A huge weight has been lifted…

…and put in the back of my van.

Ha…very funny, I know. But seriously, I feel SOOO much better today. For the past few weeks I’ve been stressing about the bathrooms in the new house. Originally I had planned to put glass countertops under our vessel sinks (Kohler Reve in White) to let the black custom built vanity “be the star.” But then someone brought to my attention the difficulty in cleaning in, around, and under a glass slab…as in, it’s not doable unless you physically remove the sink every time you want a thorough clean. And I’m just OCD enough to be inconsolable if there’s a speck of dust under the glass when it’s installed (you should see me trying to put a screen cover onto my iPhone…). So I nixed that plan and started over again.

My next plan was to find a black countertop, to again, not draw attention away from the vanity cabinet. Our kitchen consultant recommended absolute black granite or a variety of laminates…and I didn’t particularly care for any of them. So then I started browsing around online and found calcutta and carrara premium laminates and threw those into the running.

But I had a new dilemma. Originally, I was planning to use my kitchen backsplash tiles (Vihara glass tiles in Minka from Sonoma tiles) in my main floor bathroom and the Oasis tiles by Ocean Blue in my master bathroom for an accent and shower tile. They were mostly just picks that were “adequate” for the job and went with the glass countertops….but I wasn’t really committed to them. However, when I started throwing these new countertop options into the mix, my brain went haywire. I also had a floor tile in mind and NOTHING was working together.

I knew that I wasn’t going to be successful in the bathroom. For my kitchen, I knew from the very beginning that I wanted the Vihara glass tiles as my backsplash. It was kismet…I saw it in person and everything else just fell into place. Love at first sight, for sure.

But in my bathroom, I wasn’t getting ANYTHING. Not from the counters, the tiles, the floor…not even the paint was working anymore. UGH.

I knew I needed to find one aspect of the bathroom design that really spoke to me and then I’d be able to pick everything else. But it just wasn’t happening…I’ve been spending hours up at night obsessively searching through the Gardenweb forums, Pinterest, Houzz, and various home design blogs hoping to find some inspiration.

So this week I was home visiting my parents and on my last day in town I decided to check out a couple local tile stores hoping to have an epiphany. The first store we went to had some really interesting tiles and designs but, eh, nothing grabbed me. Then we went to another “highly recommended” store. I was incredibly unimpressed with the service. Of course, I’m not building a million dollar home, but I still deserve to receive the same customer service and respect that a millionaire receives. And really, how do the salespeople know that I’m not a secret millionaire…or that my mother, who was with us, isn’t?!? The salesclerk barely gave us a greeting before hurrying off to “man the floor since she was the only person on the floor” which translated to “since there’s NO ONE ELSE in the store, I’ll just sit back down at the computer and leisurely web-surf.” She certainly had time to speak with the woman who came in before us carrying a Coach bag and wearing diamonds. So yeah, that didn’t go so well.

We found a third place but it wasn’t really a tile store…but we were right around the corner from a well-known granite yard that my mom was familiar with. She and Steve recommended that we just stop and look around. My mom knew that they had an extensive remnant yard that was supposed to be very affordable.

We never had really considered granite as a serious option as the pricing we were given to upgrade was well out of our budget. And I really didn’t know what a remnant would cost…but I figured it didn’t hurt to look…we had certainly looked everywhere else.

Apparently the universe was trying to make up for the shabby treatment we received at the second store because, HALLELUJAH, we found a winner!! The saleswoman was amazing and super helpful. She took us out to look around and within 5 minutes we had found our slabs for both bathrooms. And they were absolutely stunning. And they were exactly the size we needed. And they were totally within our price range! It was just meant to be!

So, we brought home one today and will head back to my parents in a week or so to pick up the master bath slabs. Our master bath slabs are labrador blue pearl and I think our main floor bath slab is kashmir white. It wasn’t marked, but after some internet research this evening, that’s my best guess. It’s a mostly white stone with gray and black veining and big garnet flecks and cream chunks throughout. It’s gorgeous!! I can’t wait to see it with the black cabinets!

These photos actually make the slab look a little more beige than it really is, but they do highlight some of those beautiful ruby/plum flecks. I’ll post some photos of the other slabs once we get them home.

But, whew, I finally have a starting point! I KNOW I can find a floor tile and accent tile to work with these granite counters.

Really, a huge weight has been lifted…off of my shoulders!! Maybe I’ll actually get some sleep tonight (…she writes…at 2:00 in the morning…)…