The next time I decorate by a colour of the year will be the first time. Don't hold your breath. I have nothing against this particular colour but it doesn't work with all the things I've collected over the years, and I am not about to discard carpets bought after hard bargaining with dubious merchants in Istanbul or Islamabad because they don't "go" with a paint colour that someone voted "colour of the year." In its place, I think the colour would be quite nice (better than this years choices, certainly). It's just that my place isn't the right place for it.

I have tried all the suggestions Perini - didn't look purple in real life. Tile Boutique - no purple floor tiles at all. All all the lots and lots of other places = no purple floor tiles. Yes I have seen purple glass mosaics almost everywhere but I don't want small mosaics on the floor. Will also cost $55 sqm more to have grouted than a regular size floor tile. Looks like I'll just have to do boring grey as it's the trend but I have at least found one with sparkles if I can't have purple. I'm also amazed at reactions of the tile sales people - questioning, surprise, snobbery and happiness to be trying to look for something that is different. Cant' say I can't find purple, I have but with a 10 to 14 week wait to be ordered from O/S and lots of $$$ but I need to reno the bathroom by then so can't wait. Motto: If you have time and money can do anything.

Hi Fivedock If you're using a tile that looks like timber I think you would be best using the same tile from the front entry throughout. However if you used a tile that looked like stone or concrete in the kitchen/ back area for example, you could possibly use another that looked like timber in the front entry/ living room with fireplace. Or vice versa. This only works because you have a contrast between stone and timber and there's a reasonable demarcation between the living room with the fireplace and the back area. It looks terrible if you have two different timber tiles or two different stone tiles.

@ minebathroom and @ Luke Buckle, our electrician has informed us that we don't have to put solar panels on our house roof if we don't want to for aesthetics or if for example the roof was old as you mentioned Luke. Panels can be placed on a shed or garage roof anywhere on your property if you are rural like us for example, as the power can be directed into the grid from anywhere the solar panels live and that doesn't have to be on the house roof. We would love to go solar but agree with all your other points @minebathroom, too expensive and expected lifespan and feed in tarrifs are very ordinary but then there's also the back up service too, will the company still be around in one year let alone 10 years. When our electrician got his solar, he got such a fantastic tarrif rate which was offered at the very start of the solar revolution, he was recieving a cheque or refund of something like $500 a quarter but the rates are so low now, there is certainly no chance of recouping some of the instalation costs, although I wouldn't be so fused about that if I thought I would get say 20+ years out of the system before it begun to possibly fail in some way. Things do have to get allot more reliable if nothing else!!