Picking tile, paint & stain - the fun stuff!

Finally, we arrived at the phase of the remodel that I was really excited about! Picking things that actually add to the design of the home that you can see!! This is when the remodeling process gets super exciting!

Let's start with tile... we had it picked out very early on. We knew we wanted a simple, timeless tile that would be period correct for the home so we went with subway tile. For the kitchen backsplash, we used a subway tile with imperfect edges so that it would have a unique look. We used a dark grout (mostly because I didn't want to clean white grout lines) and I was also super inspired by the kitchen display at Magnolia Market. They had a very similar tile to what we had picked out for the kitchen and I felt like the dark grout lines featured the unique edges of the tile really well.

Inspiration photo from @magnolia on Instagram.

Kitchen backsplash tile in progress! Eeek!

For the bathroom, we used a traditional subway anAs for flooring, we were keeping the original hardwoods so we only needed flooring for the bathroom and sunporch. For the bathroom, we went with a traditional hexagon tile with a pop of grey. I knew I wanted to tie grey into the bathroom so that is one way we did it.

Bathroom tile options. We ended up not using the grey penny tile.

We found this awesome flooring for an extremely affordable price at Habitat ReStore for our sunporch. We love swinging by there occasionally because you never know what they might have! We really liked this tile because it resembled concrete and would go well with the color of the stone wall and tie into the hardwood floors well. It has held up so good and we had enough to put it in the outbuilding where our laundry room is too!

The tile we found at Habitat ReStore

Tips for tile:

+ If you live in a pier and beam house and you want to use tile, be sure it is porcelain and not ceramic. Pier and beam houses shift throughout seasons and weather changes and a porcelain floor will hold up better to the shifts than a ceramic. We didn't know this when we installed our tile, so we installed a ceramic tile in the bathroom and it has started cracking in some places. Luckily we've been able to repair it but if we could go back, we would have chosen a porcelain tile.

+ Since our house is old and imperfect, our sunporch floor is slightly slanted. We were originally going to go with a straight pattern for laying the tile but realized that it was going to look crooked so we ended up laying it a little different to work with the shape of the room and the imperfections of the old house.

The pattern we laid the tiles in the "imperfectly shaped" sunporch.

+ If you do a daily check-in find your tile person putting tile up before the cabinets and countertops are fully installed in the kitchen, tell them to STOP! The tile needs to meet up nicely with the top of your countertops and if they aren't there, it's hard to judge on where to start the tile. This isn't something that can be guesstimated. We ended up having to put a piece of trim between our countertops and the tile because it wasn't meeting up correctly as it was done in the wrong order. It turned out just fine, but it's one of those things I would change and make sure was done right if I could go back.

Picking Paint

This was WAY harder than I expected it to be. I had several grey paint colors picked out but I was afraid they would either be too dark or make the house feel cold. After going through a million grey paint swatches I moved on to some beige/graige options. I found one I thought I liked but I was still really uncertain. Daron kept saying "it's just paint. Just pick one!" Yea... just paint! It really does make a difference to have the right paint color. The contractor had the color mixed into the primer so I could get an idea of what it would look like and it was basically PINK! I went back to the drawing board and found a grey in a historic paint colors line at Lowes. I liked it because it was a warmer grey rather than being stark or industrial looking.

I ended up going with the far left color for the trim and shiplap walls and the middle color for the sheetrock walls.

Tips for paint:

+ Read the back of the paint card to find out what colors are used to make the paint. If it has a high number for red, your paint is likely going to have a pink tone to it. For grey if it has more blue, it will look very cool and that can sometimes lead to it looking stark. Our paint has more green in it which gives it more of a warm tone, and it does pull greens which I like.

+ Get a sample of the paint colors that you are really loving and paint them on multiple walls. Be sure to look at them during different times of the day to see how they look in different lighting. Paint colors often change with lighting and even with the decor and other colors you use in the room. That's what makes it SO HARD to pick!

+ Consider getting the primer tented so that you can get an idea of what the paint color will look like. Note that it won't be exact because it's just tinted primer but it will help you see what undertones the paint will pull. We did this and it helped me better see that the original color I picked out was WAY too pink. If you look at the right wall in the photo below you can see the wall with the tinted primer on it. So glad I went with a different color!

Take a look at that awful paint color on the left wall!

Picking Stain

Picking a stain color was easy for me, but if I had to go back and do it again I would choose another color. I went with Minwax Provincial and it is beautiful. I chose it because it is a really warm, dark stain. I thought it contrasted the light walls and trim really well and it does... but it's hard to keep clean and I think if it were a little lighter it wouldn't show scratches and foot traffic as much.

Stain options - we went with the middle one, it's called Provincial.

The color I chose is the middle color, but if I could go back, I would probably go with Puritan Pine (far left color) which I was totally against at the time. It's funny how your style and perspective changes after you've lived with a certain look for a while. Overall, I really love our hardwoods and they are still beautiful. They have some wear and tear on them but I kind of like the look. It's fitting for an old home.

Tips for staining hardwoods:

(We didn't do this ourselves, but after watching someone do a terrible job and talking to someone who saved our hardwoods, I can share a few tips from what I observed.)

+ Sand down the floors really good and make sure they are very, very, VERY clean before product application begins. Like sweep, vacuum, mop a million times. Any spec of dust that is on the floor when stain goes down will show and create a bubble in the finish.

+ When the stain is applied, be sure whoever is applying it isn't just slopping it on. If it is slopped on, it will look slopped on. Wipe it on in on direction and smoothly as possible.

+ The contractor who ended up finishing the floors to make them look right applied a couple of layers of stain to get it smooth and make sure the stain soaked into the wood evenly.

+ Make sure that your baseboards are either covered or not put down yet when the floors go down or they will forever have a tented yellow everywhere the stain splashed on them (hard to avoid).

+ A top poly coat is applied to seal and protect the floors. We were in a hurry so they only applied two coats but said three is really preferred. NOw that we've lived on the floors for a few years I'm wishing we would have done three coats. The sealer can always be re-applied in the future to continue protecting the floors.