Colored Tiles, Big Efforts, and Imperfect Perfection
By Never teh BrideWe’ve all looked at something in a shop or in a magazine and thought to ourselves, “I could do that!” In fact, I think so highly of my crafty skills and home improvement chops that it’s rare for me to look at a project and think, “I couldn’t do that.” But when illustrator Christoph Niemann decided it was time to renovate the bathrooms in his Berlin home he and his wife Lisa threw themselves into the project in a way I have neither the time nor the patience to match.
The couple began by breaking down images they liked into mosaic form to find the inspiration they needed. They tried a lot of combos before settling on Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box for the shower, Judith Samen’s Die Fettecke for the tub, and a NYC subway theme for the kids’ bath.
Sound like a lot of work? All is not lost! There are plenty of places that sell colored tiles — like Amazon, of all places — and you needn’t create a perfect masterpiece of art and practicality. Let’s say you’d optimally like to mosaic-ify a beach scene in your bathroom. Instead of knocking yourself out trying to recreate your favorite vacation pics, grab a bunch of tiles in colors that strike you as beachy, like so:
And put together a casual, abstract design using either whole or broken tiles. That’s the nice thing about DIY — it doesn’t have to be perfect to be perfect, if you catch my drift. Trust me when I say that while you may always see the one off-kilter tile, the people in your life will almost always see the 99 tiles that are placed just right.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Half the fun of DIY – to my mind, at any rate – is having something that’s clearly done by hand complete with imperfections.
In some cultures, weavers and embroiderers deliberately leave some imperfection in their work because they believe perfection is for God alone. If anybody notices that one off-kilter tile, you can always say that’s deliberate so you won’t offend God.
Of course that doesn’t work if you’re an atheist.
Drat.
I think I’ll go with the garment industry’s disclaimer that slubs and uneven coloring are meant to be part of the look. Even I can get away with that one.
September 2nd, 2008 at 2:14 pm
My ex husband almost went nuts when I was tiling our bath. I had the dining room laid out with tile patterns and designs. It took me 2 months to make sure I was happy before I started. But it’s lots of fun playing with patterns and designs tho the tile supplier was ready to shoot me because I kept taking things back. Once I was satisfied, I let it stay for 2 weeks so I could be sure it worked and I would have no regrets. Better to do this than get the job done and look at it a year from now and hate it.
September 4th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Twistie: I’ve always loved that cultural quirk that inspires people to leave a bit of hanging thread or what have you. I didn’t realize it was religious, however. I can’t recall when I first heard of it, but it definitely was in a secular context. Whenever I make a mistake when sewing a tote, I tell The Beard that I’m imbuing it with evidence of my humanity!
Jennie: I agree — much better to be sure than to dislike it forever!