Pennies & Nickels- Oh My!

Everything in me wants to include a little music by Pink Floyd with this post. But I will hold back. I promise.

I love seeing creativity like this.  Using pennies and nickels to create texture and pattern with your countertops and flooring.

I noticed that some of the nickels are face down with this flooring design.  Do you think that's some sort of bad omen?  Either way, I love the idea, and love the design.  How about you?



{Penny countertop via Curbly & Nickel flooring via Apartment Therapy}

Patterned Flooring

Some day I hope to have a little extra time {and patience} on my hands to do something like this.

{via Nick Olsen}

Or this.

{via Dean Barger}

Or this.

{via Design*Sponge}

Someone please give me a wooden floor that needs a little paint lovin'.  This would be such a fun thing to do.

DIY Tile Floor

Did your weekend zoom by as fast as mine did?  I'm happy Thanksgiving is this week... I'm looking forward to a long weekend and time with family.  And good food too.  And maybe a nap or two.

We spent our weekend finishing up our tile floor in the bathroom downstairs.  And by we I mean my husband and my brother-in-law, Corey.  All I did was keep the kids fed and happy.  {Which is no small chore these days!}

Here's what our floor looked like before the tile was laid.

Nothing fancy.  It's just a concrete floor.

And here's the start of the layout of tile.a

Now we're getting somewhere.

And here is the final picture of the floor, with grout and sealed.

{I apologize for the poor image quality.... as you can see we have little lighting down there right now - the dark patches on the side of the last picture are due to poor lighting- they really aren't there}.

You will notice in newer homes, many builders put a lighter grout color because the high contrast looks really nice.  But after they have an open house or two, you might start to see it picking up dirt, or traffic patterns.  That's why we went with a middle of the road grout color {mocha}.  It's so much easier to keep looking clean.

Next up in the bathroom: A final coat of paint and everything else.  This is what we call one of our nickel and dime projects.  We like to pay cold hard cash for our home projects and since finishing a bathroom isn't really a cheap project, we have to do a little bit here, a little bit there so we can pay as we go.  Luckily we are able to do most everything ourselves {we hired a plumber to get everything ready, but we can handle everything else} and that saves us a lot of dough.

Have you finished projects like this in your home?  Or are there things on your list that you have to work on?