UPDATED PIECES AND MARBLE INLAY

I had this set sitting in my "inventory" of goods for a few months.  It was beautiful!  The awesome detail, the size of the set, the fact that it was solid wood and wonderfully constructed, but the marble...not so pretty:(

I hate to say that the marble was "ugly", how can natural stone be UGLY?!?!  It really wasn't, but for this particular dresser, which I saw in a shade of white, with its pretty detail, the brown marble just wasn't gonna work.  But I had a plan.

A customer was eyeing the set. I knew she liked it, but not the marble.  I told her of my brilliant idea of replacing the marble with a light carrara or calcutta marble, weather she was going to buy the set or not, that was my future plan.

I knew that replacing the almost 1"thick piece of stone was way out of my budget, so didn't even consider that route.  But Plan A was to get an 18"x18" piece of 1/2" thick marble tile, cut it to size and lay it on a board inside the inlay. That way one would never know it was not a big fat thick piece of marble.  But after tons of running around and investigating, even with my "awesome" discounts (sarcasm) at the flooring places I belong to, I still could not get this down to under a $150 project.  I could not believe how much the price jumps up when you go larger than a 12" x 12" piece of marble!

So on to plan B.  Knowing I needed to go with smaller tiles, I thought the 3"x 6", laid out in a brick style would look best.  I wanted to keep the grout line tight and got SOOOO LUCKYYYYY that I could make them fit perfectly with only having to cut the ends.  That never happens to me!

I purchased the tile at Home Depot.  I had my daughter with me and she could not believe that I was removing every piece of tile from the box, inspecting them for perfection. LOL!  That's what I do if it's a natural stone.  You should have seen me when we did our master bathroom.  I literally grabbed a seat, on the floor at Homey D and went through TONS of boxes hand picking my pieces.  I am sure they were not crazy about it but I don't care!  This stuff is expensive and I am picky!

After purchasing my materials, tile and board, I got to work. I cut the boards to size.  Dragged out my tile cutter and cut my tile.  I didn't want to use mortar because of the thickness it would add so used an adhesive for marble and stone that I had left over from a project on our last home.  Normally I would only consider using adhesive over mortar on small, low traffic areas like a back splash, so it was perfect for this type of project.

My wonderful father in law came through for me...again!  He had some bright white grout laying around so I didn't have to purchase an entire box when I only needed about 1 cup of grout.  I normally would say white grout is the devil, but for the top of this dresser and tiny grout lines, I knew it would look best.  Not to mention I will be sealing the stone and grout.

 Definitely worth the extra time.  And the project, because I had some of the materials, came in at around $50.

And now I have a nice marble cutting board in my kitchen!!