I don't know but it is a bad sign if you can't find any price info online.....

Love your post! My money's on Cher! Seriously, though, i think all you can do, besides sell your engagement ring, is start looking for equivalent replacements. Hopefully you live near a big city, with alot of tile stores. Best of luck!

Instead of accent amongst field tile, how about a big chunk of it behind your range, or framing the window at your sink. Put it someplace and in a big enough piece where it will make a statement without busting your wallet. - but until you get pricing you won't know for sure.

Maybe live with just a painted backsplash until you can save up for the tile you are having a love affair with?

I will bite the bullet and call tomorrow. I know how my three year old feels when I tell her that , no , she cant have ice cream for breakfast. I found a site that sold a similar Sonoma tile for $60.50 sf retail. That is more than I paid for installed granite. I wonder what my square footage is....I think around 20....but if I used a base molding..... maybe I could knock it down to...12?.....that would make it...still insane......anyone have suggestions on how to justify decadent, lavish, spending so that it "feels" okay and not obscene? I could do volunteer work...
Now, I understand philanthropy on a very small scale...Yesterday I was trying to talk myself into $20sf and I told myself, only if you REALLY love it...
How much is okay? I dont mean what can be afforded. I mean, what becomes ostentatious? Is my sticker shock just middle-class, am I cheap? Or is $60 sf nutty?
I know I will have to use it as an accent...and I will keep my great-grandmothers ring.

I'm probably the wrong person to weigh in here because I keep seeming to go over budget on everything, but if you really love this AND you are going to live in your house for a long time, I would figure out a way to get it if doing so won't be a huge financial burden on you. Have it be your christmas, birthday, anniversary present for the year, or give up something else in the kitchen that you don't care as much about in order to get it. And, think of it this way, if you live in your house for 20 more years and you spend $1000 on your tile, that's only $50 a year or .14 a day.

Did that help or not help? :)

It is a beautiful tile at any rate!

I think you should splurge on at least one item, in each room. Can you cut back somewhere else?

If you have the cash, I say go for it! If you see yourself muttering...I wish I had gotten the Pewter Tantrum Duo...every time you walk into the kitchen, get it now and save yourself a lot of regret :)

We fell in love with a large format basketweave mosaic when shopping for our bathroom floor. We ended up buying it and using it as a "rug" in the midst of our floor instead of the whole floor, and I truly believe it looks more special this way (and it cost us a ton less). By making it a feature, you will be making it more noticeable. No matter how much you love it, if you use it as field tile, that may lessen the impact of it.
I will post our example below and ask yourself if doing our entire floor in the mosaic would have looked more or less nice. The "field" tile we used was black marble and was approx 1/4 the cost of the mosaic.
Please keep in mind that we were missing a tile here, the toilet was not installed, the walls not painted, etc.... Also the marble in the floor matches the marble on the counter, despite how our camera makes it look different.

I understand your tile lust. When it's the one, it's the one. Not much will do after that. It's why on "Say Yess to the Dress" they don't want brides to try on the super expensive dress that is three times the budget. Once you fall in love with something you can't have, nothing else compares.

I fell in love with uber expensive Moderne WZ tile for our new master bath. One look and I KNEW. The display was only two tiles, and I knew. No pricing at the store, but I knew.

This is how I finally justified the mind boggling price. I figured up a price that seemed reasonable to spend on tile of good quality that I liked. I took the difference of the two prices and divided it by the number of years I expect to live in this house, 40. Then I broke that amount up by month. It was totally worth it to me to pay that little bit extra per month to get what made me smile deeply in my heart.

Now, this could all be seen as a delusional way to justify spending an obscene amount of money on something that a reasonable person would consider worthy of an insane asylum. I'm a penny pincher by nature. If this puts me in the looney bin, they better make sure to bring my tile! ;)

I just picked up my Sonoma tantrum tile! Its beautiful but i went way over budget. I am using it as accent tile and then adex field crackle elsewhere.

Here is a link that might be useful: sonoma tantrum tile

We also chose to do an icon of tile we loved. We have enough left to frame an organization board over the table - but we haven't done it yet.

I'll warn you that tile moldings are REALLY expensive.

Thank you all, very much, for telling me what I want to hear:) Truth be told, I wasn't "really" supposed to get a new kitchen. We purchased our house at the high end of our budget almost 2 years ago. It's our third home and is supposed to be the home our children grow up in, so it's for the long haul. The counter tops had worn laminant on them. The house was built in 1991. It had a pretty wooden edge. I am, however, a DIY addict. Home rehab shows are always humming in the background. I started picking at laminant. Popping tiles, white with pretty bonticals, peeling thermofoil...until I say to DH, " How can we live like this!" ( Sincerely, he is a saint for living with me.) I wore him down to refacing and countertop. I chose 5 different countertops at a big box store and returned them all. We didn't have a choice but to purchase appliances because ours (surprise) didnt really work when we moved in. I got a new fringe and used range. Floor model DW and microwave. So we pinched there. My granite was a remnant. Granted, we know one other family in our town with granite. It's a formica town. Big trucks,modest kitchens.
Upon retuning the last purchase of cararra countertops I decided we muct have new cabs and bought them because they only cost as much as the countertop and I could "live with" something less expensive than granite for a couple of years. (Yup, right... Poor DH. Did I mention we, he, installed those cabs).

So, mmhmmmgood, I think it would be fair to head your advice. I probably will for 2 or three weeks;)

I love seeing all your kitchens. It is amazing how they come together. They basketweave "rug" is stunning and actually does even more fore the tile because it's framed. I dont have the wall area to do that but I really love it.

I just spent some time in my kitchen meditating on your wisdoms. I do love that tile. I will get a solid quote and find a second tile to with which I can use up some square footage. It will be lovely. Everything is going to be okay. My son had surgery (not major but still scary) this week, BTW, I could be deflecting some axiety. I started coming to GW when my mom was deteriorating from cancer. It has been a tough 2 years and this has been my sanctuary. It was ssuch a blessing to have somewhere to go and think about something else, so thank you. Even when I was still lurking you were all so uplifting. Peace, my peeps. I'll keep you posted..

Is this a glass tile? Did you bring home a display board or just a sample of the tile. I saw a post recently saying how a glass tile did not "sparkle" as much once it was installed and grouted because the light no longer went through the tile. If you are going to spend so much money, make sure you know what it will look like after it is installed and grouted.

It is a ceramic tile that is glazed in a color. It is concave and broken glass bits sit in the cup of the tile. it is then filled over with more glass so that it feels smooth but has depth visually. This is why it is pricey. It takes so many steps to make. I have seen it o a tile board and it is every bit as lovely. I was amazed out how gorgrous so many types of tile were when i got to the shop. You really get what you pay for. I am used to the tiles at big box stores which are a completely different animal. These are truly artisan.

If it makes you feel any better, I looked at a tile the other day that was $169 per sf -- I made sure to put it down very carefully! It was gorgeous handmade glass. But seriously, $169 sf!

If you like it and can afford it then get it, don't feel guilty and don't look back!

Hi.

Funny post. Happy your son's okay. Sorry about your Mom.
Kitchens (I'm on my second in 3 years) and GW were also a nice distraction for me when the same happened with my Mom.

Get the tile.
And give your 3 year old ice cream for breakfast the day it's installed.
Everybody wins.

Good luck,
Katie

I am not a good one to weigh in because I am a cheapskate. I mean frugal. :) Well, that doesn't mean that I won't spend money; it just means that when I do have to spend a chunk of it I want to be sure there's good reason, either for better quality or for a look that really matters to me (I am usually not very picky about decor or looks). Like our bathroom -- that was a budget reno and we used field tile from HD, but I hunted down (and happily paid for) a special edge tile to go with it because I just KNEW it would look better in our room than the standard bullnose. DH kept quiet, haha, and I was right; it fits our house perfectly and it was money well spent. But then we are talking in the low hundreds for the edging, not thousands. :)

If the quote you get on your tile is more than you are comfortable with, I suggest that you just sit on the decision for a while. After a few weeks or months (can you stand to wait that long?) you might still LOOOOVE it, in which case you should probably get it if you can afford it; or you might have cooled off a little. Or you might still LOVE it but decide that you would be equally happy using your second choice tile and saving that money for something else. Anyway, that's what I do when I feel like I am about to make an emotional decision to spend more money than I intended. Sit and wait. (Yes, I realize that takes all the fun out of it. sorry. lol)

I'm with those who say to save and wait for what you really want. I put off the kitchen reno for years b/c there were some things I really wanted that was over budget. My Jeffrey Court crackled subway was more than I had originally budgeted. So glad I waited.

Get the quote and tuck some $ away each week until you reach the goal.

katieob~ that is too funny and my daughter will get ice cream. Ice cream all around!I will give my husband the gift of not knowing what I actually spent, which makes him sleep better at night. I am sorry about your mother too. After I tuck the kids in I usually come on to see whats being chatted about. My oldest daughter says, " Mom, I get it. Sometimes you just need to think about something else or you'll feel too bad." She's sweet.
NC, you are right. I won't jump into a descision. It'll be there. It took me 1 1/2 years to find the right countertop. It'll fall into place.

Home Depot has a similar tile for $18sf, but I'm not sure what the color really looks like.

Have you actually heard the price per sqft yet? It may be better than you think or much worse, so that you can know to walk away. In any case, knowledge is power.
We do the birthday/Xmas/aniversary thing too if we want to go overbudget on something. Then on the holiday, have your dh write you a sweet card instead. Win/win. My dh is usually so grateful that he won't have to come up with something, that he is happy to be on board. Of course, I am fairly cheap/frugal, so I never go too crazy, lol.... My basketweave mosaics were $28 per sq ft and we did not need much. It was approx $100 more than if we went with a cheaper tile, but that $100 makes the room.

Ptamom -

When you say "pewter" you just mean that is the color, not that it is actually made out of pewter? Is that correct? I ask b/c I know Sonoma has a color of that tile called pewter. I also love this tile. The quote I got was for Sliver Duo $57.50 sf. So... I think either your tile place was quoting you the wrong thing on the field (which I think must be the case b/c we used some Sonoma field tile in our bathroom two years ago and it was no where near $60 sq ft. It was like...let me look it up... $12.88 sq. ft - it was 8x8 but still...) Perhaps have you have already gotten an updated quote and can happily report that you can now afford to do the whole thing on your backsplash. I hope so! After all, you KNEW and it was AHHHMAZING.

PTAmom,
So sorry you are going through this. You are not alone.
Sometimes people start out in Kitchen with the idea they
can do a reno for $500 dollars and then discover that is
the price of a dw.
Renovation are terribly expensive. Trying to decide what
to spend on and where to spend is exhausting.
Hoping you find a solution, or maybe a splurge.
~boxerpups

I understand your lust for the Tantrum tile, and your angst. It is gorgeous tile. Maybe you can figure out a way to use just some of that beautiful tile -- not an entire wall of it.

I chose the Canyon Red Tantrum 2x2 for decorative insets in our backsplash. The sheet of 25 2x2s was about $60, including shipping. (Cost of shipping is something you have to factor in with most tiles.)

Now, I have four leftover tiles that are worth almost $2.50 ea.Maybe I can make a trivet from them?

Pictures coming soon, when I have enough energy to do the photo download.

Thanks boxerpups~ I have grown to accept using it as an accent tile. I will optimisticly keep looking around for something more frugal. Here's hoping.

Redhead47, with your hair it sounds like they'd make great earings;) Too bad they are so heavy.

Ptamom: If you search NYSteve at the bottom of the post page there is a post by NYSteve showing his backsplash with similar tile as yours. I don't think it's the same but I can't tell, anyway, his was $58/sq.ft and he did a really nice "picture" of it, nicely framed behind his stove. He has some pics on his post, just scroll down when you get to it.