Tile Vanity For Pocket Change

Admittedly, this has nothing to do with what to wear. It does have to do with girly beautifying, colors, and frugality, though, and I trust, if you are still dialed in here, a little flexibility in topic is okay.

Our Labor Day project: a built-in tile vanity top in basement teen girl room. With every known variety of heated hair manipulation device (3 sizes of curling iron, flattener - er, straightener, I mean - and, every hunter's favorite, the 3-barrel waver), this young lady needs a safe place to practice her craft!

Enter the multi-talented, adventurous, and never-content-with-ordinary father, and his omni-talented, but faithful, sidekick. (Did I say "omni"? Of course, I meant "uni". Hehee. I have one talent, that is, picking out colors.)
After searching high and low for something better-than-ordinary, we settled on the pictured tiles (or should I say stumbled on?) purchased for under $10:

• Large marble-look ceramic tile: Habitat for Humanity Surplus Store, 40¢ each. We bought one spare just in case.
  
• White 2 x 2 square: same store, 10¢ each. Who knew it was almost impossible to find 2 x 2s off the shelf anymore?
  
• Gray 4¼ x ½: also Habitat, 5¢ each. Yay! Since we didn't think this through completely before building it, we were needing some not-standard sizes.
  
• The glass 2 x 6's: Lowe's. We paid $2 for an $18 box of tile! They were the one lonely box on the shelf, and we had to promise not to return them, but these are what make the counter top special.
  

For further savings on this project, we borrowed some of the needed tools from friends. Sometimes it's hard to ask, but most people really like to help. It's another way of lessening the space between your peers.