More cabinet hardware ...

Went to Gracious Home today and saw a few things I liked.

This one's really pretty in person, but it seems to sit too close to the door (awkward to get my fingers behind it) ...

This one's better in the hand ...

Cabinet hardware

I've gone and looked at lots more hardware. The limiting factor, for me, is that I need appliance pulls (the fridge and dishwasher are trim panel), and so many appliance pulls are really ugly. The cabinets and tile have turned French provincial, but I don't want anything too rustic - the pitted (sometimes rusty) cast-iron look is much nicer online than in person.

I'm smitten with something kind of fussy - it feels lovely my hand, and it seems vaguely handcrafted and organic while still smooth and finished. What do you think?

There are coordinating knobs but I'm not sure I like them -

I'd prefer something simpler and geometric (from the same company and in the same finish, of course), e.g.

The bathroom floor

The bathroom wall tile is pale peach iridescent -

And the look is modern (see the bathroom posts here and here). I've been agonizing over the floor - marble, glass, porcelain? cream, brown, green? - without finding anything that jumped out at me. Until today.

Meet the Grunions -

Or a Matisse-like flower -

They're encaustic cement tiles - called Cuban tiles in Florida, and Moroccan tiles on HGTV, though they were actually invented in medieval Europe. (We have them on the hearth in my mother's living room.) Instead of a traditional or cutesy-sailboat design, however, these are modern, designed by an architect named Jeff Shelton in Santa Barbara (lots more of his wonderful designs here). The tiles are 12x12, and they're custom made - you choose your own colors from a yummy palette (here and here).


The Grunions (above) are my favorite, of course - I'd do them in shades of green and salmon - but is this all getting too zoomorphic? Everything I like has little eyes - the birds in the kitchen, these sea monsters in the bathroom (though in real life grunions turn out to be squiggly little fish, seven inches long, with odd mating rituals). Also I'm a little worried that it might be too big a pattern for my tiny bathroom, which is why I was looking at the smaller Matisse-like pattern too. People do use Cuban tile in the bathroom - I've seen it in magazines and on websites - and it's probably no more slippery than anything else.

In a funny way, I'm looping back to the tile I fell in love with first for the bathroom floor (but couldn't have because it's $100/sq. ft.) - a serpentine pattern that links from tile to tile.

The kitchen comes together

So I've finally settled on tile! Hooray! (And I can't change my mind again, because I own it.)

I'm using hand painted Portuguese azulejos - birds and flowers. Here are some of them (click to make them bigger):

(I put sticky notes on them because I was counting how many of each bird I had, before I packed them away.)

The field tile will be butter yellow subway tiles - Florida Tile (made in the USA!) "mellow gold". There's also a cobalt color in that tile, which may come in handy for trim. Here's a picture of my tile and the field tile together (taken surreptitiously in a local tile store with my cameraphone):

The cabinet doors are this design  but in maple with a light honey stain

The granite looks like this (but much more beautiful in person):

For cabinet/appliance pulls, I'm thinking maybe these

Or else birdcage -

What do you think?

Or maybe a clear glass sink

 

31-1/2" L x 22" W x 11"H

Clear Glass Rectangular Wall Hung Sink with Mirror 

27-1/2" W x 21" D x 17" H

Clear Glass Wall Hung Sink with Mirror