VOILA!

Our Master bathroom came with precious carpeting. While I must say, carpet feels luxurious under your feet on a cold morning and while you stand at the sink to do your grooming. However, a few days into carpeting and you think about the sprays and spills and general dirt and grime that seem to find their way into a bathroom and you wonder, "Is carpet in the bathroom all that sanitary?"

We have lived in our house for almost 7 years and we have always said we were going to replace that carpet with tile. Twice, count 'em, twice I have plugged my bathroom sink to soak a stain out of an article of clothing, then hopped into the shower and forgot to turn the bathroom faucet off that was running to fill the sink. (I did not hear it running because I had turned the shower on!)

Both occasions found me finishing my shower, shutting off the water, and stepping out to see water pouring over the counter and soaking that precious carpeting!
Still, the water was fresh and clean and so I emptied cabinets and dried everything out and extracted the water from the carpeting and we continued to live with carpet on our bathroom floor. The saving grace was that the little toilet closet was tiled and therefore easily cleaned.

Then the unthinkable happened back in January. We had a toilet overflow mishap. We actually had a main sewer line plug. No toilets in the house worked and stuff was backing up into the shower and bathtubs. It was disgusting. Tim decided to pull out one toilet, where he thought the clog existed, and rotor root down in there. However, not being a plumber and working on no sleep at 2 in the morning, we did not think that when the toilet came off, it was actually a lower place for all the gray water to go and so it drained out of the tubs and shower and up the toilet hole and onto that very precious carpeting.

Well, that was IT for me. No more carpet. So we ripped it out, walked on concrete slab a while, purchased our travertine, then Tim went out of town. For two weeks. And while he was gone, and the toilet was ripped out anyway, I decided I may as well re-paint the walls. It would be easier without the new tile, the baseboard or the toilet in place. So for a week I painted and cleaned and had that bathroom all prepped. And for two Saturdays, Tim spent his free time cutting tiles because, of course, I wanted the tiles to be laid on a diagonal, the harder design to choose. And Tim sweetly obliged.

With our expert in-house tile man Chris on hand, he guided Tim and helped a lot himself in teaching Tim how it was done. Finally, when all tiles were cut, one evening Chris set the tile. After it set up, two days later, he showed Tim how to grout it.

And Voila! This is the (almost) finished product. We need to cure the grout and seal the travertine. We have baseboard to put back up and new towels to hang and doors to touch up with paint but the hardest part is done, the stone is in place and it looks fantastic!

The most amazing thing to me is a thing we discovered upon moving to Arizona. No one is a "Do-it-yourself-er" here. Back in MO, everyone did their own work. Here it is hired done. But, we remain true to our roots and did it ourselves, and we were able to get this done for half the price!