Tile Costs: Gulp!

So, I’m still in bathroom planning mode, and it’s not pretty. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a bit of a tight-wad. I’ll walk a mile to save a buck, and I actually do stoop down in parking lots to pick up pennies. I’m obsessed with getting a good deal, and I will almost always sacrifice my wants and desires if I can get almost what I want at a substantial savings.

I’m trying not to be this way with the downstairs bathroom. I’ve only completed two rooms in the house so far, the upstairs bathroom and the kitchen. The house supplied me with a lot of what I needed for those rooms so even though I spent thousands of dollars, I was able to do those rooms for a lot less than I normally would have, given the amount of work that went in to them.

I want to try not to be so cheap when it comes to the downstairs bathroom, but it goes against my nature, so it’s going to be tough. This room is a blank slate so I won’t be solely driven by restoration. With the other bathroom I still had most of it, so I put it back the way it was the best I could. Honestly, the whole bathroom was done for about a $1000 and it’s still my favorite room in the house.

I did improvise some with the kitchen, but again, I had a lot the “parts” already. Granted, everything was beat-up, covered in paint, or laying in piles waiting to be nailed together, but it didn’t cost anything. Even given everything I had to work with, if you include every last piece of wire, sheet of sandpaper, appliances, lighting, etc, etc, etc., I still spent less than $10,000 on the kitchen. Considering the room was an empty shell, that is dirt cheap for a ground-up remodel of a kitchen. Hell, a quarter of the money was spent on the antique cast iron kitchen stove.

Now I come to the bathroom. I want to do something really nice, but it’s going to be tough to pry open the wallet. Case in point: The Tile. Oy! Tile ain’t cheap. I spoke about the floor tile the other day. If you don’t include shipping, mortar, grout, or backer board, it’s around $600 for the floor tile. I figure $1000 when all is said and done.

Today I was looking at wall tile. Crack! {That was the sound of my head splitting open}. What I want to do is subway tile 3 feet up on most walls, and then floor to ceiling subway tile around the bath tub. Here’s what I’m looking at. This all came from the one and only source I’ve look at, Subwaytile.com. Again, this is just the cost of the tile. Maybe add 20% to include other costs for things like mortar, grout, and backer board. That’s a guess, and even the costs listed below are rough estimates.

3X6 Field Tile = $1600


2.5X6 Cap = $380


5X6 Base Molding = $730


Total = $2710
Plus 20% = $3252

The room has 9-foot ceilings so I was considering doing the field tile 48-inches up the wall. I think that would look nicer. The cost above is for 36-inches up. If I went 48-inches up that would add roughly another $200 to the cost. So basically, if you include the cost of the floor tile, and if I went 48-inches up, I’m looking at about $4500 in tile and supplies. That is just for the floor and half the walls in the room. I still have to add all the costs of wiring, plumbing, lighting, cabinets, walls above the tile, ceiling, and a zillion other little things that I can’t think of right now.

In some respects it is a question of money, but in other respects – at least in my warped mind – it is a question of the cost of this room relative to the costs of the other two rooms I’ve done. The cost to do this room alone could easily balloon to nearly the cost of the kitchen if I’m not careful. Can I justify that? Will my tight-wad tendencies impose themselves on my wants and desires for the downstairs bathroom? Will my head explode if I continue to think about this? I can’t say at this point.

Stay tuned.