mbstarfish's Profile

You can find round spongy (sorry, don't know the material) mats at IKEA. I have deep blue ones for my round kitchen table. I just wash them and hang dry, but I think they'll hold up in the dishwasher, too. They are only at the stores, and they come in a lot of different colors.

GL!

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the comments and for letting me share! I love Apartment Therapy; it's a great source of inspiration for me so it's great to be featured here.

Regarding the "not art deco" comments - if you read my letter, I never said we were trying to create art deco bathrooms. What I said is that we bought an old art deco house. Unfortunately, as you can see from the photos, the original art deco tile work was covered by some hideous mottled '60s tile. The original colors were blue and peach, and if I ever post the photos from the rest of the house, you'll see the art deco influences elsewhere. We did, however, try to create bathrooms that were clean and contemporary, with some retro touches such as the art deco sconces in the master as well as the ceiling lights (which are not pictured), the fixtures and the sink vanities in the other bathrooms. I did try to use classic subway tile and hexes in the hall bathroom, however my installer wanted to charge me an insane amount since it would take a lot of work to completely straighten the walls to "make it look good" as he put it. Anyway, it was cheaper to install marble than subway tile, as crazy as that sounds.

So this leads me to answering the questions regarding the cost of the renovations. It is a bit difficult to break out because we renovated the whole house and we used the same labor pool to do it so their labor costs are hard to break out. Also, keep in mind that we had to install central A/C, all new electrical, copper piping and new walls, so our cost is much higher than most bathroom renovations would cost. With those caveats in mind, the royal ice marble that we used came in 18" x 18" squares which we then had cut in half an installed in a brick pattern. So those pieces and the Thassos ran $7-9/sq ft. The larger the piece, the less expensive it was. The marble mosaics (including the floor) ran from $12-15/sq ft. The glass mosaic was $25/sq ft but we had a lot left over from a previous bath reno so we only needed to buy 2 sheets. In terms of tile install labor, it was $6/sq ft. If you are looking to use marble in your bath, you can find it for $4 and up, depending on your type and what the "hottest" tile is at the moment. For instance, Carrera can be found for $4/sq ft, but Calacutta is averaging $12 or more because it was the "in" tile. You can also get tile for less money if you go to tile distributors and negotiate - you can get from 10%-30% off retail prices (i.e., Home Depot, Expo). Everything else we bought using Home Depot and Expo 10% coupons and we hit Restoration Hardware during its bathroom sale and got 30% of normal prices. Overstock.com, Craig's list and eBay were also our friends.

As for the glass enclosures, for those in Miami, we got them from Total Glass and Mirror. Most glass places wanted to charge us $3000 for both encloures, but they came in at half price at $1600 for both (master and hall bath).

In terms of keeping the marble clean, I use Method products - anything too harsh or abrasive will damage the finish on the marble. Other than that, it's low maintenance. I will say that if you use marble for the top of your sink vanity you have to be careful of water ring staining, hence the dark resin tray that holds our toothbrushes, etc.

Thank you again everyone!
g.

Honeybee, I think you saw the dining room on Domino Magazine's decorating contest...