I spent a lot of time last week reading about how to tile and watching videos on how to tile. I have done several tile jobs in my life, but never a shower. If I made a mistake with this project, I could be looking at some very expensive water damage, so I wanted to make sure I did it right.
Although, earlier I had measured the walls when I initially bought the tile, since my brother and law did all the work to re-frame the tub, I needed to recheck the numbers and make a final decision on what I wanted to do design-wise. I laid the measuring tape on the floor and lined up the diamond featured tile alternating with plain field tile. I then figured out how small a piece would have to be cut on both sides. One of the things that I learned was to not cut too itty bitty a piece for the corners if you can help it. I lucked out -- big enough.
Using a level, I started by drawing a horizontal line the height of one tile minus 1/8 inch off the bottom of the green-board. This gave me a slight overhang on of tile. I will fill this space with caulk when I am done. According to my calculations, I had to center one tile on the back wall. So I measured 1/2 the distance of the wall, made a mark and using a level, I drew a vertical line (the red line in photo on right). Then I drew two other perpendicular lines on either side of that line between which was one tile wide. This gave me my starting place for my first course of tile.
I am using Ultralite Mortar by
Mapei. It is a thin set mortar with an approximately 2 hour pot life. Although the bag gives directions to mix the entire bag at once, I did not see being able to tile the whole thing with all the cutting inside of one day -- much less 2 hours. So, I have been mixing smaller batches. One of the problems that many of the articles I read noted was that Do-It-Yourself-ers like me usually don't get the thin-set mixed thick enough. It has to be peanut butter consistency not mayonnaise consistency. When you have s scoop on your "spoon", it should hang there and not drip off. I made sure that I had everything ready to go BEFORE I mixed the thin-set. This was good because all my preparations and recalculations -- not to mention another last minute trip to
Menards to pick up the right sized trowel -- the thin-set would have sat there over two hours by the time I got to it.
About half-way through the day, I realized that the 2 X 6 bull-nosed tile that I got to go around the edge was not going to work. I can't go out to far on the sides, or I would hit the mirror. Taking it into where the original tile left off didn't work either because I would have left me cutting corner pieces that were only 3/4 of an inch wide. Ugh. So that meant if I was going to fix it I had to do it quick before the thin-set dried. I popped off the 18 or 20 tiles that I had placed, scraped off the thin-set and started over. Then, back to Menards I went and exchanged the 2 X 6 for 4 X 4 bull-nosed tiles. Or I should say two Menards, since the first one did not have enough for me.
I started tiling around 12:30 or 1:00 PM and tiled into the evening and got nearly 3/4 of the job done by 8:30. At that point I was finished with my third batch of thin-set and my patience was gone. You could see the design coming together, but the hard cutting was yet to come as I had left the wall with the faucet for last.
I woke up the next morning and felt like I had been hit with a Mack truck -- every muscle in my body was screaming. However, there is no stopping now since I have house guests coming at the beginning of July. I have to get the bathroom done or everyone will be sharing the master bathroom.
I worked out where the pipe for the faucet was going to end up. I had anticipated needing to drill a whole in the middle of a tile and bought a carbide hole cutting bit. I was lucky and won the hole cutting lottery! Both the faucet and handle holes were on the edge of tiles and I was able to cut it out using my tile saw. (Yes, I own my own tile wet saw -- best tool investment I ever made!)
I kept working up the wall and cutting the tiles to fit into the corner. I got up to the design rows and realized that my rows were not matching up to the back wall that I finished the night before. By the last row of the wall, I was off nearly an inch at the top! I looked at the tile and realized that the second box of 4 X 4 bull-nosed tile was slightly wider than the 1st box. Since I was lining my course up with the bull-nosed tile So I took off the top 4 rows and trimmed the nubs off of one side of the bull-nosed tiles to make them a little smaller and narrow the grout line. By the time I got back up to the top, I was even with the back tile. Like I said, my little wet saw is a do-it-yourself-ers best friend.
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| Nubs |
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| No Nubs! |
All in all, I am pretty happy with the job. In two week ends it went from this:
to this:
Now I gotta get rid of that robin's egg blue!
Happy tiling!
The colors are 2007-10C Coconut Milk and 2007-7C New Haven Clay in an eggshell finish. However, you will not see either of those colors in the picture on the left. That is because, I was not sure that I could cover that pink. So I selected Valspar's High-Hiding Primer as the first coat. It worked great and the pink is completely covered in one coat of this primer. Next week, I will begin painting the colors I selected.
Painting was easy -- I did it all in one day. I also put the toilet together and fixed the gouge in the tub from when I dropped the tile. A 'field trip' to Bed Bath and Beyond yielded a new, extra-long shower curtain, towels and floor mats. The shower curtain will look better once it has hung for a few days and after a couple of steamy showers takes the wrinkles out. I certainly am glad to be done. I promise, these are the last pictures of this bathroom you will ever see. (However, I do have two more bathrooms that need painting . . . next year.)
The product's name is funny -- Bernz-O-Matic! The kit contains flux, a brush, propane container and torch. 
After I got that done, I cut the pipe to the measurement I had calculated. The pipe cutter was a little small and hard to tighten down after every turn or two. But I was able to make it easier by using a pair of pliers. I guess my hands are not as strong as they used to be.
I finally was able clean my tub. After weeks of demolition, mud and tape, thin-set, grout and caulk -- that was one dirty tub. All in all, I am pretty happy with the results and I think that my $60 purchase was most likely cheaper than a plumber. And you never know when I might want to sweat some more pipes.
Today, I started my day by taking out the rest of the inner parts of the toilet and removed the tank. The toilet has been hard to flush and I decided it was time to replace everything as long as I was fixing up the bathroom. I actually started this task last week, but since I had not actually checked out what kind of insides this toilet had, I assumed it was like the one I changed out last year. Not. So I had to make a trip to the hardware store on Thursday to get more/different parts.
Using a level, I started by drawing a horizontal line the height of one tile minus 1/8 inch off the bottom of the green-board. This gave me a slight overhang on of tile. I will fill this space with caulk when I am done. According to my calculations, I had to center one tile on the back wall. So I measured 1/2 the distance of the wall, made a mark and using a level, I drew a vertical line (the red line in photo on right). Then I drew two other perpendicular lines on either side of that line between which was one tile wide. This gave me my starting place for my first course of tile.
I started tiling around 12:30 or 1:00 PM and tiled into the evening and got nearly 3/4 of the job done by 8:30. At that point I was finished with my third batch of thin-set and my patience was gone. You could see the design coming together, but the hard cutting was yet to come as I had left the wall with the faucet for last.
I worked out where the pipe for the faucet was going to end up. I had anticipated needing to drill a whole in the middle of a tile and bought a carbide hole cutting bit. I was lucky and won the hole cutting lottery! Both the faucet and handle holes were on the edge of tiles and I was able to cut it out using my tile saw. (Yes, I own my own tile wet saw -- best tool investment I ever made!)
I have to say that one of the best purchases I ever made was a small wet saw. I have done several small tile jobs (and the next job on my list is the guest bathroom tile around the tub) and a wet saw makes a HUGE difference on how fast you can get the job done. Renting one is possible, but when I bought it, the saw was on sale for under $150 and it would have cost me $75 to rent one for a day. Now 10 years later, 2 houses, and a few tile jobs later, buying it was a great decision.
The paint covered easily in two coats -- even the darkest color.
I put the darkest color on the walls around the refrigerator and the cabinets next to it. The lightest color went on the walls around the window. This made sense to me as the window is large and it would have looked odd to me to have a very dark wall with a big bright hole in the middle. The medium color is on the wall where the stove sits. I like the way the three colors work together in the room to provide some depth.
On the left is one of the cabinet doors with only the base paint; and on the right, one with the glaze layer added. On the left: cool, flat, grey; and on the right: warm, glossy, taupe. Wow, what a difference glaze makes!
As I wrote in one of my prior posts, I had to keep reminding myself the painting treatment was a two part process and continue through the cool, flat, grey color with which I was covering my cabinets. But now that I am on the second part of the color steps -- I see my plan coming together.
