Our busy, busy day

I knew that we had planned on tiles today, but I had no idea that we would spend an entire day, from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm running around for the house.  It feels so good to be home, relaxing, and I'd love to say, not thinking about the house, but I always think about the house, but at least I'm not running around anymore.

Our day did, indeed, begin at 8:00 am, with a trip to the tile place.  Three hours, a fight with the saleswoman, and a lot "blah, blah, blah," later, we walked away with almost all of our tile decisions finalized.  We're getting down to the wire here, orders need to be placed, otherwise, the only people we can blame for another month of empty house will be ourselves.

We originally went to the tile showroom Mr.B works with in October.  The man we worked with was a wonderful guy, who was supportive and energetic.  Sadly, he is on vacation now, and Ms. Gray took over the account.  Let's just say that her name describes her, kind of a miserable human being.  As soon as we started talking to her, I wanted to finalize our selections as quickly as possible and be done.  Unfortunately, when it comes to picking out tile for your house, the process is never quick.  We started with the master bath.  Ms. Gray had printed out the list of all of our choices, so we worked our way over to our first choice, master bath floor tile.  I was so proud of my preparedness:  I had my inspiration notebook, the computer loaded with my three bathroom mood boards, tile samples from home, and a few books with yet more inspiration photos.  Ms. Gray was not interested in all my hard work, just interested in the tile.  Fine lady.
Turns out that we still really liked the tile we chose for the floor, and the tub deck nine months ago:

We also realized that we still really liked the travertine mosiac we chose for shower floor and bench:

Ms. Gray suggested that we use the mosiac for the tub skirt as well, but "Cute Tile Guy" suggested instead that he would cut "strips," of the floor tile in order to wrap around the roundish tub skirt.  I'm now confused.

I also am uncertain about tiling around the toilet and behind the vanity, we need to do some measuring before making our final decision.  It was in this discussion that Ms. Gray ended up really offending me, and caused Joern to threaten to leave.  Joern said that we were undecided about tiling behind the toilet, because we want a minimal amount of tile in the bathroom, and then he added, "in America, there isn't a lot of tile in bathrooms."  To which Ms. Gray responded, "ugh, I know, it looks horrible, and those wobbly American houses can't hold tiles anyway!"  Seriously?!  Can you say that when you are a salesperson, and you have an American customer.   This is a usual comment here, but one I am particularly sensitive to, considering that my dad and godfather build houses.  Joern lost it, and said that he is so sick of people making these unfounded comments, that it is unfair to me, and that Ms. Gray needed to appologize and if not, we would leave. 

Although I found it a little embarassing, Joern was right.  We are the paying customers, and she needed to keep her opinions about the quality of American home construction to herself. 

She finally appologized, and started pulling out all these stories, backpacking through the States nine times, her son spent a year in the States studying, "blah, blah,blah," which I didn't really care to hear.  But whatever, we need the tiles, and Mr. B gets a significant discount at this tile showroom, I just hope that we don't have to work with Ms. Gray more often.

Once the mood lightened, it was on to the children's bath.  My beautiful, cottagey, beachy, bathroom.  Since we chose a "wood look" tile for the flooring, Ms. Gray asked about our parquet.  Since you should never try to match these two floors, we needed a contrast.  The only problem with answering this question was that we never finalized our parquet choice either.  We decided that we would go from the tile showroom to the parquet company, to finalize our flooring choice.  I did change the tile in the shower though.  Our original choice was Joern's choice, a very large, rectangular, matte tile, which didn't really fit with my cottagey theme.  So, I changed the tile to my beveled edge subway tile.

From there, we moved on to the powder room.  We will use the above beveled edge subway tile halfway up the walls, which I think will look incredibly sharp with a dark gray paint.  We also chose, for now, a dark grey floor, which will also be used as the floor in the pantry because it is located so close to the powder room:

Ms. Gray warned that the floor doesn't go with my subway tile.  I'm not sure what to do here.  I also asked if there was some sort of a "cap" tile for the wall tile.  I really made Ms. Gray work on that one, but after about half an hour of searching, she found a proper, fitting cap tile. 

From the powder room, it was on to the cellar, which is by far, our most challenging tiling choice.  The problem with the cellar is that it is such a huge, tiled space.  I see throw rugs in our future, because it is just such a large, continual space, and I am not the world's biggest tile fan (according to Ms. Gray this is because I am American and we have no senrse of style or taste.)  We had originally chosen a very lovely gray tile for the cellar:

But Joern, who has free reign in the cellar tile choice, decided he wanted beige.  We looked at bunches of beige tile:

It isn't easy to chose a beige tile for about 450 sq. ft (45 qm) of unbroken space.  I have a fear of beige, which is funny because we'll probably have beige walls, and our very beige and brown master bath, but I have a fear of too much beige, unbroken, in one space.  When I walk into large spaces of beige, I feel like I'm being swallowed by beige, but I understand that I may be weird.

After three hours, we left without finalizing the cellar tile, and agreed to return on Monday with a parquet sample and a sample of the stone countertops in the two second floor bathrooms.  And I took a deep breath of relief to be away from mean ol' Ms. Gray.

From the tile place, we headed to the granite guy, who is supplying our exterior window sills.  He also sells tile, for less money than the tile showroom, and he is nice.  Joern was more than happy to jump at the opportunity to give him the order for our very large tiled cellar.  He pulled out a whole bunch of beige tile:

We were particularly drawn to the two tiles on top in the middle.  They are a stone tile, and have tons of life.  Since they are stone, and a natural product, no two tiles are the same, which means plenty of interest and beauty, and I love stone!  The nicest thing of all was that he offered that we could take home a bunch of samples, because that's really the best thing you can do.  Getting samples from most places is like pulling teeth.  It was so refreshing to have this offer.

From there, we headed to the house to check out the tile in our foyer:

Joern likes the one on the right, and I like the two on the left.  Both are interesting though.

Since we were in the house, and I had the camera, I decided to snap a few shots of all that is going on in the mechanical room:

The air filtration system and the heat pump.

The pipes are now all insulated, and the plumbers then put a cover over the insulation.

A view of the insulation cover.

                                 I'm in the picture, so you can get an idea of how large the hot water tank is.

We also noticed this very pretty control box. 

Once we had sufficient photos, it was on to Reutlingen to Bembe, the parquet company.  We had visited the parquet showroom a few times last year, chose a wood, but again, never finalized the decision.  We were immediately impressed that the salesman recognized us, and greeted us by name.  We checked, and agreed that the burgundy oak was still the best choice:

We also liked the smoked oak:

But we then agreed that the smoked oak with all of our espresso wood and chocolate leather sofa would be dark overkill.  So, we wrote up the final decision for the burgundy oak.  And then we received the great news:  as of 11:00 today, the parquet factory was closed for their three week summer holiday.  Fan-freakin-tastic!  We won't be able to get the parquet until the middle of September, at the earliest.  This may set us back a week or two, but this one is our fault.  At least we were able to walk away with another decision checked off the list, and two pieces of flooring.

Then it was time to head to the bath showroom, to ask for countertop samples.  Sadly, our account guy was out for the afternoon, but they were able to send someone else to help us.  Of course, he acted like we were asking him to solve world hunger, but we were finally able to get the samples of our limestone and granite countertops. 

From there, it was back to the tile guy, to clarify a question for the exterior window sills.  We even had to call poor Mr. B, who was headed out for vacation.  Fortunately, he picked up the phone and answered our question, so that we were able to proceed with the production of the exterior window sills.  They will be ready on Wednesday, a little late, but they are beautiful.

While we were at the tile place, we decided to go to Joern's parent's storage warehouse, which is in the same building, to check the vanities against the stone samples.

And while I was having fun with our samples, I decided to look at the floor samples against our dark furniture:

I'm so pleased with the look, we almost don't need a carpet in the dining room!

So that was our day.  Hours, and hours, and a bunch of decisions, that can't be changed now. I also made the decision to spend the weekend thinking about the door.  I even posted the door choices on Facebook, and got some really exciting feedback!  The final process of the house is exciting and scary, but it feels good to know that a whole bunch of decisions are behind us, and I can't dwell on them any longer.  Hooray!