Expectations...and Reality

I blogged last month that I ordered a wonderful lamp on One Kings Lane.  It arrived and was not the same as the photo.

I was so excited about it, but here's what arrived:

The handles were white, and the rest of the alabaster was brown.  It made the lamp look really bad.  Plus there was a huge chocolate brown chunk on it.  So off it went back to OKL.  They were very gracious about it not being what was represented and took the return. 

Casita Progress:

We worked to finish up the tile job on the casita bathroom, and are almost done.  The shower has been completely tiled, only grout is missing.  We're saving that for the next trip.

The tile is marble Venato.  I really like it because it appears to me to be a cross between statuary, carrara, and calacutta.  While we hired out everything in the project, we decided to do the tiling ourselves, as we think we're so picky that we wouldn't be happy with anyone's work....  

We are so slow, we couldn't earn a living laying tile.   The bathroom floor is a 1x2" herringbone white marble (Venato) tile, and we used a 3/4" hex on the shower floor.  We ran a border of 3" x 12"  around the edge of the shower (and bath) floor, mostly for cleaning purposes.  I wanted to do a 3/8" border of grey marble between the field and border, but got vetoed as I always come up with really difficult things to do.  However, the most difficult thing we did was put in a floor heater.  The internet suggested we use floor leveler after puting down the floor heater.  It was AWFUL.   It made the floor really uneven.  We will never do that again.  I think chiselling into the concrete floor would be easier than the mes we now have.  So there's a few uneven floor tiles in the mosaic.  My husband says that was caused by me being too cheap and not ordering enough tile.  Oh yea, we did run out and he was manufacturing 1 x 2" tiles to put under the vanity..... I didn't mean to be so cheap, I miscalculated..and we made it work as the tile was from the east coast.

The floor is grouted, walls are not.

The vanity, wall sconces and mirror is from Restoration Hardware.  With the 10 foot ceilings, I like the vertical space the sconces take.  I won't ever feel really great about placing the vanity as the marble slipped out of my sweaty hands smashing my husband's....   So yea, the top is heavy and get 3 people to lift it in place.

So we left sunny California and 100 degree weather for Portland 64 degree weather.  The Molineaux roses around the fountain have a profusion of blooms, wish we could have stayed to enjoy it.

I'm planning on attending Expo this weekend and hope to tell you all about my great finds!  Have a great weekend.