THANK YOU!!!!! That makes it perfectly clear what is needed.

If you have your heart set on "that tile" and zero cuts ... you need to make the room fit the tile.

If you are stuck with the dimensions of the room, look for a size tile that won't need cutting, or accept the inevitable.

I wanted the edge curb of a drop in bathtub to fit 3" bullnose tile all along the edge directly over top of the vertical tile that ran the front of the tub. I built the frame with exactly those dimensions in mind (less the width needed for the cement board). I absolutely agree that very specific tile layouts with no cuts requires rigorous planning ahead of time. And I absolutely think the end result will pay off. This is an excellent demonstration. Thanks!

I like the idea of building a model.

I try to be very detail oriented. For my kitchen I drew detailed pictures to the 1/2" to supplement the architect drawings but apparently there is a lot of wiggle room in a picture for some people...especially when it comes to tile layout.

Still will never forget my oft repeated story of the plumber who installed my faucet backwards in defiance of my drawing, the manufacturer instructions, custom, and the ability to operate the faucet. Much less permanent than tile but why?

Excellent demonstration and mock-up of what you want and how to do it for the tile-setter. Thank you! I am bookmarking this for the future. You are absolutely right in that this is often very hard to communicate and should be planned ahead of time.

In an area known for expanding and contracting soil, I wonder if that curved coving (is that the proper word in this application?) would crack. I like it a lot, in priciple, but I wonder if there isn't a reason for creating a joint at the meeting of the horizontal and vertical planes.

I've never seen it crack, but I've seen the adjacent groutline crack. I don't live in an area with unstable soil.

Great illustration! People think that clean lined modern looks are so "easy" to achieve. They don't realize that there has to be a lot of work behind the scenes to make it appear to be so plain and simple. There needs to be professionals with beyond average skill sets involved in both the design and execution.

You're missing the three foot length of 2 x 4 that enables you to hit the tile guy over the head with it.

Love the cove.

I never would have thought of building a model. Very nice. Thanks for the idea.

I don't know if this is interesting to anyone, but I happen to be in my little Minnesota house, 61 years old, not a bit of renovation to the bathrooms, and none intended at this point. Loaded with cove with still going strong. I love the neatness of the cove meeting the floor. So tidy. 5 kids, two adults. Not a lost tile. Never has been re-grouted either. As I look at this I marvel at the craftsmanship. By the way, the color of the divider tile is accurate. The other reads too brightly.

Another view of glass and tile divider

Cove molding on the vanity/mirror

Powder room cove

That is really, really beautiful.

Thanks, Pal--I think so too. Brings memories: one kid peeing, two kids washing their faces, late for school.

I love cove tile, and tile niches. When we had the bathrooms done in the other house, I let people talk me out of keeping much of the 1957 tile and fixtures and going "current". The baths really needed better storage, and replacing the vanities (they weren't anywhere like yours, vedazu) affected everything else. But I did get to add niches in the tubs, and had to tell my tiler how to do it! We also talked a lot about how to do corners and edges without cuts. Now in this house, with freakily-similarly tiles, done at the same time, I see cuts and know exactly how they could have been avoided. I try to ignore it.

Kitchen Detective: The way to prevent cracking is to use sanded caulk instead of grout for the seam at the bottom of the coved molding.

Any time you have a change of plane, unless you have a cast concrete cube, you need a flexible sealant.

lazygardens: unless you are doing a "wetbed" installation, which is what was done in these pre-60's houses. No caulk, all grout. The chickenwire,tarpaper and mud went up the wall, creating one big "plane."

I know because I'm probably the only person on the planet in the year 2006 who put ceramic tile on her countertops--and ran it up the wall, with the great help of an old Ukrainian guy and the people on the John Bridge Forum. A detail is attached. Solid as an Interstate...

I am reminded of the story of the Italian brother and sister who inherited the family palazzo with it's world class art collection. Every amateur decorators dream, right? Nothing in the place had been decorated or changed for many decades. They had impeccable taste, and wanted to decorate it themselves. But knowing the value of good design, they hired a renowned interior designer to go over their work after they finished, in case they had made some sort of mistake or awful blunder, like amateurs are likely to do. He toured every room, and gave each his careful attention before he offered an opinion.

"I hate it," he finally told them.
They were shocked and concerned, "What is wrong with it?"
"It's prefect!"
The brother and sister thought he meant it as a complement, like he was jealous.
"No", he corrected them, "No room should be perfect. Humans are imperfect and you put your guests ill at ease if you present a room that is more perfect then any person is. It's insulting."
And then he instructed them to change a set of matched vases, or switch a rug in the room so it didn't so perfectly match the curtains and the art work, etc.

It is the height of pretentiousness and egotism to design a room to be perfect. (And I don't know if those are becoming more and more the American values, or what?) It's like the CEO who wants a very uncomfortable chair opposite his desk, so anyone who sits there is put at an immediate disadvantage.

And isn't that what the 'esthetic' of uncut tiles is ultimately saying? I am more perfect than you.

Now, if you are building a bath, I suppose it may not matter if the walls are built to fit a tile choice. But to make a wall fatter than it need be and waste valuable inches in what is probably the smallest room in the house is sheer lunacy, imho. Makes me think of something Joan Crawford would do in a fit of neurotic obsession. Or as others have suggested, to measure and limit your tile choices only to tiles that fit without cutting, even if that limits your choice to only one tile, is equally as mad.

Design, especially interior design, is suppose to serve us, not the other way around. We should not be expected to get down on our knees and worship a wall tile (though I imagine quite a few people expect that of us.) You do know what people do in a bathroom? Believe me when I say, having a wall of uncut tiles is not going to make your poo smell any better.

This post was edited by Lilylore on Thu, Dec 25, 14 at 2:23

But since a standard finished drywall wall is 4-1/2 plus tile making five and the above wall is Four and the other is four and a quarter... I am saving an inch not wasting one.

Someone's into the wassail already.

Yes, if design was nothing but a matter of a yardstick and measuring inches, mathematicians would be the greatest interior designers and decorators would be out of business.

Marcolo, you are too sweet. Merry Christmas!

Posted by palimpsest: "But since a standard finished drywall wall is 4-1/2 plus tile making five and the above wall is Four and the other is four and a quarter... I am saving an inch not wasting one."

I know I am kinda dumb when it comes to math. So I am having trouble adding that up. But it looks like you are actually wasting 2" of valuable bathroom space for the sake of having an impressive and daunting tile arrangement. (well, more like 4ý, because if you used one wall instead of two, not to mention the fact of framing and drywalling two separate walls all for the sake of uncut tiles. sheesh!)

Are those the kind of tiles you can get at Home Depot?

This post was edited by Lilylore on Thu, Dec 25, 14 at 10:26

Those are 2" square porcelain tiles. The entire face of the wall is 4".

If you were using a 4.25" tile you would only need One on the face, so you would have 4.25" with a bullnose wrapping the corner on one side and a bullnose edge coming from the other surface equalling 4.5" (I said 4.25 in an earlier post but it's really 4.5") So it equals a standard drywall wall without tile so you are still saving part of an inch.

I don't have the professional training required for this kind of conversation. And I'm not talking about math and design.

So I'm just going to sit here and congratulate myself for finding somebody else to trim all those damn Brussels sprouts.

Marcolo--check the other conversation about consistency--I posted something about one orange for you......

So if the old adage is "measure twice, cut once", then to pull off this (Fabulous) look, it must be measure about 15 times; no cuts".

Great mock up, and loved the comment from the post above:

if design was nothing but a matter of a yardstick and measuring inches, mathematicians would be the greatest interior designers and decorators would be out of business.

I'm not why there would be an objection to trying to get a layout of full tiles.

The main objective here isn't necessarily to end up with only full tiles, but to avoid Slivers or small fractions of tiles, and with the construction of a pony wall of normal thickness, a sliver or fraction of a tile could end up being necessary.

I wouldn't expect this kind of thing to be necessary or important in every bathroom, and I would not impose this on a client or tilesetter who wasn't interested in achieving something like this. But for people who *want* it, or wonder why they didn't *get* it, this is just an illustration.

Pal, I really appreciate it. Thanks again.

vedazu, I am totally jealous of your bathrooms! How wonderful that you've kept them. The only original tile left in my 1949 home is at the surround going into the shower and the shower basin. It looks like it was done in the same quality workmanship as yours and has the nice corner-round edges as well. I so wish previous owners hadn't ruined that bathroom with....groan, laminate walls and shower surround in place of the lovely tile...double-groan.

kitchendetective, I think there was a time when most tilers and other trades felt pride in their work and considered themselves not simply installers but as craftsmen. Makes one nostalgic, doesn't it?

Thanks for the tips on how to achieve this look, palimpsest.

One factor for the older houses - the architects and builders were used to tiling, and the tiles came in very standard sizes that made no-cut layouts work with the framing materials of that era.