LA RÉSIDENCE!

Paint it Black!

2011-02-26T14:47:00.000-08:00

After waiting more than 2 years...the back exterior of the house has finally been painted....BLACK!

As you may remember it was turquoise!

We are very very thrilled! Also very happy that it didn't snow in SF as was predicted!

Here are some photos for now. I'll upload a before pic soon.

More photos to come.....

....AND WE'RE BACK!

2011-01-17T11:36:00.000-08:00

Demo Day 01

GETTIN' IT TOGETHER.

2010-08-12T21:08:00.000-07:00

We finally found the perfect place for our porcelain dolls that we found at the Alemany flea market. They're still dirty & haven't showered yet. Why don't they look cute/creepy sittin' in the corner of the bathroom bench?
Now we'll never have to shower alone again....

Fancy Evian® Christian Lacroix "Prêt-à-Porter" bottles in the shower too.

It feels like they should be in our bathroom. They were 1$ @ Big Lots. I love Big Lots. It's like a flea market in there. Every now & then there's some good stuff in between all that junk. They even sell contractor bags for super cheap. I get excited about stuff like that. One day, I won't have the need for contractor bags anymore, that's even more exciting!

Oh look now we can use the sink shelf as a book shelf too! "The Book of General Ignorance" next to the air
purifying Lampe Berger lamp Smells good. Masks that fresh reno' smell well.

Found the perfect nook next to the sink @ the window for Alex's Slow Glow lamp that we bought in Amsterdam @ Droog Design.

It's such a cool lamp. It's filled with fat. Vegetable fat. When the light is on, the fat slowly melts into liquid. It's so cool.

I was worried about bringing it back on the plane, since it's shaped kinda like a bomb and it doesn't help that my Swiss-Brazilian looks like a full-blown terrorist when he doesn't shave for a coupla days. + everyone looks a little stressed when they're travelling...I sure shit wouldn't want to sit next to him on a plane! I'ld be scawed.

So we packed it in our suitcase and hoped for the best. It would have sucked to have vegetable fat all over our clothes if the glass did break, but I was more worried about the embarassment if we had tried to bring it with us on the plane instead of checking it...having to explain what exactly it is, "Oh it just looks like a bomb, but it's a designer piece. Organic material? That's just fat. Yes, fat. And Alex just looks like he'll blow shit up", but he would never do that. In fact, he wants to get a tattoo if a little kitty....the fuzzy kind.
...like this :

The Slow Glow lamp was about 180$-220$ at the time. They now cost almost 800$! We have to find a new euro converter thing to make it work again. Love that lamp.

Most of our design books are still in storage, but we already put these on our shelves. Where to place cookbooks when you don't have a kitchen? Right next to the Sextology book. Then cram the books about small space design
into the small space that's left. No color cordination needed.

[PIC]

Alex's tree stump is looking sexy in our den. It's from kid robot, so I guess it's not a stool but a toy, or maybe it's a stool toy. That's my miele vacuum I got from Helene. Love it! Such a happy color for a vacuum cleaner. It's from Hollywood! Thanks Helene♥

Pixel gun : "Bang Bang!" It's the pixel gun. Arson playing dead.

[PIC]

3-legged orange chair we found on street. It's still disabled & probably will be for some time. I think it's special. It reminds me of the old vegas chandelier I tried to donate to good will but they REFUSED it, so I took it back home. So much rejection. I felt bad, so we're keeping it and will use it for the B&W bathroom upstairs. One day it'll be a show stopper, well maybe not a show stopper, but something special....like the chair.

We have a rug. I really wanted a graphic b&w rug kinda like this :

Alex wanted one of those super plush rugs like this :

But those don't last if you have two rambunctious terriers like this :

So due to the Arson & Riot terrier situation, we got this "rugged rug" instead.

You like? [I still like the B&W rug].

Here's our first piece of "artwork" that we found @ Point Isabel today.

Thai triangle pillows. Hanneke brought these over from Europe to Pasadena when I moved into my first apartment alone. It was my first piece of furniture. And they have been our only furniture (apart from the office chair) since the renovation. We got rid of everything else, but these stayed.

Herman Miller Aeron chair in sheep's clothing. Because it's COLD in SF.

[PIC]

Pouf, Pouf!

Now, I'll go & dream about a sofa....that would be SOFA KING COOL!

It's getting cozy...a lot of stuff is still temporary (lamp, curtains & unhacked ikea console), but it's starting to feeling homey....

FURNISHINGS & THINGS.

2010-08-01T19:59:00.000-07:00

Awww...look! It's a 3-legged orange chair...

Abandoned @ the corner of 23rd & Florida.

So we took it home...

It's all alone.

But look how great it's already getting along with the stairs.

And the desk cabinet too. It fits right in. I wonder if we found it, or it found us.

This my friends, is our first piece of furniture. You like?

NOW WHAT DO I DO WITH IT?
Add some wooden tapered legs...like this?

Or add a rocker? For the pups.

Or just design our own legs?

What about socks! Does it need socks? After all, summer in San Francisco is cold...

Chair Socks @ designspray.de

so many decisions...

...

WHITE FLOORS & FURRY ANIMALS.

2010-07-22T00:48:00.000-07:00

White Epoxy Resin floors [the night before].

Back Story :

We didn't meet the required legal ceiling height. BUMMER. So we had to jackhammer the concrete & shovel out the dirt underneath.

That sucked. A lot. And because we didn't want to spend a lot of money doing this, we did it ourselves, bit by bit.
Kinda like that :

We rented a U-haul truck to haul it to a dump - a concrete dump/brick/dirt dump - where you pay to dump it and where they re-sell it to be used as fillers and such. Everything had to be separated; Dirt from concrete. In different piles. In different locations. An added headache.

Not just did we have to load our U-haul but un-load it too! And because we were trying to save money by renting the truck for a limited time, we had to move fast! It was hardcore labour. We watched all these trucks next to us at the dump unloading their concrete by using a tilt-lift thingy - a button they pressed that unloaded it automatically. The kind of button you want when you don't have it. We manually had to shovel blocks of concrete off the truck. As trucks came & went, we kept shoveling. It sucked. I never sweated this much in my life. And the thought of having to do it all again - not just once but a couple more times, wasn't very motivating.

We ordered pallets of concrete from home depot.

Lay the rebar, and poured new concrete in patches. Uneven patches. And it took a loooong time.
[and may have cost us more in the end doing it ourselves than hiring professionals to do it in one clean sweep. oh well...].

Jesse doing his thing.

Anyways, we now have an uneven floor which is barely legal. Installing hardwood floors in the den was not an option; it's thickness would have raised the floor too much to be compliant with building codes. Well we could have dug deeper, but we were tired, and along the way decided that we really really wanted to do an epoxy resin flooring. Why? Because it rocks, oh and it's only about 1/2" thick max.

epoxy : waterproof, durable, anti-bacterial, stain & dust resistant, seamless & easy to clean.

What's not to love? We finally could have a floor that's white, and a glossy one too.

Here's the floor the night before after Alex scrubbed off all the paint 'droppings'.

It wasn't quite good enough so we had to sand it the next day before the epoxy guy came.

Floor after 1 coat of epoxy primer :

Floor after 2 coats of epoxy primer :

We keep sneaking down the back to have another look. It's exciting to watch epoxy dry! By the way we didn't put drywall and cedar all the way down to the floor, because we don't want to use baseboards [no likey]. So we will add the missing pieces after the epoxy floor is complete, so we get a seamless/floating look and no baseboards! Yay!

This photo only looks dirty, because the windows are.


Arson, wondering why we keep running down the	back stairs...

So that was the primer. 2 coats only. More to come as we watch it dry & await more epoxy coming our way.

WE GOT MO' EPOXY TODAY!

Riot checking out the new floor from patio.

So so happy with our new floors. The light reflects so nicely. Now just adding some more coats to patches.
Will post more pics later...

BEFORE & AFTER-ISH

more pics..

after watching the epoxy dry, we saw a lot of blotchiness, so the epoxy guy had to come back & do it again...
Looks much better now. Can't wait to paint the bottom of drywall - really liking the non-baseboard look.

...

OH PENNY TILE BATHROOM!

2010-07-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

I am posting a pretty picture first, or else I'll get depressed. Then, I'll post the uglies.

The before, during, tearing out the bad tile job, the re-do and finally the after.
No, I'll just post everything backwards today.

First off, here's the sketch ::

When we designed the bathroom, we decided we wanted a big shower [for San Francisco standards], since the upstairs bath is so small. And we wanted a cozy lil' nook for the toilet, so we decided to build a diagonal wall, giving us more space where we needed/wanted it, and less where we didn't. We couldn't figure out where to place the sink, so we kicked it out of the bathroom altogether and placed it right outside.

[The sink we designed so that it will blend into the rest of the design of our "den", with floating sink & shelf that has the faucet/trough hidden in it. But that's another post].

Instead of adding a shower pan curve, we dug out the concrete a little deeper, so that we could have a step down shower. [a little hard to see in pic below]

We had a lot of plumbing going on in the walls. All of the plumbing from our rental unit next door was running along the walls of our bathroom. Since the den was the 'bonus room' behind the garage, we wanted to make sure that it wouldn't feel like a basement and avoid soffits at all costs. To mask this, we built a shower bench, which has all the plumbing running above and below it. No one needs to know.

We really wanted to have a dual shower. This one was a need. One with an in-ceiling shower head/shower tile, and another with a hand shower. The hand shower was needed to give Arson & Riot a bath. Also both fixtures had to work at the same time, or separately -> this took us forever to figure out when choosing the valves. Plumbing is complicated.

We added the 'shower tower', which we designed & laid out in illustrator before building it. We needed storage that was mostly out of sight - for shampoo, towels, toilet paper etc. So we designed it with 3 niches on each side. The front is a towel niche, the left for shampoos, and the right, by the toilet, for toilet paper, a bin, cleaning supplies, swiffer and more.

The 'shower tower' also had to function as a water barrier since we did not want to add a shower curtain or glass door.

We wanted to make the most of the penny tile, and use it to curve the edges.

Grouting.

Curving the tile.

Without the grout, the tile could make you kind of dizzy, but never delusional.

The floor and the walls had to be floated. And the bench re-done because there wasn't enough of a grade for water to run down.

THE RE-DO : Bad tile job. We had to tear out. It really hurts re-doing things and really sets you back timewise & moneywise, but now we're so happy we did. What a difference. But it still hurts in some places.

It's green.

Sheetrockin' it!

Like a sauna. Kinda.

Double thick firewall + insulation + plywood + sound board + OSB + sheetrock =
Never having to hear any Mission 'hood gunshots while in the shower!

Plumbing.

The diagonal bathroom wall. This was also a re-do. First we used metal studs because
we wanted to build the wall out of a translucent material to let as much light in since we have no window in the bathroom. First glass, but that was tooooo expensive, then acrylic but that was toooo expensive too, and then polycarbonate panels [used in greenhouses] but that for some reason didn't work out either, so we just built a regular wall, which made us very sad at the time.

Soffit in back housing ALL plumbing.

From garage looking into bathroom.

We got our plumbing fixtures & we're really really really excited about it. Can you tell?

Bathroom fixtures, are like jewellery for the house.
[I think Americans spell it Jewelry, but that feels so cheap]

Oh look, it's the in-wall toilet tank!

Since the bathroom is situated right behind our tenants garage, we added some cast iron pipes, dug them into the ground, aded rebarm and filled them with concrete. This barrier is in case they do hit the wall, they would hit the pipe first, instead of the wall, which would break all the tile. I'm tired.

Here's the BEFORE :

Lovely lil' sewer pipe in the middle of the room.

Here's the toilet. Even though technically it's not really a BEFORE pic of the bathroom,

since the toilet used to be where the Office Space/Desk Cabinet is now.

But I'll let it slide.

And that was the story of the penny tile bathroom. Backwards.

THE RENTAL.

2010-07-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

This renovation was our warm-up. The prelude of what was to come....

When we bought our Edwardian duplex, it came complete with tenants in the front unit, so we planned to move into the back unit & start our renovation right away. Then during escrow, we got a call from Lisa, our real estate agent,
who informed us that one of the flatmates moved out, so the other moved out as well.

They were out. Uh-oh! We panicked. We were all alone : New homeowners, new landlords & new renovators.

We were scared. Lisa held our hand and told us everything was gonna be alright. And she was right. We just didn't know just yet. So the plan was we either find new tenants....or we could hold off on our own renovation next door, and finish the rental first. It did need a good reno'. So that's what we did.

Here are the AFTERS, because they're so much prettier than the BEFORES.

ENTRANCE & KITCHEN :

BAY WINDOW : with our built-in lil' bench :

MORE KITCHEN :
We added an 18" dishwasher, went with a smaller euro-sized fridge so that we could fit in a bigger sized
stove (30" instead of 24"). That fridge was hard to find!

LIVING ROOM :
This was previously used as a 2nd bedroom, which meant the kitchen served as the living room as well.

LIVING ROOM & KITCHEN/ENTRANCE
There was a 2nd door to the bathroom to the right of the closet. I don't know why bathrooms need 2 entrances,
we have the same in our apartment. We closed it up. Now the sole door to the bath is right under the stairs
in the second photo.

VIEW TO KITCHEN FROM STAIRS :

It's a tiny apartment, but felt light & airy with it's 11 ft ceilings, at least AFTER we painted it white.
The lamp wasn't properly installed yet, as you can see.

But wait! I forgot the floor plans!!!!

FLOOR PLANS :
The house is split in an unusual way for San Francisco. Instead of dividing it through the middle from front to back -
like the railroad apartments, they sliced it in half right through the middle. The rental sits on top of the two garages facing the street The kitchen, living room & bath are on the first floor......

The bedroom is on the second floor, which once was an attic. It's got slanted walls. The diagonal greyed out lines represent the [unusable] crawl space. Dead space!

on to....

THE BATHROOM :
We tore out the bathtub, and put in a large shower instead [San Francisco large]. We sealed off one door. Moved the toilet closer to the shower so we could have a bigger vanity. We added frame less glass shower doors, which helps the bathroom feel bigger.

Shampoo niche. I love niches!

THE BEDROOM :
After tearing out the carpet, we really really wanted to paint the subfloors, which were beautiful wide old wood planks, WHITE!

But we didn't.

There were patches missing, and the planks were in really bad shape to be used as flooring, so we tore those out too, but salvaged them and will use them for a project someday. We put in a new plywood subfloor, which would not have looked pretty in white, so Alex installed sisal flooring over it. He HATED it! We were out of time & out of money. It was a big bummer at the time...but we're okay with it now. It's a cozy bedroom.

Even more cozy with a bed in it!

Here are some more photos of the apartment furnished. It's very small, but very cute.

Mimi added a curtain to the closet, which worked much better, but I did think she was crazy for stacking the
file cainet on the desk;)

THE MORAL OF THE STORY :
My mother told us to make the apartment as if it's for us. A place we wanted to live in. So that's what we did.
It's a small apartment, the bones of it were good & it had lots of light (unlike our unit).
We re-designed it simple and laid things out efficiently, taking advantage of the high ceiling for storage etc.

When we put the apartment up for rent on craigslist, we got lots of responses. And when we rented it, we always peeked in when we walked past it to our dark & dingy apartment, and thought, damn we wish we lived there!

...what Mamma says, Mina does.

NOW FOR BEFORE PHOTOS :
We moved the stove to the other side, so we could add a small dishwasher next to the sink.

And we tore out all the laminate, which had more laminate underneath it. The now finished flooring is actually the subfloor, which are beautiful doug fir planks.

We put in a new stove (CL) that was 30" instead of 24", where the fridge is in this pic, and found a slim euro-style
fridge to fit into the small space. We added as ikea filler piece to match the cabinets on the side of the fridge & added knobs for jackets, keys etc.

ick.

Carpet everywhere.

The bathroom.

THE RENOVATION :
Jacques flew in from CH to help us with our renovation. Thank you Jacques! He moved into our unit next door to the rental, while Alex & I still lived in Oakland.

RENOVATION PICS TO COME : In the meantime, would you like to check out our penny tile bathroom?

This renovation....

This renovation....

This renovation....

This renovation....

This renovation....

This renovation....

This renovation....

This renovation....

OFFICE SPACE.

2010-07-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

Designing a desk cabinet :

Originally we wanted to have a cantilevered desk - similar to the design of Nigel Parish.

BUT...a cantilevered desk was a little too complicated. So that didn't happen.
Instead, something like this is happening :

We built it out of 3/4" MDF, leaving a cut-out for the window we salvaged from Building REsources. Added a recessed light to match the rest. Since the depth of the cabinet is quite deep, and I hate dead and/or difficult space, we cut out some niches on the side for books. Everything else will be hidden inside the cabinet. Clutterfree livin'!

The sides of the cut-out we covered in cedar, so it reflects the cedar wall on the opposite wall & ties the room together. We Painted it in Benjamin Moore's "Simply White" [oil, not latex, which I'm not sure was such a good call, but we shall see].

Still need to bondo the screw holes and add another filler piece.

Oh yeah, and then there's the desk, which fits right into the negative space under the drawers. It's on lockable castors, which are hidden. We were going to build a custom chair as well - like shown in the sketch; this way when everything's put together, it will just look like one shiny, glossy white wall with the cedar/window cut-out...but we're tired.

The idea of the desk cabinet, is to hold all our stuff, printers, scanners, laptops, external HD's, EVERYTHING! I'm going to use the inside of the cabinet doors for the small stendig calendar, cork boards, and the grundtal magnetic spice rack with containers from ikea for paper clips, stamps etc. When we work from home, we'll have a proper home office, and when it's not in use, we can stow everything away, including the desk. Out of sight, out of mind!

STORAGE RULES!

UPPER RIGHT CABINET : Mail slots to hold laptops, kindle & future iPads. Above is a deep shelf with pull-out pantry thingy we cut down from IKEA. And a shallower shelf on top.

LOWER RIGHT CABINET : 2 shelves. First uses an IKEA plastic pull-out for mini shredder. Second uses same pull-out with 2 bins -> trash & recycling. [Love finding hidden places for trash bins].

UPPER LEFT CABINET : Will house our printer on bottom shelf on IKEA kitchen pantry pull-out. Above is drawer for paper etc., Second shelf will include a mounted lockable cabinet (not pictured) and another shelf to hold file binders.

LOWER LEFT CABINET : Two shelves with IKEA kitchen pantry pull-outs re-configured to hold horizontal hanging files.

DRAWERS : There are two drawers in the middle. And two more cabinets at the very top. That's where all the blueprints of the house will fit in nicely. We couldn't make 2 big ones on top, so the middle piece is a filler, but no dead space!

Here's how it came together :
Diagonal wall of bathroom on far right. Sink next to it. We had to build a wall to the left of the sink for the heating radiator, so we decided to use that NOOK by the window on far left for our desk cabinet project.

Our window with no view. We will add a Flora Grubb vertical living wall on the fence
outside, so we get some green.

How much is that doggie in the window? (woof! woof!). The one with the waggley tail How much is that doggie in the window? (woof! woof!). I do hope that doggie's for sale

And now for the finale....
[almost]

I AM A SINK.

2010-07-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

I am a 100+ yr. old douglas fir post.

I was hidden in this wall, next to that pink door...

I was excavated & cut. Glued back together again. Sanded & stained.

And then some. Here's what happened...

Tile is in! It's field tile from Heath.

.................

Today, we have a mirror! Mirror, mirror on the tile wall...

I can't believe this post used to hold up part of our house. Happy we were able to re-use it. The kitchen trough sink from Kohler was the perfect size for this small space sink. And the unusual Kohler faucet fixture was a great find on sale @ Home Expo for 99$ from $700! - although it did have some pieces missing & took a while to figure out. I love that it's hidden, and for a sink that's outside a bathroom, but in our den, it doesn't feel like a sink. Blends in well with the rest of the design. The mirror was hacked from an ikea Molger cabinet. We've been looking for a super narrow mirror like this for a long time....

The post had some really really old handmade nails in it. I kept some & need to find something to do with them.

Two more coats of sealer and we should be done!

Not having had a sink for about a year now - using the bathtub instead, this is real luxury.

I don't need to put on my hunter rain boots & crouch down to wash my hands in the tub.

Real civilized. I think I like it very very much.

UPDATED : The sink now serves as a bookshelf too!

Slow Glow Fat lamp from Droog Design, a good book ["The book of General Ignorance"], Berger Lampe, Ikea "dragan" soap dish.

SMELLS LIKE HOME.

2010-07-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

[this is poetry]

Cedar, cedar you smell so good,
brought you home, brought you to my 'hood.

Thought about you for 1.5 years,
Gave me a splinter then took away my fears

Cut you down & nailed you to my wall.
Oh your fragrance, can't get enough of it all.

Out of all the woods, you are my fav
Let's stay together 4ever. Won't you let me ride your wave?

THE CEDAR WALL.

Here's the blueprint with some scribbles to show the layout of the den:

[as requested by Helene]

Here's the BEFORE layout :

Since, the "den" is our multi-purpose room : Office, Alex's video playroom, Extra living Room, and also our Guest room, the plan was to build a murphy bed HIDDEN in the cedar wall, but a cool one, like this :

or like this :

But that didn't happen. Relationships are about compromises, and this was one I lost. So, I'll just keep the sketches:(

THE BEGINNINGS :

{PIC HERE}

The cedar wall.

{PIC HERE}

THE "ORANJE" STAIRS.

2010-07-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

Hup Holland Hup!

The World cup may be over, but our dreams are not.

Today was "de huldiging" in Amsterdam where our oranje football players ride thru' the canals of the city to greet their peeps. About half a million people were present.

A sea of orange.

"Oranje Elftal" in A'dam today.

Coming in 2nd, is cool too. I guess...

At least now, we can focus more on our renovation...

THE STAIRS!

Orange-you-glad-we-are-painting-our-stairs-orange?

Why Orange? Because it's AWESOME! [well that & it being the dutch color].

We are only painting the treads orange. The risers are "simply white".

Color : Benjamin Moore's "Electric Orange". Oh yeah!

That's a "Million Dollar Red" color swatch at the bottom. Would love to use it somewhere in the house. hmmm.

UPDATE :

I've got a major bondo headache. It gets you high in all the wrong ways...

...

TILE, BABY TILE.

2010-07-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

I am obsessed with tile, especially penny rounds & hex.
Here's the tile we will be using for our house.

DOWNSTAIRS

DEN BATHROOM : white penny round tile. [installed with curved edges]

DEN SINK [outside of bathroom] : white dimensional diamond tile from Heath
[white grout]

PATIO : mix & match green tile from Heath for built-in bench.

UPSTAIRS
KITCHEN BACKSPLASH : Black hex tile.

The kitchen will be all white IKEA cabinets. The glossy finish. [we have the non-gloss white IKEA cabinets next door in the rental, and it doesn't hold up as well as a glossy finish would].

For kitchen counters we will either be installing CaeserStone in white (although I hate the lil' flakes). But I just read on Remodelista that CaeserStone is coming out with a New Pure White. Solid! I like!

Or...that black material used in school labs that is pretty much indestructible.

Well, at least we got the kitchen back splash figured out! Black hex + black/gray grout.
From counters to ceiling about 8 ft of tile. Yum!

BATHROOM : Floor : white hex tile, curved at shower pan and curving up on edges against wall [black grout].

Wall wainscotting : Black field tile.
Rest of wall : white 3D subway tile.

Black field tile : this is NOT it, but somewhat similar...

And the 3D subway tile :

It's a small, oddly shaped (square sucks!) bathroom with 11'ft ceilings. So, for a small bathroom, it'll have a lot of tile. The ceiling will be painted Benjamin Moore's Bath & Spa Aura paint in pigeon gray [matte] and so will the chandelier that's stored in the garage. A matte primed look. Not sure about the chandelier, I only kept it because GoodWill wouldn't take it, I feel sorry for it.

We're using the same kitchen trough sink from Kohler, as we used for the "salvaged-post-floating-sink", in the den, but instead of undermounting it to a 100 yr old post, we will class it up and use a veiny white carrera marble slab.

If we're lucky and have some hex tile left, then we'll use that for the front entrance steps.

And that's all I have to say about tile!

HEATH TILE.

2010-07-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

Heath Ceramics is one of the few remaining mid-century American potteries still in existence today. Founded by Edith Heath in 1948, Heath handcrafts and hand-glazes their tile and tableware for over a half-century at their Sausalito factory. What this all means is; old school.

We made several trips across the golden gate bridge to browse through their overstock room, where they sell 2nd's & 3rd's at discounted prices.

We wanted to use their 3x9 oval tile in white, as a backsplash for our "floating salvaged post-sink". It would have been a nice contrast to all the straight lines we had going on in the den, especially with the horizontally installed cedar wall.

Instead we found enough 3x9 dimensional diamond shape tile in white we could use for the small area.

Here they are, right in front of the big gaping hole from the sink's plumbing.

And here's the Heath installed & grouted :

During the last 1.5 yrs, we made about 5-6 trips to Heath Ceramics, to rummage through their overstock room in the back, to find enough tile to build our outdoor patio bench. Since we couldn't find enough tile

of just one specific color, size, or glaze (it was a lot easier for the sink since it's such as small area), we just picked up all their shades of green in various lengths and mixed & matched it. This is us laying out the tile in our garage at 1 a.m to see if we can find some sort of consistant pattern.

We have just about enough. This is about the height the bench will be. We will use salvaged wood and cut them into slats for the seat on top.