This Ever Happen to You?

We need to finish the kitchen.  If I ever want to stop carrying the dishes back and forth from the laundry room (which is a pain, but doable), then we need counter tops and a sink.  That means I need to pick out tile.  We like tile and it’s easy for us to install.  I’ve always had tile in my kitchens.  Granite is pretty, but trendy and expensive.  Formica is nice, but it’s not something that we are used to.  I’d like to go crazy and try building cement counter tops, but ‘crazy’ is the operative word.  I also like wood, but wood and food germs together, not so much.  So the verdict it tile.

We have our kitchen sink though it is not installed.  It is kind of a funny story because we bought the sink for our last house.  We had decided to remodel the kitchen, give it a little update when Dave and Valerie came along and bought the house.  We had already purchased the sink and tile.  We didn’t get enough tile to do the new NEWA kitchen, but we’ll find another use for it.  The sink however, will work fine.  It is a composite granite double sink that is sort of creamy beige in color.  I think it is pretty and it will work for this kitchen.  (I just reread this and thought creamy beige and grey?  You’ll understand later.)

But I need to find tile.  Yesterday I went on Daltile’s website and they have this really cool tool where you can upload a picture and, using their material colors, plan your kitchen or bath or whatever you are deciding to tile.  It takes a while to set up and when they ask for actual dimensions the graphics don’t appear correctly, but the color choices appear pretty close.  You can’t get detail or fancy with trim, but you can get a basic idea of color combinations with your existing cabinets and wall colors.

Before

I spent hours playing with this tool and picking out colors and sharing them with Don.  Then when I narrowed down my choices to a couple, I found that you can purchase samples of the tile and have them shipped to you.  Neat!  If only it worked.

Every time I ‘clicked’ on the order a sample button, the item would appear in my ‘shopping cart’.  I was successful in getting three items in my cart.  Then, every time I clicked on the shopping cart button, I was directed to another screen which told me that I didn’t have any items in my shopping cart.  I found that if I only put one item in my shopping cart, I could get as far as “proceed to checkout”, but at this screen I once again found my shopping cart empty.  I “didn’t have any items selected”.  I messed around with this for an hour.

I tried different tricks, different ‘pathways’ of getting to checkout counter, hoping that it was just a broken link somewhere in the programming.  Nothing worked.  Finally, I remembered a quote for the definition of insanity – “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”.

When you live in the boonies like we do here in NEWA, you have to do a lot of internet shopping.  And I normally prefer it.  I bought all of my light fixtures that way.  I’ve ordered parts for Don for different projects around the house and for vehicle repairs.  I have not (until now) had any problems.  But after you spend a great deal of time comparing products, picking out form, style and color, you really want to see and touch the product first hand.  I know I can pick up the phone and call Daltile, but that isn’t the point.  These things are supposed to work!

I was so frustrated by the time I gave up that I clicked on the ‘contact us’ button and wrote an email to their corporate headquarters about my experience.  I was polite, but firm. And, after all, I do have some color ideas, so the day wasn’t a total waste of time.  I also saved the pictures on my computer so I could show them to you and you could help me decide or offer suggestions.  But guess what?  The picture format is not compatible with my computer, so I cannot even do that.

If you ARE interested in helping me decide, the colors I that I am considering are a medium variegated grey for the counters and a muted green for the back splash.  Let me know what you think.  If you have nothing else to do, on products.daltile.com my choices are:  Counters:  Timber Glen Thatch P615 Rustic OR Veranda Steel P500 and Wall/Back splash:  Continental Slate Brazilian Green Mosaic CSS2 OR Folio One Martina Olive.   I would love some feedback.