Tiling Is Complete!

They finished the tile work on Wednesday. I love it!

The poor counter guy spent about 1.5 hours trying to improve the look of that seam on the counters. I'm still not thrilled with it, but I think it's an improvement. It looks better in the pic than it does in person.

Countertops

The countertops went in on Monday in the kitchen and bathrooms. They're all carrera marble. They did a beautiful job installing them. These guys are real perfectionists. I'm obsessing though over the seam on the kitchen sink. It was a decision that was made without me. The kitchen measures 96.5" on the side with the sink and the prefab slabs that I bought were 96". Instead of slicing off 1/2" from another slab and tacking it on to the end where I think it would be less noticeable, the boys decided to do it down the center of the sink. Everyone tells me that this is the most professional place to do the seam, but why?! I don't get it. I could live with it except that I feel like the seam is really dark. It's all I can stare at right now. I think that the sink can be one of the most elegant features in a kitchen, so I don't understand why you'd put the seam there to begin with. After spending an hour contemplating ripping out all the counters and finding new marble delaying everything by weeks, I have come to my senses. I've called the counter guys to see what they can do about lightening the seam. I suppose that there's always at least one thing that haunts you in a remodel. This is at the top of my list. I haven't heard back yet. Maybe I'm being a Jeff lewis drama queen on this, but I just want that kitchen to be perfect after all this!

Counters and Backsplash

We finally settled on our kitchen counters and they are as impractical as one can find, but we both love them. It's called Crema Marfil and it is gorgeous. Creamy and elegant and lovely. I really like granite and know that it is so much more practical (esp as a rental which this studio will be down the road), but we got the Marfil. Here is the really exciting part: it comes in smaller 63" slabs which is exactly the dimension of the large area that we need. We need an additional 18" width piece to fit in to the left of the stove which was going to force us to buy an additional slab, however, I found a small broken piece in the bargain area that will work out perfectly for only $45. I was very pleased with my scavenging.

We are most likely going to go with a small square stone tile like the one above as well. We'll do that last after the counters are installed. I think that we are pretty effectively going to be emulating this kitchen that I fell in love with before.

Import Tile has a great selection of granite slabs at really reasonable prices in addition to all of their beautiful tile. That's where we got the Marfil. The small backsplash tile is from Best Tile which is a bizarre place on Bayshore. They didn't have much, but I did like this tile.