Shower!

Bam!

I'm hoping for a full reveal Thursday but I am too giddy with tile completion not to share this. Drywall is almost finished, toilet is in and the sink is ready to go. I can see the light!

Grouting- The Final Frontier

This week I tackled grouting our bathroom floor. Not going to lie, I was scared. Really scared. But I pushed through and it all worked out in the end. Here are a few tips.

1. Take the time to make sure any mortar that pushed up through the grout lines is removed. This takes forever but it is worth it.

2. Work in small batches. I did 2 cups of grout mix at a time. which was about 1/4 of our 42 sq/ft bathroom floor.

3. Be prepared. Get everything ready and have extras. Extra gloves, water, etc.

4. It's going to be messy, and that's ok.

This was the scary part. I had my beautiful clean tile and then I dumped grout on it. (below you can see all three phases. Clean in the upper left, hazy in the upper right and freshly dumped grout on the bottom)

And then I freaked out.

Yeah. Not very pretty. But keep going. Just like the instructions say (I liked this series of tutorials btw) keep working that grout in to the grout lines and scraping away. It looks like a mess but it will clean up. I promise.

5.  Walk away. This was the hardest but, because I was working on the floor, I couldn't grout the whole thing at once if I had any hope of getting back in there to clean up. So I put my 2 cups worth of grout down, spread it around and then walked away for 15 min. That gave the grout time to set enough that I could form my grout lines (for a good explanation of this you can watch the video) and clean up. It still wasn't pretty but don't worry.

The first day I did half the floor, cleaned as much of the grout off the surface of the tiles as possible with my sponge (there was still a back haze) and then went to bed. When I woke up in the morning I used a damp sponge to clean off the last bit of haze. If you don't wait for things to dry a bit you just pull up the grout from where you want it and spread it around the top of the tiles. No good.

So pretty right?

It took two days but only about 3 hours of actual labor. Lots of waiting. Don't rush it. I still think it is scary (how on earth will I manage a vertical surface- the grout is like pudding!?!?) but at least now I know it can be done. We are tackling the shower this weekend so I'll let you know how it goes!

Anyone else have grouting tips? This was my first experience with mixing my own grout and it is a lot more liquid than the pre-mixed stuff. Good for the floor but I'm curious to see how it works on the walls.

Cheers!

Materials

Tile- Black and White Basket Weave from The Tile Shop
Grout- Un-sanded grout from Home Depot in Charcoal

 

Tiling- The How and Why

Now I preface this by saying we are not master tilers nor is this necessarily the best way to go about things but this is the method that worked for us.

Because Daniel is a computer guy, we started with math.

Our shower wraps around three walls so we wanted our pattern to move smoothly from one side to another with the least amount of cuts (cutting tile is a pain). Math let us see exactly how many tiles we needed and how many part tiles we needed for our first row.

Then we pulled out our new best friend. The laser level.

This ensured that everything stayed straight and lined up. No drifting!

Then we started tiling.

Realistically you could have started here but it helped to have some plan of attack. I didn't get a picture but we actually started at the height of the shower ledge (about half way) and tiled down. That made us sure that the most visible section (the ledge) would be a full tile instead of a partial tile. You can see in the above picture the laser level showing the horizontal and vertical lines (in red). That saved us from so many "are you sure that's level?" and "that doesn't look straight to me" arguments. The level doesn't lie my friends.

Once we got the lower half of the wall figured out the rest of the pattern followed. It probably took 1-2 hours just to get that first row down between the math and the staring. On our first day we only finished the back half of the wall. Day two took us to the left half and that was basically the weekend. Last weekend went a bit smoother. By the end we had made it to 99%

Why didn't we finish? We ran out of edge tiles. I grabbed another case this week and we should be ready for grout by the weekend.

So there you have it. Our third tile laying experience. It was definitely a lot easier this time around but it still took a lot of patience and planning (things I have trouble with) and a lot of mortar. Like way more than I thought we would need.

Hopefully that helps those of you on the fence about a big tiling job with your decision. It isn't rocket science, but it can seem that way. Seeing how the quotes we got for someone else to do the job were around $1,700, my $500 tile job is perfect in my eyes.

Cheers!

Stick A Fork In Me

I'm done! More to come on the how and why but for now I am happy to be basically finished tiling our downstairs bath (here are the original plans if you need a refresh).

I ordered the floor tiles today and plan to start grouting this week. We are inching closer to a shower people!

Anyone else knee deep in a project? I can see the light at the end of this tunnel and I am so excited for the finished product.

Cheers!

Baskets and Baskets

Ladies and gentleman, we have tile!

We were just too excited to wait so Daniel took the afternoon off and we got the whole floor tiled in about 4 hours. There was also about an hour of prep, which was definitely the most important part. First we laid the tile all around the perimeter.

This helped up make sure our pattern fit the space (I wanted to cut as few tiles as possible) and allowed us to adjust for the fact that our room is not quite square.

After that it was mortar, tile, clean up and done. I put the tile down and Daniel came behind adjusting the pattern and cleaning up. All in all it was surprisingly easy and quick (at least compared to the kitchen tile). The mesh made it easy to get things even and the fact that it basically meant you were putting down a square foot of tile at a time.

Grout? That's a different story. We are hoping to get the shower tiled this weekend and then grout the whole thing at once.

Who else is in the middle of a tiling project? I'm looking forward to it all being done.

Cheers!

Tile Eyes

Yup, that's a real medical term. Symptoms? Everything you look at looks like this

and this

and this

After 10 hours of tiling I wish we were further but I will give you a complete update when we are! Spoiler- it involves lasers and a lot of math.

How was your weekend? I got ceremoniously stomped upon by the dog for mother's day.
Cheers!