New Entry Tile

We spent Labor Day weekend installing new tile in our entryway. The original tile was a 6" glazed white tile with black grout. It was pretty ugly. You can see a glimpse of it here. The edges where the tile meets the wood floors was cracked and that white just showed everything. I wanted to go with a natural gray stone with dark grout. It was really hard to find a gray stone. Most natural tiles seem to be in the brown family. I originally wanted to do slate but the color variations were just too much for me. I ended up picking a flamed granite. I went with a slightly contrasting grout line. I'm not 100% in love with the grout color but it'll do. I would have loved to do a thinner grout line but the size of our entry was just right to have 11 full uncut tiles if we used a 3/8" grout line. Any smaller and we would have had to cut the tiles on both ends. I went back and forth but in the end decided full tiles with a wider grout line would look better than cut tiles with a smaller grout line. I could have been wrong but it's too late to change it now! We extended the tile area about 6" further into the carpet than it had been so that we have a full four tiles across. My husband put down the new underlayment and I did all of the tile work. This was my 4th tile installation and I now remember that after every tile job I've declared to never lay tile again! It's a wretched job. But I'm sure some day (not in this house) I'll talk myself into it again. I bought the tile from The Tile Shop. They seem to have about the best prices around. If you are in the KC area hit the Independence store. I shopped at all three area stores and they seem to have the most helpful staff and offered me the best deal. Always ask (ever so sweetly) if they can do better than the listed prices - they generally can!