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Whichever feels best on the soles of your bare feet. Both will break any glass/ceramic that is dropped on them.

jamaligarden.com sells river stone. i believe they have a few different colors to choose from. if you're in NYC they're in the floral market on 28th at 7th ave. also in the floral market is b. j. floral supplies on 28th closer to 6th ave. they've got stone as well. you can probably work some bulk deal with them.

Depending on how many square feet you're doing, you might try a craft store like Michaels or Craft Warehouse if those chains exist in NYC. The reason is sometimes they have more interesting varities of rocks. I assume you don't want every rock to be the same color.

Before you do it, though, have a heart to heart with a real-estate agent as to resale value - will you be helping or hurting your resale chances down the road?

If you're gonna do it, just bite the bullet and buy the pre-made sheets of stones sold by tile retailers. You will save HOURS of time. And they have already been preselected to give a fairly even surface.

Check out IslandStone.com
They make river pebbles on a web backing that can be installed like tile.
Will probably give you a better finished product than installing individual pebbles.

It is a great look. I think p2's advice is on the mark.

By the way - if individual stones seems tedious, try these :

http://www.naturalstoneoutlet.com/Pebbles.html

Check out their "standing pebbles" for showers etc.

We used the 12" by 12" sheets of river rock in our bathroom, although they were used as an accent band on the wall along with slate tile. The pebbles look great and on the walls of the shower have stood up well, two years after install. They need sealing. Installation was somewhat labor intensive. We were contemplating doing the floors with the pebble tile but were concerned about difficulty in cleaning and since we were expecting our first child we thought ahead to the years of toilet training. We paid about $25/square foot and bought a local tile place in PA. Good luck!

You don't have to install one by one. You can buy mesh mounted stones in sheets from a tile supplier. This will save you tons of time, the result will be even, clean. You'll be grouting just the same as you would tiles, so maintenance is nothing special.

i'd definitely consider any effect on resale value the stones would make. it's a trend, and what do trends do? ;) i'd stick with tile - dark stones could darken the tiny bathroom, be a pain to clean, effect resale, etc. tiles, simple nice tiles, have no downside :)

Off topic, sorta:

reef, how do you keep your shower clean? We have a travertine (honed) shower with slate accents and floor. We have a real problem with soap scum/hard water deposits on the slate floor. The only way I've found to remove them is with hardcore chemicals followed by re-sealing. Any advice?

Tile is boring. Go with the stones, it's a gorgeous look.

I once did a kitchen backsplash for a client using river rock that comes in bags from the craft store. It turned out AWESOME, but it was mucho labor intensive. It's a much more dimensional look and feel than using the sheets of rock that are sold for tile.
I also did our shower floor and a lot of a wall using bagged glass globs from the craft store (the bathroom I'm referring to was featured here during bathrooms month). Again, super labor intensive but super cool looking. It feels great on the feet and is virtually slip-proof. Overall, the floor is working out great, but the glass globs probably differ from rock in that they are relatively even in thickness.
When my shower floor is due for a deep cleaning, I spray it down with grout cleaner and go over everything with a scrub brush, so it's slightly more work than just mopping, but not enough to cause me any pain. I would imagine a floor in a non-wet area would require less maintenance.
Whatever you choose, I'd make up a sample board first to be sure that you are going to like the finished product once it's grouted. There is definitely an art to setting plain old river rock and getting it to look nice without too much blank space. One of the biggest mistakes I've seen with installed rock tile of any variety is leaving too much grout in the joints with not enough rock showing.

splatgirl - links to the bathroom pictures?? I'd love to see it (again ;->).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/splatgirl/sets/185957/

scroll down. they're toward the end.

Ann Sacks makes something like this that comes on mesh sheets. It is most likely more expensive that the DIY version but the mesh makes it easy to install and helps it adhere.

http://www.annsacks.com/onlinecatalog/program.jsp?cat=272104&coll=278904&prg=1040204

hakatai also sells these river rocks on a mesh backing for tiling - much much much cheaper than ann sacks.

I bought a whole bunch of the pebble tiles from Zation stone on clearance. They are the 12 x 12 on mesh. I'm just about ready to start tiling.

I would go with the mesh tiles instead of messing with the individual stones. The one problem I could see with laying individual stones in the mud is that your fingers will start to get gooped up and after a while the stones may get really covered in the thinset leading to a huge scrubbing project. And that would be before you grout. The grouting is not going to be easy. Those things will eat up a lot of grout.

I am also going to go with any grout other than white because of the large gaps.

Good luck with your project.

I used to think about resale value and now just kind of take the "who cares" attitude. As long as it is tasteful, simple and complemented with good fixtures it's nothing that can't be enjoyed by another owner or easily replaced by another owner.

I've used www.coverallstone.com for several projects.

Mesh-mounted river rock definitely is easier to install than loose pebbles. The only challenge is monitoring spacing between the sheets so you can't see the outlines of the sheets. The Coverall Stone products and most others are mounted on sheets that can be arranged in an interlocking pattern to reduce the probability of ending up with a patchwork look.

splatgirl -AWESOME! That about sums it up. :->

while i enjoy innovative hard surfaces in bathrooms, number one consideration should always be safety ... pebbles, rocks, etc are damn slipper. ya, i know, your not going to fall or have a mat ...

a friend did this a few years ago, in her small bathroom and shower... it looks great.
she found a supplier for the mesh backed sheets (for about 1/3 home expo's price) on ebay.
it does need to be sealed every year, but is not slippery.
good luck.

check out costco.com and search "tiles"
its seems to be a pretty good selection overall and reasonable
prices......one indonesian beach stone mesh backed was
priced 10 sq feet at $79.99
the best part is i see that you can email for samples on some
foe example the one above.

wow, splatgirl, congratulations on your amazing house. I like how you made the glass tiles a sort of Japanese-tattoo design, and that you have them flowing up from floor to wall.

i love the rocks in the bathroom idea. i have seen this application and im always dissapointed by the amount of grout that sits between the rocks. perhaps if its done one rock at a time, the result would look better. more work of course, but somehow the tighter rock pattern would be much more flattering.

the thing about the stones is, in my experience, it is hard to clean if they are very uneven and also sometimes a few stones will become loose and come out in addition to the grout issue mentioned by some people--this just in my experience. i plan on having tile or wood floors in my new bathroom.

Jon_B-

We had the slate sealed with a natural look sealer (the brand was Aqua Mix) and when it's time to clean we, okay the husband, uses concentrated "Stone Cleaner" by "Aqua Mix". It works a treat! We've not had to reseal in the two yaers we've had the slate. Good luck.

Oh, a few people have mentioned that the stones can be slippy and may come loose. We only have the stones on vertical surfaces so I can't really say from experience but I would think with the large amount of grout in between the stones they wouldn't be slippy. We've had no issues with stones coming loose either. Our tiler was great so I wonder if the stones loosening depend upon how skilled the installer is?

I have a large collection of foreign coins accumulated over years of travel, and would dearly love to use them in my kitchen or bathroom -- perhaps in the floor, but perhaps set into a countertop or backsplash. Has anyone tried this? any suggestions?

Deborah,

Check out Cheng's concrete website, http://www.concreteexchange.com/?referrer=Google&gclid=CNyP9eyM-I0CFRjBWAodpknXLg

You might find some information on setting objects such as coins into poured concrete.

Sassy mentioned that Hakatai sells the river rocks, I ordered a sample from them as a contender for my kitchen backsplash and though I did not use them, they were really lovely (I went with an irridescent glass tile instead). Also, like many places Hakatai tiles are half off to the trade so if you can get someone to order them for you (my contractor did), obviously they are much cheaper. My tiles went from $16 per square foot to $8.

These type of pebble tile is becomming very popular. I have them on my kitchen backsplash and in my shower pan.

Try getting them here: Pebble Tile

I have also ordered from Natural Pebble Tile and love both of these products!

Hope this helps!