The front hallway floor

Way back in early December when we were away in Mexico the magical tile fairy payed a visit to our house, and our front hallway, which had been unfinished cement for the past 18 months, was finally tiled. Couldn't ask for a better Christmas present than that!

I'm so happy that we took Cal with us when we picked out the tile as he was the one who chose it. I was leaning towards a much more muted mosaic, but he was extremely vocal about his choice. And he was right. It's very striking when you walk in, and gives the dramatic effect I was looking for. 

We went with a single strip of black tile to delineate the inlay. This strip is the same width as the edge of the vent cover on the floor. There was no way to work around the air return, so we decided to work with it as best we could.

The marble mosaic inlay is centered in the inner vestibule, with a 12" strip of Carrara marble tile bordering it around the edge. The rest of the floor is 12x24 Carrara marble tile grouted in pale grey. No scrubbing white grout lines for me!

It's amazing how clean and bright the hallway looks now. It's like the grey concrete on the floor previously sucked up all of the light in the hallway. This is the only "before" shot that I can find, but it's a miraculous change. And it's so nice to be able to mop the floor and get it actually clean again.

There's still lots to do to finish up. I'd like to install some wainscoting, the air return vent cover needs a good scrubbing and a coat of fresh paint, and we need to get some stuff up on the painfully bare walls. Now that we have the floor finished I actually have some incentive to tackle the rest of it!