I just finished my subway tile shower/tub combo. In the beginning I just kind of assumed I would use white grout, especially since I was a first time tiler. I figured I would need all the help I could get in disguising any mistakes. Once the tile was set, I realized that I liked seeing the pattern, and didn't want to mask it with the white grout. So I returned the grout I had already purchased and order Laticrete Silver Shadow from Lowe's. I'm very happy I went with the silver.

The mirror is from Pier 1 Imports.
I did not want a medicine cabinet(I keep all my meds in the kitchen); I prefer the impact of a beautiful mirror as a focal point.
I gave up some storage for aesethics, and I do not regret that decision.
I only have a single drawer for staorage in the vanity, but I do have access to a closet now from inside the bathroom where I will keep most of my 'junk'.

The tub is a 60" Kohler Bancroft soaking tub. I had toyed with the idea of getting an airjet tub, but decided against it as I heard too many people say they are noisy and get cold faster, plus I would have had to change more electrical stuff. And the price---way out of budget!
I believe the tub was 375.00 devlivered from HD; they did not give the option of picking it up in-store.
I was worried about the aestehtics of the tub with the curvy front apron; wasn't sure if it would 'go' with everything else; but once installed, I loved it. The curvy front adds a little interest to the bathroom.

The HD tile is porecelian, and honestly, I didn't like the way HD's travertine tile looked. You could tell it was cheap. This porcelian tile has blown me away with the way it looks on the wall and floor. It is NOT the tile I originally wanted(budget, once again), and in the end I said to the GC---"Just get the HD tile, I'll suffer with it!"
I am pleasantly surprised. It is very forgiving in hiding imperfections.

I loved my GC. The only issue I had is that I had specified stark white subway tile, I wanted the subway tile and the tub to be one color. My GC thinks he installed white, but actually he got bone. I know this because one of my stark white sample HD tiles got mixed in with the field tile and stood out starkly against the bone. He did replace this, and still thinks he installed white. I am not going to fuss too much about it---it still looks good.

I had a contractor who gave me a set price for the job--no matter what I wanted to do--the labor would remain that set price. He completely gutted everything, raised the ceiling, moved the heating vent, rearranged a closet(and installed an interior light!), fixed the hallway floor leading in to the bathroom, installed a pocket door, and did all the plumbing and electrical. He had little experience with bath remodels(he owns a drywall business), but I gave him a shot to see what he could do.
This was my first time working with a contractor(we usually DIY), and he was great. He didn't look at me like I was crazy when I gave him my ideas, and tried his best to do everything I wanted.

The tile is the cheap stuff from Home Depot; .22 ea. subway tile, and the wall/floor tile was 1.69 for 12x12, .99 for the 6x6.
I had him set the tile in that pattern because I hate grout lines and I wanted them to be less noticeable.
I had him take the tile up the wall because the room is so small, and I thought it would look more spacious that way. Also, I am so tired of mildewy baseboards and sheetrock, I thought going with tile up the wall would make for easier cleaning.
The contractor used outdoor vinyl trim to create the arch over the shower, and to frame the shower itself.
Everything else was purchased online. It was a little scary buying online, but in the end, everything came together just fine. I was going for an 'unmatched' look, with different finishes on lighting, faucets, etc. I was tearing my hair out trying to make everything match, so I decided to go with unmatched, yet coordinated, fixtures.

The Toto toilet I bought online after much research, it was the cheapest fully skirted Toto(329.00 shipped). Same price as the completely useless 4 year old American Standard Champion it replaced. What a waste of money the Champion was!I got sucked in by those ads were they flushed all those golf balls. Funny---you don't see that ad anymore.

The two things I did not waver on in this remodel were the T&G fir ceiling, and a fully skirted toilet. I am tired of trying to clean toilet bases with all those nooks and crannies!

Now I have to make the rest of my house match my bathroom!

Reading this forum proved to be enormously helpful, as I was overwhelmed by having to make decisions!

I measured shampoo bottles, etc and made a lower space for razor, soap, and the three taller spaces are PLENTY big snough -even for teenage DD's myriad hair products :)

It's a grout color called Delorean Gray. I scrupulously scraped out the grout so it was not proud of the rounded edge of the tile, which minimized the width.
Casey

Also, I have subways as my backsplash in my kitchen and I prefer the 1/16th" joints. But, I think 1/8th would work well with your crackled finished tiles. Your tiles have a softer look that can handle a slightly wider joint.

Here is a link that might be useful: wainscot and travertine

The glossy field tile in our hall bathroom provides a nice contrast to the split-face travertine mosaic border tile and honed travertine floor tile.

abd1--thanks. At a local Home Show this past weekend, the tile store we'd used had a nice display utilizing some new tile they'd gotten in--glossy 4x16" (!!!--cool shape/dimensions) white tile with stone strips/mosaic accent tile.

Nice bathroom!!

The glass shower door is installed now:

Someone asked to see the upper cabinet opened. I have 8(!) outlets inside of my tower.

Our contractor built a beautiful cover for our baseboard heating that really blends with the woodwork on the walls

This is the final version of the vanity with the mirror installed.

We went from this...

There was one electrical outlet in the hole bathroom and it was in the medicine cabinet.

We closed off this door and moved the shower to that side.

So here is our new vanity...

Our new shower

We will put white wood blinds on the window and a cover for the heater

Here are the details:

Shower fixtures, towel bars: Restoration Hardware Asbury
Floor and shower walls: 12x12 honed carrara tiles set in a running bond pattern with delorean gray grout
Floor in shower: Cobsa thin basketweave
Light: Landmark Lighting
Knobs: Lookintheattic.com
Vanity: Custom built
Makeup Mirror: Kimball Young hardwired
Paint: Trim and vanity is Glacier White and walls and ceiling is Stonington Gray

So my girlfriend and I were basically locked in the bathroom all weekend but we got a lot done!

First off here is a show of the shower. We have the nitch in and the accent tile in the center (matches the style we mounted on the vanity). Today they do the shower floor and grout. They will come back in a few days to color enhance!

First thing on Friday was to close off the walls with drywall. This was tricky. The original drywall was 3/4 thick and I can only buy 1/2 now so I first put in a 1/4 drywall panels then the 1/2 on top. By the way I hate drywalling!:

Then started the beadboard. That went pretty smoothly. I cut to length, my girlfriend applied the "liquid nails" and I put in place. I used some finish nails to hold it all in place

I ran out of beadboard at the very end which was very tough but I moved to doing the cap moulding and baseboard. This went pretty easily and I liked the finished look.

This image shows the cut out I did for the "concealed cabinet" I am building behind a picture frame. I'll work on that next:

So all in all a good week. I called the electricians to come back and finish their work. Plumber will be in Thursday and tile guys later this week too.

Have to find tile to look at shower doors this week.

Its coming together!

Thanks for all your support and advice along the way with our latest project... we're ALMOST done but sort of stalled. We just need to add the door threshold and some pretty natural wood shelves above the toilet, but DH has moved on to other woodworking projects, so those little projects have been shoved down the list of priorities. Since it may be months before I get those shelves (and art/decor) up, I thought I'd at least post some pics of the room as it is now. Forgive the crappy lighting: it's snowing hard so there's no natural light :(

Project scope:
1956 bathroom with 1980's/90's tile, vanity, toilet. Tub was original but sadly unsalvageable: the enale was totally wrecked and stained and impossible to clean.
Suspected some subfloor issues due to leaks.
Budget: $2,500. (final total was a bit under $3,000... so we didn't do too badly :))

The layout was awkward, the door swing used so much of the floor space and only allowed a very small vanity. Since this is the hall/guest bath as well as the primary bath for my teenage daughter, we really needed to maximize storage and vanity space. I drew a new plan which involved moving the doorway to the perpendicular wall. As much as my DH balked at adding additional work, he admitted it was TOTALLY the right thing to do once we finished. The room feels SO much bigger now.

OLD BATHROOM and layout:

Some photos from during the renovation... which was planned to take 4 weekends and ended up taking about 6 or 7.....
DD sledge-hammering the old tile down

lots of rot in the subfloor

Self-leveling-compound poured over the radiant floor heat cables in the floor

The shower area waterproofed with Hydroban (LOVE LOVE LOVE that stuff!)

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NEW BATHROOM and layout plan:

DETAILS:
Since our budget was soooo tight, and we wanted to use quality materials and get a unique, custom bathroom, we had to get creative!!!

Tile:
I had a small amount (it was mostly random pieces and offcuts) of very $$$ calacatta marble mosaic tiles left over from a previous project that I knew I wanted to use. The other materials were chosen around that starting point. I designed niches to use that tile in, as accent, based on the quantity I had. I used inexpensive white marble baseboard pieces from Home Depot for the shelves.

For the rest of the tile, I needed to use super-cheap stuff (the entire room is tiled to chair-rail height), but I didn't want it to look cheap or ubiquitous. I would have used subways, but DD emphatically vetoed them. It's her bathroom, and we let her have a LOT of design input. Since we have other areas in the house that use square tile in a running-bond pattern, I decided to use 4x4s, which are the cheapest anyway, but in a running bond rather than stacked pattern. After bringing home samples of the big-box cheapies, I decided to "splurge" (20 cents more per tile, I think, it was about $2.35 per sf after sales and discounts)) on Lowes next-step-up American Olean Ice White, which has a slight rippled surface that catches the light and adds a layer of interest that the flat, cheaper Gloss White doesn't have.

For the floor, we used American Olean 12 x 18 Pietra Bianco, a limestone-look ceramic tile that I'm surprisingly happy with :) Underneath the tile is radiant-heat cable, so the floor is wonderfully cozy and warm.

Floor grout is Latapoxy epoxy.
Wall/shower grout is Tec Accucolor XT, a super-modified grout that supposed to be a lot more stain-resistant (PITA to work with, though!)

Hardware:
DD wanted girly, vintage-looking stuff, a big departure from DH and my modern aesthetic. We narrowed down the style range, then I started watching eBay for deals. We scored about $750 worth of valves and faucets and stuff for about $275.
Vanity faucet: Moen Monticello
Shower faucet valve, trim, tub spout: Moen Monticello with Thermostatic valve
Shower head: Grohe Relexa Ultra on slide bar (LOVE!)
(after working with a bunch of faucets recently, I can say that the Moen monticello stuff is pretty cruddy compared to the Grohe RElexa, Kohler Purist, and HansGrohe stuff I've used recently.)
Towel bars and tissue holder are Ginger Hotelier.
Curved shower rod is the Crescent Rod. I tried some expandable ones they had locally, but this one (ordered on line for the same price) is SO much sturdier and nicer-looking. It also makes the shower space much larger.

Toilet:
Toto Carolina that we got at a yard sale for $150 including the Washlet seat (which we removed). We were driving down the street and DD -who professes to HATE anything renovation-related- said, "Hey, look, Mom... isn;t that one of those skirted toilets you like?" SCORE.

Tub:
American Standard Princeton ~$300 at Lowes. yeah, we chipped it right away by dropping a tool on it while installing the faucets; luckily there's a repair kit that actually does a pretty amazing job :) We used the American Standard "Deep Soak" drain, which adds a couple inches water depth for baths. I wanted DD to use her OWN bathtub rather than my new one in the master bath :)

Vanity:
an old dresser. We bought it on Craigslist for $40, and DH reworked the drawers to fit the plumbing. He also added modern drawer slides so that they work easily. We bought fabulous vintage glass knobs on eBay (if you're looking for vintage knobs, check out this seller: billybobbosen.)

I painted it BM Dove Wing.
We totally went over budget on the vanity top. I'd intended to bet a remnant of granite... but of course couldn't find one DD and I liked. Then we found this little slab of Vermont White quartzite in the "exotics" bone pile at a local yard. It was over budget but we loved it. Then, of course, we decided that rather than a plain square front, it had to be cut to fit the curvy front of the dresser... which added about $100. So the vanity top was our biggest expense at $480.

Medicine cabinet:
A salvaged cabinet we got at the local Habitat for Humanity REStore about 2 years ago. We framed it into the wall (where the old door used to be), painted it, and I tiled the little shelf area with my calacatta mosaic accent tiles and marble baseboard pieces from Home Depot.

Lighting:
Pottery Barn wall fixture from eBay
Ikea ceiling fixture (like $8 each and rated for bathrooms!)
Fan/showerlight combo is a recessed, can-style fixture by Broan/NuTone. It's AWESOME. Quiet, unobtrusive.

That's all I can think of right now. I think once we have the natural wood shelves up over the toilet, with DD's shell collection and a plant on them, it will give a little but of softness/naturalness which the room needs. It's a little TOO "elegant" right now :)

The second best thing, perhaps, are built-in shampoo niches. I LOVE the way they look, and that they keep shampoo bottles off the tub edges, ledges, and generally out of sight. We have multiple niches including tall, multi-shelved ones that hold a lot of stuff.

Third is bigger shower space. In the small hall bath we accomplished this by using a "Crescent Rod" for the shower curtain on a normal-sized tub. In the master, we made a 3 x 5 separate shower and a separate soaking tub.

Fourth is a good quality handheld shower on a slide bar. In our master we have one in addition to a regular showerhead; in the hall bath it's INSTEAD of a regular showerhead.