One Year Later

One year ago today we lost our friend, Diesel. The pain is easing, mostly being replaced with memories and tributes. There was a car show held in his honor last summer. He would have grinned so big his face would still be hurting. At the end the boys lined up their diesel trucks and “smoked for Diesel.” There was a lot of snow this winter and we all thought about how much Diesel would have loved sliding around in all that frozen stuff. But most of all, we just missed him. We love you, Diesel!

Tile Battles

Well, it's been a long 'battle' with an uncertain outcome, but we finally agreed on bathroom floor tile!  Yeah!!!!

Jerry wanted small tiles and found this "weave" pattern.  He loved it.
I hated it




I wanted marble - in 16-inch squares.




His point was he wanted to create something interesting - a work of art - with the tiles and this could only be done with the smaller tiles.  My point was that it is a fairly small bathroom, with not a lot of open floor space and the little tiles would be too "busy."  He keeps telling me that I get one shot - he's not going to redo this house in 5 or 10 or 20 years, so I don't want anything that I can't change.  Tile is not something that I am willing to tackle by myself.  So my vision was a timeless, classic look of large tiles in a material/pattern that wouldn't get old - marble.  I also want to be able to add rugs; something you can't do if the floor has a focal point (unless you add them around the focal point, which we can't do because the floor is too small).

We went to some home improvement stores and looked at what they had for sale even though we both knew we weren't going to find anything we liked, much less that we could agree on.  We were right.  And we apologize to the couple who were laying their tile pattern out on the floor while we argued over large vs. small.  It was only after we were leaving that we noticed that you were using both of the tiles we were bashing.  I'm sure they will look very nice in your house!

Finally we were able to find a time to go to a real tile store.  We walked in and the first thing we saw was the little stuff.  Glass mosaics, ceramic mosaics, tiny mosaics, and the dreaded basket-weave mosaic.  The back of the store had the larger tiles for me, but it was a long walk.  We came across this - which made me cry.  
However, he did agree that this would be a little "busy" in our bathroom.  (I told you so!)

Just as we were about to give up, we found this.

Yes, I know it's on the wall here, but ours will be on the floor.  We both love the color, the pattern, it has both the small tile for him and the larger tile for me, and it also comes in other sizes that we plan to use on the shower walls.  But most importantly we both agreed instantly.  No arguing, no convincing, as soon as we saw it we knew that was the one.

It was a beautiful moment.