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.
Rick S says
Nice job with the tile. It looks like it was always there.
Your toilet looks like the blue American Standard one we replaced when we refurbished the upstairs hall bathroom.
The fiberglass tub/shower had a crack that was getting worse and we replaced it with white.
The toilet went on EBAY and shipped from Wisconsin to Georgia. The man who bought it had broke the tank lid on his and needed a replacement. His whole bathroom, tile and fixtures, where same blue. He said it was getting him out of the Dog House with his wife.
Jamie D. says
It is an American Standard! Likely from the early-mid 1980s from the looks of the box and the price tag from Hechinger’s.
The tub is original to the house, which was built in 1950, and is enameled cast iron. It’s a bit scuffed up but no chips at all!
Rick S says
I was told the color is Dresden Blue and original to our c1978 house.
Every other faucet and toilet in the house was Kohler when the house was built, but at the time Kohler didn’t have the right blue.
The other toilet colors in the house were Swiss Chocolate and Almond. Look inside the tank or on the lid for manufacture date. It may have sat on the shelf before install but tells when toilet was made.
Eartha Kitsch says
Oh and I forgot to say how cool it is that the old owner is showing you photos from back in the day. I dream of that! p.s. Frankie is SO cute.
Jay says
I suspect that many RR fans have that same dream.
Jamie D. says
It’s amazing! I doubt that I would have even met her except that it happened to be a nice, warm day and I was sitting on the porch with my daughter when she pulled up out front with her friend and asked to take pictures to send to her brother. She was in town for the weekend for her high school reunion.
My father-in-law and several of his uncles and cousins all grew up in the same neighborhood, so they knew the “kids” who grew up in our house. It wasn’t that risky inviting a total stranger into our house. Her story checked out 😉
Amazingly, she told us that she owned a book that had belonged to someone from my father-in-law’s family. She happened to be at an estate sale, not even local to us, and picked up the book and recognized the name in the inscription, so she bought it. It’s a small, small world. She recently mailed it to us so we can reunite it with a relative.
And the pictures she sent me of the original house? The decor is to die for! I wish the wallpaper and draperies still existed! Some of our paint colors and furniture are very similar.
KStacey says
I was lucky enough to buy our house from the almost original owner (he only lived there for 49 years, haha) who was also quite the shutterbug, even had his own camera shop when he retired, etc. there were hundreds, if not thousands of pictures left behind. Most of them were stuff that means nothing to me, “Maybel’s birthday, Red Lobster 1996” kind of stuff. But the pictures in/around the house are priceless! It does hurt a little when I see some of the original fixtures or shag carpet from 1968… but for the most part, the house was spared any upgrade-mania, and has been fairly easy to bring back to its mid-century glory. Stripping the country blue off the porch railings was a b!%#! though! Haha!
Eartha Kitsch says
I love it! Very well done ! 🙂
Paul-CT says
Jamie, I love your bathroom. It came out perfect! Are the sinks under mount? I can’t blow up the picture to see clearer. Also, did you consider re-glazing the sinks to match the commode and tub?
Thanks
P.
Jamie D. says
Thank you, Paul! The countertop and sinks are all one molded acrylic piece. Judging from the neighbors’ homes, the original footprint of the bathroom was much, much smaller and there was only one pedestal sink. When the orignal owners renovated, they expanded this bathroom into a hallway and partially into one small bedroom. That bedroom got combined with another small bedroom to make one big bedroom. So the house ended up being 3BR instead of the original 4BR offering of this neighborhood, but we have this huge bathroom and tons of closet space in exchange. And the biggest medicine cabinet that I’ve ever seen (those mirrors are sliding doors. The whole entire thing is a medicine cabinet)
When I bought the blue toilet on Craigslist, the guy threw in a matching sink, also still in the box, never installed. Of course, there’s only one. I’m hanging onto it in case we ever need to replace this countertop and I can magically track down the exact match.
Jay says
Sounds like a previous owner did have good judgment in how the space was reallocated even if you were left with an unsavory sounding bath judging by your description. I thought maybe the bath had been expanded because bungalows don’t typically have mile long double sink vanities. Your new bath is beautiful and we all dream that someone will show up unannounced that they once lived in the house years ago and share memories/photos.
ineffablespace says
I used Daltile Keystone colors in all three bathrooms and Daltile semi-gloss in one as well.
I used all 2×2 in the Waterfall (blue) like the above bathroom, with coved floors and vertical corners in the walls. The second bathroom was all Keystones in Artic White and plain, not speckled grey. Again all coved horizontal and vertical.
In the third bathroom I used cove tile like above for vertical coves, and Keystones for the coves on the floor.
All of this required (a lot of planning as the bathrooms were sized for the tile) multiple special trim pieces. The nice thing about Keystones is that they make a ton of specialized trim pieces.
Nobody at the tile place has ever tried to steer me away from any color choices, but I bought the tile through a commercial dealer not retail.
Kelly says
Jamie mentions “other Hall-Mack built-ins in several other rooms too”. I only know of Hall-Mack bathroom accessories. Did they also make products for other rooms?
Jamie D. says
There is a built-in paper towel, plastic wrap, and foil wrap holder in the kitchen, but we don’t really use it because the chunky size of modern rolls doesn’t fit. I *think* it is a Hall-Mack but I’m not positive.
We had a Towel Ladder with the shell design in both this bathroom and the ensuite, but haven’t gotten around to reinstalling them since we painted the room. The ensuite also has “The Shell” towel ring, but inexplicably, in the brass color instead of chrome like everything else. I’m guessing it was a mistake and the previous owners were just like “eh, close enough.” I’m debating if I should just sell it and try to track one down in chrome or if I *GASP* spray paint it chrome.
We have the Tow’lescopes next to each of the closets in one bedroom, which is nice to have for planning tomorrow’s outfits. Or, like me, to hang an organizer for circular knitting needles. There are also 2 Tow’lescopes in the ensuite shower stall.
The three-in-one towel rack and a mirrored shelf are located inside this bathroom’s shower. I didn’t picture them because, well, the shower is super cluttered with tub toys and bath products, and our tile surround isn’t in great condition right now. That’ll be our next project, having it retiled in a glazed Daltile to match the floor. And we will likely not reinstall the mirrored shelf because it just catches pools of water. The three-in-one rack is handy for drying swimsuits after a day at the pool but I suspect moisture is getting behind the wall where it was drilled through the tile.
Also in the ensuite is a Shower Recess, another Relaxation Unit, a Concealed Lavatory Unit, and a tissue box cover mounted into the wall next to the sink and another mounted next to my built-in vanity. Again, we rarely use the tissue box covers because modern tissue boxes just don’t fit into them.
Carol says
My MIL had a toothbrush holder recessed into the wall – when the flat chrome panel was pushed the toothbrushes and water glass would twirl out – she had a fabulous yellow main bathroom….
Carolyn says
Nice of your tile setter – thinking – about jazzing up with cove tile since there are so few craftsmen among the tradesmen. Although it IS kind of odd the tile store wasn’t onboard with your ideas. Do people really move that much that every decorating decision needs to be so temporary?
Frankie – seems to me, when you’re always in formal attire, it practically begs a photo.
Jamie D. says
Exactly! I was set on the waterfall blue and the tile shop’s owner said “you should really consider a neutral, think of the resale value.” I was like, dude, I couldn’t care less about resale value, I’m living here now and plan to live here for a long time, so I’m getting what makes me happy.
I was glad the installer saw it from my point of view rather than his boss’s…it seemed that he really enjoyed our vision for the bathroom and installing something not-beige.
Janet in ME says
I love the tile but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out if it has a pattern. Is it random? Random is my favorite way to do tile. Oh, and Frankie is pretty sweet too!
KStacey says
It’s for sure a pattern, you can see the 8×8 pattern block repeated after the first three to the right.
Jamie D. says
Thanks, Janet! The pattern on Daltile’s mosaic tool was “random block”. But there is kind of a repeat…the tiles are mounted on 12″x12″ mesh. The installer really took his time rotating the tiles to make sure they looked totally random.
There is one spot where I suspect they either didn’t have enough Pepper White rectangles to finish the pattern, or the tiles weren’t rotated correctly, but there are a few too many blue squares right next to each other and ugh, it bothers me because my eye goes right to it.
Pam Kueber says
One of my tilers told me once that it’s a tradition to include a “mistake” in the tile job: The gods are the only ones who are perfect, and they will punish you if you do something perfect.
Diane in CO says
That’s called CYA in my neck of the woods, LOL! I think I’ve had those guys at my house…… 🙂
Dan says
A beer tap next to the relaxation unit, and you’d never have to leave the bathroom!
Phyllis says
A relaxation unit is just the ticket for quality Executive Time ^_^