Running your own tile and stone showroom can have its major benefits when you're remodeling your own house, naturally.
Elizabeth Miller's is full of beautiful tile and stone leftovers: offcuts, off-colors, pieces that were over-ordered by clients or contractors, or just didn't work.
But being the owner of Fractured Earth Tile & Stone has its drawbacks as well.
"I probably had 10 different kitchen backsplashes designed over the past five years," she says, because every time an interesting new product came into her shop, she wanted it.
And so her Foothills home - in her own words a "very modest" Territorial- style house - has become a bit of a showcase, with its innovative use of surfaces.
There are counters of wire-brushed granite - it has a rough finish to it and is easier to keep clean, says Miller. Around a living-room fireplace there are porcelain tiles with a metallic finish. The floors and back and front patios, all Indian sandstone, have seen two dozen of her clients walk over them to see just how the product - available in her showroom - looks installed. And, for the record, the glass tile she finally settled on for her backsplash (and repeated in countertops out on the patio) is turquoise with pops of orange, blue and yellow.
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Miller is a bit of an interior-design enigma. On the one hand she loves high-end stone and tile. After all, this is how she has made her name in Tucson. But on the other, she loves a bargain.
Her favorite furniture stores are affordable, often local and frequently chains: Tucson's Copenhagen Imports and Contents Interiors and the now-defunct American Home (still with locations in New Mexico); Crate & Barrel and Costco; and online discount store Lamps Plus (www.lampsplus.com).
"I'm the middle child of seven, and we didn't have a lot of money. Growing up I used to make all my own clothes. So I like to be really frugal," she says.
Miller's original kitchen - installed when she moved in more than 11 years ago - comes from Tucson's Dorado Designs and is a discounted former display model. When she recently added more kitchen cabinetry, Dorado Designs matched the natural ash of the original ones.
This is one bargain hunter with plenty of insight and imagination. In her master and a guest bathroom she's made vanities out of rustic cabinets and dressers (see Ideas to Steal). One of them, bought in a scratch-and-dent section for $150, was damaged on the top but is now covered with a granite counter. In her powder room she turned another dresser into its own pony wall, giving her storage, too.
Storage is an issue in the master bedroom, where the walk-in closet is small. So she and partner Bob Mulgrew, 50, an optometrist, have cherry built-ins around the head of the bed, giving them extra drawers and closets.
The extensive remodeling has seen popcorn ceilings removed, some ceilings raised, numerous inside archways taken down and the back yard, still with its original swimming pool, also landscaped.
She's converted the old garage into a games room/studio and added a powder room. Two new double garages now sit at either side of the house, and the walled front patio is a bright but cozy retreat with cushioned seats and a gas fireplace.
The work has been done in four phases, ending just recently with the tiling around the living room fireplace, extending the kitchen island and adding kitchen cabinetry, and putting in an outside grill.
But now Miller, 57, is starting to take another look at the first projects she did 11 1/2 years ago. That master bathroom could do with a face-lift, she said. And she already has her eye on some fancy new stone and a river rock shower basin.
Contact Gillian Drummond at gcdrummond@aol.com, or visit her blog at www.gilliandrummond.net