tile

This upstairs bathroom in Pacifica was in a mixed-use building owned by a fairly well-known artist. The building has an open floor plan, and the small bathroom is one of the only interruptions in the space. The owner wanted the finish level to go beyond typical mixed-use or industrial standards, so the bathroom would feel

This entryway in a Castro District duplex was a little problematic from start to finish. The tile is a marble herringbone mosaic, which has to be installed very meticulously. Its joints are smaller than a sixteenth of an inch, so there’s almost no room to hide an error. The surprise came at demo. When the

This is the downstairs bathroom in the same Pacifica building as the upstairs bath, the one guests use. Since it’s the bathroom visitors see, the owner wanted it to match the level of finish he’d brought to the rest of the space. The old floor was a rubberized vinyl in a raised penny pattern, laid

Older homes settle. Over decades the framing shifts, so walls go wavy, floors lose their plane, and corners drift out of square. None of that matters much until you try to tile it. Tile is flat, straight and square, and it shows every place the house isn’t. This Berkeley client wanted a tile baseboard to

This was a great project. Saltillo tiles are traditional handmade clay tiles from Mexico, formed by hand in molds, so no two are alike. That character is what makes them beautiful, and also what makes them a lot of work before they can even go down. Saltillo is baked clay, and it’s very porous. Left