Jamie’s custom-design Daltile mosaic bathroom floor — and Hall-Mack Relaxation Unit and recessed scale, too!

It’s so great that readers are still able to design their own mosaic tile patterns and colors using Daltile’s Mosaic Pattern Designer. I keep thinking, one day this will just be gone, but it’s still there. I chased after Jamie when I saw her comment in this story on the blog.

In her comment, she wrote:

Lauren’s bathroom makeover story and “3 ideas for Angela’s aqua bathroom design” were how I learned about Daltile’s pattern designer, and I pretty much copied those almost exactly in 2 of my bathrooms. And yes, the store where I ordered from was like “huh, I didn’t know we could even do this!”, but they were awesome and my floors came out perfect (even if they did try to talk me out of blue tiles because “no one wants blue anymore, think of the resale value!”).

One of the original residents of my home recently stopped by when she was in town for her 50th high school reunion, and it took her a minute to realize that the floors were brand new, not the original floors she remembered from her childhood. And now she’s been texting me pictures of the house from when she was a kid so I can see what it all looked like in the 50s and 60s.

So we connected via email, and I asked Jamie if she could send photos. Howdy hudee, there was some more deliciousness in that bathroom that she had forgotten to mention! 

Jamie wrote:

I don’t have any vintage photos of the bathroom, sorry.  When we moved in, the floor was shaggy, gross carpet over some badly worn vinyl tile, and there was 80s wallpaper.  The sub-floor was in bad shape, due to the shower having a leaky sliding glass door.  There was a non-functioning low, oblong gray toilet in this bathroom, looked like it was probably from late 60s-early 70s.  We removed it immediately and then it took me almost 2 years to track down a blue replacement to closely match the blue tub.  Finally found it on Craigslist 80 miles away, NOS, sitting in a guy’s basement for 30 years for a half bath project that he never got around to doing.

The floor is newer Daltile, I swiped the pattern & color combo directly from one of your stories.  The joists needed to be reinforced and subfloor entirely replaced due to the leaky shower door/old toilet problems. I think the Pepper White rectangles have since been discontinued. I remember it being an issue when we ordered, but they had just enough left for our square footage.

The Hall-Mack built-in scale and “Relaxation Unit” were installed by the previous owners when they did the bathroom renovation sometime in the early 60s – house was built in 1950 and the original footprint of the bathroom was much smaller.  

Our tile installer had the idea of doing the blue cove base border around the scale and it’s the perfect touch.  And the Relaxation Unit is perfect to hold books for potty training the toddler.  We have other Hall-Mack built-ins in several other rooms too.  They must have gone through the catalog and picked stuff to put everywhere.

Frankie the Boston Terrier photobombed me at every angle.

Thank you for sharing, Jamie! The tile, the toilet… the whole bathroom — and all of you — look fabulous! What a happy bathroom and I bet, a happy home! 

P.S. This made me laugh, it’s just SO “things that Retro Renovators say”:

…We removed it immediately and then it took me almost 2 years to track down a blue replacement to closely match the blue tub.  Finally found it on Craigslist 80 miles away, NOS, sitting in a guy’s basement for 30 years for a half bath project that he never got around to doing.

Tee hee.

• This link should get you to all my stories about Daltile’s Mosaic Design Tool aka Pattern Designer
• And, this link for recessed Hall-Mack bathroom products — Relaxation Unit, bathroom scale, and more.