More tiling...

I am thoroughly tired today, after a busy weekend of remodeling Michael's new treatment room. How satisfactory...to see long-lasting fruits of our labors! We painted the room on Saturday, and we laid tile on Sunday.
Unfortunately, at the end of the day on Saturday, after contentedly viewing the new colors on the walls, we laid out some tile just to get a sense of what it would look like, and I was appalled at the rosy color of the tiles in my cool blue-green-grey room. No, no, no!
Michael had already hauled all of those heavy tiles from the car to the room, but we went on Sunday to buy NEW white-grey tiles and he then had to haul the others BACK to the car and BACK to the store. His poor BACK! So, we did lay the new tiles out yesterday, and, as I write, the cement is drying beneath them. Grouting is tomorrow! Again, Michael was a sport about being the heavy labor support guy through this process. He cut tile for me, mixed mortar, and even handed me tiles as I laid them. I got all the fun work of actually setting them in place! Despite that, I was exhausted by the end of the day, just as any child would be after playing with mud and rocks for hours and hours!
I did find the process easier this time round. We had fewer questions about how to go about things. We know where to get our eco-friendly paints, we've tiled before and had the tools and tile saw, etc. I found that I had much more patience with painting...perhaps after having the experience of knowing that it WILL be done, even though it seems to take forever.
I still oscillate on knowing how much to invest in aesthetics. Aesthetics alone are worth something, of course, but I also have a strong belief in recycling and reusing, and I love innovation and conservation. So..for example, I'm wrestling right now with buying a new lamp for the corner of the room. We have two perfectly fine lamps that could suffice, but neither is the pewter or silver color I would like... and I'm still rankled over the fact that we bought a nice rug for the room that cost only a quarter of the cost of the gorgeous one that I wanted to get for it. We bought simple, large, and very nice ceramic tile instead of the gorgeous Italian porcelain tile (that cost almost three times as much) that we used on his office... It is all coming together very nicely and will look perfectly satisfactory, I believe. 5-star hotel quality, but not an exquisite piece of art. Oh well...
It is exciting that Michael will have a slightly larger treatment room--with a window! We have great enthusiasm about that window. It even has the deep windowsill characteristic of old homes. Michael and I have talked about those types of windowsills wistfully for at least a decade, and, given our current satisfaction with our house, are fairly unlikely to ever have deep windowsills of our own. So...that windowsill means A LOT to us!:) It's large enough to set supplies on, and the window does open for a much-needed airing out when necessary. Hurrah!

I'll look forward to posting a picture of the treatment room when it is pulled together in a week or so.