Tile Time!

Before Thanksgiving, it was time to choose the tile for our rec room's reno project. The tile we picked is going to go in the entryway (in front of the new french doors), laundry closet, and half bath. PLUS we needed to make sure it would match in the kitchen since we're eventually going to swap out the laminate flooring in the kitchen for whatever kind of tile we're going with in the rec room.

Here are the two sample candidates we came home with (both ceramic and in the beige family):

Tile #1 (below the step in the pic above) is a 12x12 tile that had a moderate amount of movement & color variation, along with a subtle texture to it, which we liked because it would hide dirt (read winston's pawprints) and dings/dents a little better. But it competed with our kitchen's existing granite countertops which are pretty busy with a lot of movement in it (see it in the top left of the above photo?).

Tile #2 was a lighter beige, 13x13 tile with less movement and a smoother surface. It'd hide dirt less than the previous tile, but it was easy on the eyes since it played well with the kitchen countertops and gave off a cleaner/sleeker feel. Plus we liked that, at 13"x13", it was a larger tile and would help make our smaller kitchen feel a bit bigger/grander.

The winner? Tile #2

Here's where I mention that we got the tile from a home surplus center where everything is awesomely discounted!

And for the tile we chose, the discount was discounted! haha - love it! What would've cost us a MINUMUM of $300-$400 from Lowe's or Home Depot cost us less than $170. We needed 224 sq ft (for both the rec room and kitchen) which came out to 12 boxes, plus one for wiggle room. So 13 boxes at $12.92/box came out to $167.96 before tax. BAM.

In other rec room progress, we have closet doors on our laundry nook and half bath:

They're 7 feet tall and larger than standard-size doors since our ceiling was raised and could accommate taller doors. Plus with stacking the washer and dryer, we wanted to be sure we'd have plenty of clearance for access to the dryer door and button functions. I love all 7ft. of these babies!

They came with brass hinges...



...but I swapped them out for cheap with oil-rubbed bronze (ORB) hinges from Lowe's:



Here's what one side looked like after swapping them out:

And here are two pics (from different angles) showing one door with ORB hinges and the other side still with the brass - big difference, right?

And here's the after, with all the hinges changed to ORB:

Ahhhhh :) I think that looks so much better.

And what a difference it makes having the doors mounted compared to this before pic...

...and this before before pic...

...and finally, this before before before pic :)

 
For the new doors we bought these inactive doorknobs (also referred to as dummy knobs) since they open like closet doors and don't have a latch in the middle:

Since the one door is for the bathroom, we'll have a little slide lock installed on the insde of that door for privacy.

 

And lastly, some awesome progress has been made on the newly-opened up doorway. When I last posted, it looked like this...

But now it looks like this since it's been taped and mudded...

Close-ups:

Now it's set for sanding. Then 2 more rounds of mudding and sanding. Then painting! :)

Also, there's more progress going on with the completion of the steps:

Check back soon and I'll share some more pics of it all. Happy Friday! :)