Carrara Venato with Bardiglio Gray for a Softer take on the Harlequin

Perfectly installed and designed By Valerie Wheeler and it is called on her blog an English Kitchen Reveal

Bardiglio Gray Marble Sold here. Carrara Venato for the Bright white look to best enhance the room sold here.

Historically the Gray and White Harlequin is found in Europe South of the Italian Alps and the North is predominantly black and white. This is simply Geography. The Bardglio Gray used here and sold online at The Builder Depot is from Italy. The black Tile is Nero Marquina from Spain.

The Gray and white is subtle easy-on-the-eye look. The very best thing is that even when you go into Buildings in Europe that are over 500 years old with this floor, it still looks great. Therefore you never have to worry about remodeling in your lifetime! This is not a floor that will go out of fashion because it is steeped in so much history.

Carrara Venato creates shower of dreams…. Mine anyway :)

Yep. This is definitely a dream shower. Beyond a Five Start resort hotel.

It is an incredible installation glass doors yet to go on, but this does give us a better view of the marble. This is no accident in creating this masterpiece. The customer or installer (probably both) has placed the Venato 6×12″ Honed to spread out the veining to create the look they want. They added a Venato 1″ Hexagon honed to the two niches framed with the Carrara Venato 3/4″ honed pencil trim. (Nice touch)

Then on the floor and as a feature wall is the Carrara Venato 2″ Hexagon Honed and the main bathroom floor has the Carrara Venato 12×24″ Honed in a classic brick format.

This shows how well the marble matches when it is picked and packed by our marble experts no other company offers this service. That just one key difference to our business model. A USP to our business. We are not interested in huge volumes. We are focused on each individual customer as if these are our bathrooms.

This is not dumb packing at a 3rd party warehouse or low cost warehouse employees, these are skilled marble experts with decades of experience selecting the marble for your project. You are not ordering from people that have no access to the product. The actual product is right outside the door of our offices. We see it before it is shipped. We selected this lot. Our offices are not in some ivory tower with the marble in another state. Our product is all together with us under one roof. Very few companies operate this way.

A no frills marketing strategy helps keep our costs low. We do not have experts in marketing writing our blogs or taking pictures to the point that they are not realistic with the products our pictures are with an iPhone (not even the latest one). My English teacher would not have picked me to write this blog, but we do not want to pay for another resource. All resources are a cost. Costs have to be added to the square foot price of the product and in these inflationary times saving our customers money and perfect marble is more important to us than grammatical perfection. I am already making excuses for this post. Happy to change any mistakes if someone would point them out. Then we are all working together to keep the prices low 🙂

As with all our blog posts prices are subject to change (as eventually this post will become a decade old). This was posted during 2022 when inflation was impacting globally. Hopefully in the future inflation is under control again.

Carrara Venato Honed Bathroom

The incredible Carrara Venato used perfectly to create a shower classic instantly adding value to any home buying direct from the supplier The Builder Depot.

Keeping the number of SKU’s simple: A Carrara Venato 6×12″ wall tile with Nero Strip Hexagon shower floor tile and capped off with a simple pencil trim.

Not a complicated design but the 6×12″ has been arranged to maximum effect spreading out the veining and not just thrown on the wall box-to-box. Planning has paid off here.

The great thing I know about this shower, we can come back to this post in a decade and it will still look like a shower that I wish I had. That is when you know you have a great design. Timeless Classics. No need to ever remodel again (which once you have done it you do not want to do it again). This type of bathroom that sits in Hotels in London that have been around since the 1800’s or the Plaza in NYC with their timeless Carrara marble bathrooms. Installations over a hundred years ago and looks perfect today.

The bathroom will add value. Overtime the cost to create this same design will double, triple and so on. The design itself will not age and the owner gets to enjoy living in a 5 star hotel resort bathroom forever, all while the value of the bathroom appreciates in value. “Carrara Marble” bathroom is an incredible bonus feature when it comes to selling a home. Tomorrow or in fifty years.

Cement Tile and Carrara Venato! Wow!!

Very quickly: In front of Island Cement Tile Medina Black $10.95/Free Ship. 4×12″ Cararra Venato Subway Tile $8.00 a Square Foot. Pencils $9.95EA and Arabesque $16.95 all honed. (This collection of Marble is Exclusive to The Builder Depot).

The post can be seen on Instagram here: Jenny Hollander also good resource for questions about grout color, etc.

It is also called the following, Atlas, Taza, Medina and on and on with lots of names for the same Encaustic Cement Tile….. just to really help customers (let’s all agree one name….. but sadly that would not work as our price of $10.95 a Square Foot with Free Shipping (thru 2019) is the lowest in the market).

Everyone can make Cement Tile it is then simply a question of how efficient you are at supplying the consumer and not many are very efficient – but will give you a) A lower price then charge you huge amount of freight or b) Price the product by the piece for example $6.70 then you have to multiply that by 2.25 to get the “Real Cost Per Square Foot” which is at $6.70 a piece $15.07 a Square Foot”. It is just “Click Bait”).

The marble is stunning. Background as white as Calacatta Gold, you will never find a marble with such consistency from product to product, from field tile to mosaic to trim….. not just saying that because it is ours. You can see how white the base is of the 4×12″ Carrara and the Arabesque framed above the stone against the white door. We all know the color of a white door. That is a good reference point to how white based our Carrara Venato collection truly is. Exceptionally white. Probably the whitest based marble in the world and it is a Trademarked product only sold online through The Builder Depot 🙂

Incredible white Carrara Venato bathroom and love the Brass Fixtures

What else can I say or feel other than Wow! This is Carrara Venato as White as Calacatta for a fraction of the cost. Add Brass Fixtures and you have a Five Star penthouse Bathroom (probably better).

Here the customer has used the following products and at 2018 this was the price:

6×12″ Subway Tile Honed on the wall $8.00 a Square Foot

1×3″ Herringbone Honed on the shower pan floor (creates better grip): $12.95 a Square Foot.

4×12″ Subway Tile directly after the Subway Tile: $8.50 a Square Foot.

Bullnose down the edge near the door to finish the gap with a beveled edge $9.95 Each

Very simple just four SKU’s. If I was a betting man, on the other side is most likely a double niche and the background of the niche is 1×3″ Herringbone to co-ordinate nicely. This product was not just laid box to box, some tiles were removed, tiles were dry laid before installing. The perfect look was planned just like on HGTV, it did not just happen this was a professional installation.

Great looking bathroom! Venato Again!

Used in this picture Carrara Venato 1×3″ Herringbone Polished $11.45 a Sq. Ft. for the flooring (grout creates enough COF/Grip to make it safe and polished can be used). Along with 4×12″ Carrara Venato on the wall for $8.00 a Square Foot. $15,000 from a traditional tile and stone retailer, about $4,000 from us. A great save! Who wants to pay more. Not sure any one ever walked into Target or a Publix or any Grocery store and wrote out a check for $11,000 saying “You did not charge me enough” so why pay more for the same product from the same mountain?

Taken from Instagram here. I love the way people can tell others where the products used came from. It is great when designers take the plunge and buy online from us. Carrara Venato especially the 1×3″ Herringbone they have purchased with 4×12″ on the wall is one of my favorite looks.

Prices are subject to change. Valid at the time of this post.

Carrara Venato Shower. Simple and Stunning (rather envious).

December 1st already. Where did 2016 go. Last night I had to ask my wife is this 2015? What year is this….  I just had a complete mind block. But that really means 2017 is in less than one month!

Carrara Venato has been exceptional quality this year and as we have already bought a years stock for 2017 we know it will be great next year. Carrara Venato has the ability to mix mosaics, field tiles and trims perfectly. It is pre-sorted to a set standard displayed on huge 10FT x 6FT board, they simply match the tiles to the standard and it has to be in the range by 5-10%.

In this picture we have Carrara Venato 3×6″ Subway Tile for $7.00 a Square Foot along with Venato Herringbone 1×2″ Honed $11.45 a Sq.Ft. and the pencil trim $9.95 each all honed.

Carrara Venato is a Trademarked Brand only sold by The Builder Depot. It cannot be purchased elsewhere. You maybe able to find a Herringbone for less. But look at it, it will be darker, it maybe thinner (not 3/8″) it will have rows or columns removed not making it a full square foot. There are tricks the industry uses to lower prices. We do not. Why trick people. We have a perfect marble at an incredible price and we are the nations only Google Trusted Store!

Shower and Bathroom. Bianco and Venato.

This is a great mix of Carrara Venato 3×6″ Subway Tile on the wall (which is currently $7.00 a Square Foot) then Bianco Carrara Hexagon with Bardiglio edge for the flooring. They have then edged that with our 1×12″ Bardiglio Border and edged again with the 3×6″ Venato.

Same home following the look through they have used again the Bardiglio striped Bianco Honed 2″ Hexagon Mosaic.

This is what make has made The Builder Depot unique from any other online company or even retailer. We can take pictures of the product, our product (the product that will be packed and shipped to you, it is a huge level of control in an industry that really has none).

This is product that we stock. This is not stocked in a 3rd party warehouse while the person you speak to on the phone is 600 miles away sat on the 32 Floor of some “tech” building and has never seen the product or worse they are not even in the USA.

The people on the phone at The Builder Depot can open the door while on the phone with you and find the product and discuss it with you. Take pictures and send them on. Match up with other sizes. All of this impossible task for big boxes or any other online retailer or Tile and Stone retailer as they just have 2-3 year old concept boards to work off.

“This is one of the main reasons we are able to be a Google Trusted Store and so many competitors or companies in the similar remodeling industry cannot”. Comments David Shearn. “The ability to see the product you are selling everyday should not be underestimated in the results it drives through customer satisfaction.” he adds “How can a person in a cubicle hundreds of miles away sell a natural product or a product that they cannot physically check. You must reduce the distance from customer service to the actual product”. Companies already know this and that is why they refuse to have unbiased reviews on their website. “If you are nothing but a broker you are doomed to follow the same results as all the brokers that have come before you. Irrespective of how much Venture Capitalists, what you to “IPO” so they can “cash out”.

At The Builder Ddepot we “know” what we are shipping. The majority of online companies are “Brokers” or as they do not like that name they call it “Marketplace” but it is a Broker. You buy from their website, they add 20-30-40-60% and then ship direct from the factory or 3rd party warehouse. Chaos. Absolute Chaos. Tried it before many years ago.

Unless you have the product and the people all in the same facility results like this are incredibly challenging to achieve. With their customers paying the price.

For us. We keep it all close. Everything is here. So we can check it off, sign off, double check. Make sure the 3×6″ goes with the 6×12″ and the pencil that you plan to put in-between matches. We can do all this because our customers communicate and we are working with the product every day.

Here is the product on the Bianco Carrara Collection page, one of 70-80 different products. The largest collection of white marble in the USA, stocked and ready to ship. No third party. Just premium products warehoused with over 2.5m square feet in Alpharetta, GA. People ask “Why not add a warehouse on the West Coast”. We have been down this road before. The further the product gets from the people you speak to on the phone the less control they have over the quality and knowledge of what they are doing.

It is imperative (and other companies can find this out the hard way) that the person with whom you are speaking to about your order, can physically see and touch your order. Can mark the crate as “Sold belongs to Remodelers, Inc.”. That pictures can be traded.

Here it is on the product page. Price is subject to change but currently for 2016 it is $12.95 a Square Foot. (I cannot find any company that competes with this price at ‘C’ grade Italian Marble).

Carrara Venato as it is installed!

Here is a real opportunity to see the process at work by a qualified MIA installer. In case you are reading this years later it is around May 11th 2016 and the installers Facebook Page showing the progress is here.

Usually we only get pictures of complete jobs put this installer is not only a highly qualified and skilled Marble installer (the type you want to hire hint, hint) but also good with Facebook and Instagram.

In case anyone is wondering that is Carrara Venato 2″ Hexagon $11.75 a Square Foot • Carrara Venato 3×6″ Subway Tile $7.00 a Square Foot • Carrara Venato 6×12″ Subway Tile • along with some matching trims and pieces from the collection of over 80 choices. The Carrara Venato Collection.

A Carrara Venato Bathroom

A Classic but a Beauty. This is Carrara 4×12″ Honed ($8 Sq.Ft.) in the Shower and a Venato 2×2″ Hexagon Mosaic Honed ($11.75 Sq.Ft.) on the floor. The customer gave us his permission to share his comments as he sent us pictures.

Our exclusive marble from the Carrara Venato Collection available in both Honed and Polished

The customer gave us his permission to share his comments as he sent us pictures. Here they are below, just a simple cut and paste from the email, it was addressed to Stephen at our warehouse (we have left the customers name out):

Stephen,

Attached is a picture of our master retreat/ dream bathroom in the house we just built.  I purchased the marble through you guys at $8-$9 a square foot.  This same tile would have cost me $25-$35 a square foot at the flooring and tile specialists in our area.  When I told them about the products I saw on your site, they laughed at me and tried to play it off as “junk” marble much like they tried to downplay the big box store’s hardwoods as “junk” hardwoods.  I know better than to follow their biased advice so I walked out of their stores time and time again.

If it looks like marble, feels like marble, and smells like marble; then its gotta be marble.  You can see by the picture, our dream is a reality and I couldn’t be happier with the quality of marble.  Please use this email as a testimonial for those who are teetering between you and one of those “specialty” stores.  The tile that shows up at your house does indeed look exactly like the pictures online.  I can even report that my tile installer reported not a single broken tile during shipping.  With nearly 100 sq. ft. of tiles delivered across the country, this caught me by surprise.

You guys also have remarkable customer service.  Stephen, I was most impressed that I was able to send you my floor plan and you came back at me with estimates of how much I would need.  Everyone else wanted to charge me $30 to $50 to come to my house to give me an estimate for how much I would need, they wouldn’t do it based off of the plans.  Kudos to you and your team and their flexibility.

My only regret is that I ordered so much extra tile based on some breakage, and that breakage really didn’t occur due to your high quality shipping.  We also used less trim pieces than expected because of how nice the tile looked without it.  So really, no regrets.

You guys are great, and continued success to you!

Sincerely,