This beauty sat in broken boxes in front of the Habitat for Humanity store. I almost fell over when I saw it.  I staked my claim immediately, I even had to fight off a guy who tried to take it as I went for a hold tag. All being fair in 2nd hand building supplies, I stood my ground and walked about with about 40 ft of this very high end star and cross tile for 20 bucks.  What a score. 

With no use in it's foreseeable future, it has been basement bound for the last year, but our goal with the Boyle Heights 4 plex is Use It All!  We are picking up this 4 plex with a super tight budget and every time we use something from our storage we save lots of money. Even a cheap tile budget would cost us hundreds for a 45 sq ft laundry room.

You'd think we'd actually count it before installing it, because that would make sense. But no... We (I) just assumed it would be ok. WRONG!  We're short 5 of each tile... The original ARTO tile is +20$/ft and a 6 week leadtime. 

I went to 4 local stores that sell ARTO hoping to get lucky and find a sample... No luck. The guy at Mortarless on Fletcher ( which is sadly closing next week) gave me the idea to trace them onto bigger square tiles.  Sounded kinda crazy and also kinda genius. Ok!

Right is original, left is traced and cut. Pretty awesome.  Stay Tuned!!