Booyah! I am thrifty!

Okay, so I tried to find a match for the tile in my bathroom, to no avail. I found one that would be close, but totally out of my price range.

I went on Overstock.com and found a great deal on mosaic tiles, paid $360, and when they got here, they were totally wrong. It was my fault: there were two that were quite similar, except that one was the wrong colors and unglazed. In the picture, though, it was identical to the other. Anyway, it was in the "recently viewed" and said "B&W tile" (which I took to mean black and white), and so I clicked without reading the fine print. Luckily, they take returns. I just have to eat $60 for the shipping.

Anyway, then I priced tile at Home Depot and a few other local places. Most of the plain 4x4 tiles were around 95 cents each, and I was going to need around 700. I was willing to pay that, but didn't really want to.

A friend suggested the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store. It has a lot of stuff -- salvaged, leftover, etc. I wasn't super-hopeful, but I thought I'd at least stop by before I went to Home Depot.

They had a lot of tile. Because I needed so many, I balked at grabbing handfuls of the tables and loading up a cart, but towards the wall were a bunch of boxes, some opened, some not. I grabbed a box and found white 4x4 tiles, a bit glossy. Perfect. I started grabbing every box with the same brand name that looked like it was full of the same tiles. But then I picked up some and thought they looked... whiter. I held them up and realized the ones I had were "biscuit" and the new ones were "gloss white." I liked gloss white better, so I started picking up all the tiles and comparing them to see if they were gloss or biscuit. Soon I had boxes and boxes of lustery white lined up. And then I realized that some of them were glossy and some were matte.

I liked glossy better, so then I started tilting all the tiles up and down to see if they were shiny. And then I realized that some were bumpy and some were flat, so I started running my hands over all of them to check to make sure I was getting the flat ones. So I was comparing, tilting, and feeling up every tile, which got tedious. I was also wearing polyester and it was 85 degrees out, so I was sweating my balls off. I took a different tack: I started stacking up full boxes that had labels only. I didn't give a shit whether they were "designer white," "gloss white," or "gloss ice white" as long as there were seven boxes of them. It turned out that there were enough of the gloss ice white for my whole bathroom, so I filled a cart and took them to the counter.

Their price list posted near the tile area didn't include 4x4 tiles, so I really wasn't sure how much they would be, except that I could sort of deduce from the prices of the other sizes that they wouldn't be too much. I had about 750, and I went to the counter. They asked how many I had, and I said I wasn't sure: there were 100 per box and I had 4 full boxes and three that were missing a few -- 20 to 30 each. They gave me the full boxes for $12 and the open ones for $6.

You read that right -- I paid $66 plus tax for almost 800 tiles. I think that more than covers the shipping cost to Overstock.com.

Incidentally, I'm pleased as punch about all this, which might explain something about me. I think people look at me and how happy I am and how great my life is and think I just have everything handed to me. Actually, if you really think about it, this whole thing was a pain in the ass: I researched for ages to find a matching tile and was disappointed. I fucked up the Overstock order, lost money on it, and had to take extra time to haul 140 pounds of tile to the UPS store. Then I sweated my balls off to find enough tile to use and again lugged 140 pounds onto a cart (and off on and on to and off of) and into the car and into the garage. The white tiles were my third choice. But in the end, the story I'm going to tell is about how I saved money, supported Habitat for Humanity, and am perfectly happy with my new tile. It's not so much that I get everything handed to me (although I admit that I am VERY lucky), as that I'm happy with whatever I get.