When our friend photographer Aya Brackett and her family moved into a house just across a shared courtyard from their former place in Oakland, California, they gained more space.
Photography by Aya Brackett.
But they found themselves missing one detail in particular: the handmade tile floor in their bathroom, an existing feature that had sold them on the house in the first place.
After
Wanting to inject a bright clean look to their master bath Brackett and her husband asked Myers to create a floor evocative of the ocean fog and the inside of sea shells The...
...herringbone pattern is composed entirely of white opal glass tiles that once laid on a mortar bed present a dazzling range of shades varying from translucent to opaque and many points in between
Myers does most of the tile work in her studio in Inverness.
That included installing subway tile (Daltile in Arctic White) around the existing clawfoot tub as well as a new watering can shower head and hand faucet in brushed nickel (by Randolph Morris) and painting the walls Benjamin Moore Super White.
A tiled step neatly separates the mosaic from the subway tile, which was added under the tub in lieu of mosaic as a way to economize.
“On the floor, where it gets walked on, if there’s any tiny pebble, it can decrease the strength of the glass,” explains Myers.
The Process
Glass tiles, known as tesserae, are handcut from sheets of pressed glass of uniform width (Myers sources hers from Spectrum and for this chose a streaky opal).
In her studio, Myers adheres the pattern onto a fiberglass mesh that she then cuts into outsized puzzle-like pieces—each labeled with a corresponding letter—for transport to the site. Shown here is a map of how she broke up the floor.
“Though I deeply enjoy transforming large, rigid sheets of stained glass into flowing designs, it’s a obsessive commitment I wouldn’t wish on anybody,” says Myers.
Myers can transport all the sections at once in the back of her Prius and loves the fact that it’s a low-tech process—there’s nothing power-based—that she can do singlehandedly.
Myers jigsaws each of the pieces together leaving no trace of borders, something she says that’s impossible to do with ready-made mosaic.
The Installation
Myers uses a no-VOC industrial adhesive by Eco-Bond to adhere the tesserae to the mesh.
As needed, Myers cuts tiles on the site.
When the score line is lined up with the nipper’s white line, that bump causes the glass to break along the score.”
Once the tile is taped into place, Myers works section by section applying sanded grout—”a mix of sand and lyme and water; pretty much the same as what the ancient Greeks used.” For bathroom floors, she says, white grout is too hard to keep clean looking, so she uses a pale gray (shown) or bone.
Grouting
Before and after the grout is added.
Once the grout is in, Myers says there are no exposed edges and the overall surface, thanks to so many small pieces, is nonslip.
The room is in a 1980s addition to the house that Brackett describes as “hippie Bolinas handmade.” It had a tile floor, a wood-paneled peaked ceiling (which the couple preserved), and fine proportions, but an overall gloominess.
Before