1930s Bathroom Tile ~ Hong Cozy Home

1930s Bathroom Tile

Hi there,

My first post on the community!

I have moved in to a 1930s mansion block in SW London which I need to renovate from top to bottom. I want to play on some 1930s themes and the bathroom has what I believe to be the original tiles. They're in a two tone green and yellow contrasting scheme. At floor level there is a row of 6" x 6" green tiles. At chest height, there is a green 1" x 6" pencil border, a further 6" x 6" yellow tile, then topped off by a green 6" x 2" bullnosed tile.

I want to either keep the tiles as they are and restore them, or replace in exactly the same scheme bit with black highlighting white. I will replace the current bath, toilet and washbasin with 1930s style ones, and also install a shower (requires new wall area to be tiled).

SCENARIO 1: Is it feasible to restore existing tiles? matching colour and size. Can anyone recommend specialists who'd do these? Is it likely to be astronomically expensive? I see lots of problems as the tiles are metric size; there are unfortunately quite a few broken patches where eg holes for plumbing/electrics have been drilled through the wall; and we'd need to tile a new large, area for the shower.

SCENARIO 2: I'd hack off existing yellow and green tiles and replace in exact same pattern but with black on white. So can anyone recommend UK suppliers of bullnose tiles for bathrooms? Searching on the internet, none of the usual tile or DIY stores stock them. Instead you can only get PVC or stainless steel tile trims - which IMHO look tacky. I've seen some Victorian fireplace specialists which stock them, however they are in imperial sizes - so they'd go out of synch with the white tiles which would be in metric (the black trim at 6" would be slightly longer than the white main body of tiles at 15cm). So ideally I'd want them in metric sizes - however if there were a cheapish supply of 6" x 6" white tiles then I could go with the fireplace imperial sized trims.

Strangely, bullnose tiles seem to only be a rarity in the UK - I can see them on the Homedepot site in the States and a Bulgarian builder who gave a quote says they're frequently stocked in Bulgaria. Am thinking this to be the cheaper option than restoring tiles in scenario 1 above.

Thanks for looking and any advice/links appreciated!

Stephen