Onyx – Good Enough to Eat!
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Onyx is one of the most beautiful tile materials you can choose for your bathroom today. With honey colored tones and rich veining, you almost want to eat it!
One of my clients, Sherri Gorelick, lives in a 25-year old timber frame house in Southfield, MA and was looking to update her house, particularly her two main bathrooms. Despite Sherri’s original declaration that her style is contemporary, we quickly figured out that her style is really more “transitional,” a mix between contemporary and traditional. The house had full view casement windows and sliders, exposed rough-hewn beams and un-stained wood paneling which gave it a slightly more masculine, contemporary feel. But her personal style is more soft and traditional than the structure of the house would indicate. She loves colorful artwork and decorative items and furnished her house with traditional Shaker chairs and English club style chairs and sofas. As her house suggests, she’s a modern and successful woman with deep traditional sensibilities.
How to transform her bathrooms? Onyx turned out to be a great choice because this natural stone’s warm light-filled tones could bring a much-needed feminine touch to her heavily beamed house. While onyx comes in many colors and patterns, check out the honey onyx we found at a nearby stone yard for the upstairs bathroom and the white onyx for the downstairs bath. Simply scrumptious!
We used the white onyx slab for the first floor bathroom’s double vanity. When the bathrooms is fully lit, it’s like a piece of art.
As you can see in this before-and-after photograph, a dark masculine shower space in the upstairs bathroom turned into a light-filled spa like retreat for Sherri and her daughter. The shower boasts 3”x 6” honey onyx subway tiles and a honey onyx mosaic floor and the hardware is from Restoration Hardware.
Although it’s a tough bathroom to photograph because of its small footprint, we fit in a beautiful storage cabinet in the space between the shower and toilet. The linen white paint was a perfect complement to the honey onyx tile work.
The shower shelves and curb (the flat piece under the glass door) were cut from the same piece used for the small vanity. Again, the hardware is from Restoration Hardware.
Sherri is a dream client! Not only was she easy to work with, but she trusted me to help bring out her own unique style. She absolutely loves her house and it still gives me a thrill to see the space that she inspired. You’ll see more of Sherri’s house transformation in coming blog articles and we hope to start phase 2 of her renovation in the coming years – transforming a dark basement currently used for storage into a family room.
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