Sparing

Project Make Our Bathroom Less Ugly has cleared its biggest hurdle, the floor is in! Don't all applaud at once, simmer down now. To get to this point we had to take the toilet out (and leave it out) for a few days while we installed cement board on top of the existing floor and then lay the tile. On TV laying tile looks as easy as making a pb and j. So not true. Here's how it really works for those of us that don't draw a paycheck from spinning a trowel. You get the thin set down and it sticks to the neighboring tile. Then it's too thick over here and way too thin over there so you spread it out. By now half the tiles you're going to lay are coated with thin set and you have tile spacers stuck to your fingers and maybe an errant one stuck to the dog. Then as you're laying it on the floor it catches the edge of a spacer and pulls the spacer down into the thin set underneath the tile but this isn't realized until you actually get the tile laid on the floor and sit there pounding on the high spot swearing wildly because it won't flatten out. Once the little bastard is found and removed and the tile is re-laid, you realize the thin set was put on way too thick and has oozed up in between and onto all the tiles. How that can be I spread it super thin over there? So you peel it up again spread the thin set around again, and drop it again. As you can tell by now the first round of tile laying didn't go very well. We had them all in but yours truly muffed laying a majority of the sheets of the wonderful hexagonal tiles, in the center of the room. It wouldn't be so bad if it was in the corner behind the toilet, but no, right smack dead center of the room. It was like it they were daring me to do something about it, "Hey there slappy, we're shifting to the left and the right and creating all sorts of awkward gaps! Touching! Not touching. Touching! Not touching." We ripped them out and taught the dog and the cat some new swear words, then drop $50 bucks on 2 more boxes of tiles. Part of the reason the tiles in the center went in poorly (well, 99% of it is my fault, the rest isn't, really!) is a ridge that runs right down the center of the room. I saw it before I put the tiles in but thought it would be hidden and not a problem. It was like a small mountain range running from the toilet out towards the wall. I tried sanding it down but that was futile so we bought some floor leveler and leveled it out, and what do you know it worked! The ridge is a lot less pronounced and the tiles went it much more smoothly this time around. My back didn't cramp up from being hunched over on the floor for several hours, the stream of profanity was almost non-existent and it just looks a lot better. We can't take all the credit for this, we did have assistance from a very generous friend of ours who used to do general contractor/home construction work.

Tonight we're going to grout it and provided that goes smoothly we can call the floor 'done.' Then Thursday is install our new pedestal sink, hang the mirror and medicine cabinet day. This weekend we're setting our hands to laying the shower tiles and you all know what that means....finally taking a shower in our shower. Oh ya and calling this thing done.