When it came time for Chuck Reed to make major upgrades to his outdated kitchen and the tired bath he inherited when he bought his Los Angeles home, he never had to waste a minute leafing through the paper or asking Google to search for design firms. The Interscope Records executive only had to place one call to his older brother. Jimmy Reed, three years his senior, has built a company and established a reputation as the best of the very best custom tile designers and installers that you’ll find anywhere in the world.

Jimmy Reed didn’t have to work that hard himself to find the perfect materials for the kitchen and bath remodel/makeover. As soon as Jimmy had developed his artistic design concept and finished laying out his meticulous plans, he called on Oceanside Glasstile for the all the kitchen wall surfaces. For the guest bath, Jimmy Reed’s artistic, intricate tile design and layout could only be accomplished by working closely with one company, the handmade tile artisans at Malibu Ceramic Works.    

Right from the start, Jimmy Reed knew the kitchen needed a little bit more pop than just the beautiful glasstile from Oceanside. Working up from the great look and feel of natural hardwood flooring with matching cabinetry, Jimmy chose the modern look of stainless steel for all of the appliances. He then introduced gorgeous natural blue stone for all the countertop surfaces.

As the grand finale, Jimmy Reed selected the perfect color and style of glasstile from Oceanside’s top-selling Tessera collection. For all of the remaining wall surfaces including the lengthy utility hall, Jimmy Reed flawlessly installed 1” x 1” Spruce colored Oceanside Glasstile with an iridescent finish that worked beautifully with the blue stone surfaces.

“The old kitchen was terrible,” said Chuck Reed. “It was really old. I’m talking like from the ‘40s. We just had to start over again completely from scratch. The only thing we kept was a really cool, vintage looking stainless steel clock. Jimmy did all the tiling in the kitchen with Oceanside. He’s definitely got that artistic side to him. He’s a creative perfectionist.”

To fulfill his extremely detailed design plans for the bath, Jimmy Reed had the good fortune to once again work closely with Bob and Matt Harris, the father-son team that own and operate Malibu Ceramic Works. Almost 35 years ago, Bob Harris recognized how far away our culture had strayed from the fine art of traditional handmade tile. In response to that realization, he founded Malibu Ceramic Works and has been a champion for the revival movement of the ancient craft ever since. The one thing about handcrafted tile is that it takes a master craftsman to install them, which explains Jimmy Reed’s long and storied past with the now iconic tile producer.

“I’ve known Jimmy Reed for a long time,” said Bob Harris. “He’s a big fan of our tiles. All his jobs are custom installations, and that’s all we make. That’s a combination I would vote for. Jimmy is great to work with. He understands design and has that innate ability to visualize the project. He has imagination.”

For Chuck Reed’s custom guest bath, Jimmy Reed managed to use classical handmade tiles and rich patterns to create a modern, stylish bath well-ahead of its time.

For the flooring of the bath, including the shower’s floor, Jimmy’s incredibly intricate, beautiful pattern of Malibu Ceramic Works handmade tiles produced an instant classic. The three walls of the shower and its custom bench feature larger tiles in a soft, neutral color style. In a different, beautiful pattern that shares only the same color scheme as the flooring tiles, Jimmy designed a distinctive band of tiles from Malibu Ceramic Works that outline the bath’s large mirror and eventually tie out the entire bath layout. The same band of tiles ran from the end of the mirror across the top of the shower to form a border effect that visually balances the design. 

“The bathroom was Jimmy’s whole plan,” Chuck said. “He came up with the concept and worked with Malibu Ceramic Works on the design and layout. What amazes me is when a certain line begins with a full tile and then somehow, maybe 30 feet away it ends with a full tile. He never takes shortcuts, and ’m always happy about that.”