Oh, the love hate relationship I have with our master bathroom. I dream of the day I can soak in our salvaged claw foot tub, surrounded by freshly painted wainscoting, basking in the glory of the beautiful Carrara marble and sparkling polished nickel fixtures. But sadly, those days are still months and roughly 142 "to do" list items away from being even close to a reality.

While Alex has been toiling away on restoring the drafty and disgusting window in the room, I've been no slouch on my own. Rather than sitting idly by in the bullpen waiting for a construction task, I've been immersed in the world of tile and fabric, a world both exhilarating and overwhelming all at the same time. A world where color, pattern, and inspiration abound, but seeds of buyers remorse and indecision creep up like the tendrils of ivy on our courtyard wall. 

Truth be told, I've been hunting for a suitable tile (well, stone to be exact) option for this room for years, and though many potentially viable candidates have presented themselves along the way, I have never swayed from my desire for a Carrara marble hexagon tile. I've spent a fair amount of time poring over samples from various stores, and for a short time even debated a 1" vs. 2" mosaic, but I feel I've finally settled on a winner. Although larger format tiles would be more practical in a room of this size (from both an installation and grout maintenance perspective), I'm a purist at heart. I know our bathroom redo won't fool anyone into thinking it's an "original" bathroom in our 1880s victorian, but I'd like to pull in some elements that one might have found in a home of our age so it looks and feels more appropriate to the period. My desire for a somewhat historically accurate material selection helped me rule out the 2 inch hexagon. 

Primarily I've been researching various online companies in addition to visiting local stone showrooms, and I've purchased an array of 1" honed Carrara marble samples to choose from. From my experience, I can highly recommend ordering samples from different companies because you get a better feel of the product's color and shading, variation and prominence of veining within a sheet, and the thickness of the tiles themselves. In most cases, samples run approximately $5-$10 each with free shipping. If you ask me, I think that's a very reasonable price when making such an expensive purchase, especially for a large room. 

Ordering the samples has helped us to narrow down the company we'd like to use (I'll be sure to share the name once the order is placed and tiles arrive to our satisfaction), and I feel that's one big item we're able to mark complete on our design checklist.