Just my take on this, I find tiled textures difficult to work with and control to a high degree. I uv map and place fully mapped images on everything, even large walls. Sometimes you have to break up walls into a couple of areas but for me its way I prefer to work. This means textures will sometimes be as large as 8196 but todays computers can handle it.

It also gives you far more control over how things look. A good and fun way to build up a texture inventory is to carry a camera with you and take shots of interesting surfaces. Its also fun to spend a day going downtown and photographing old brick walls, sidewalks etc.

Old churchs can be a very good source of interesting textures