Grout!

Melissa read up on how to grout and spent most of the day grouting the shower. I worked on building the chair rail shelf and listened to Melissa grunt and groan.

Later, I joined in and we finished most of the shower (didn't have time to do the floor or curb).

The next day Melissa mixed up unsanded grout, which we needed to use for the floor because the tiles have less than 1/8" gaps between them. After the floor, I joined in and we grouted the curb and the bathroom floor. Several days later, I applied a first coat of grout sealer and wiped it down. Finally, the next day I applied a second coat of grout sealer and wiped it down. Whew! That's it for the tile!

In conclusion, tiling is not a weekend project. It has many different tasks that all need ample uninterupted drying time before moving on to the next task. That is, if you want it done right.

Tiling the Floor

Once the holes were cut for the toilet discharge and intake, the rest was very easy. Since we will be adding base board, the accuracy of the cuts was not important. This made the measuring and cutting go quicker and I could keep up with Melssa's tile laying. Somehow, we ended up fairly square with the tiles. I was quite surprised.

I also cut an oak threshold to fit and used it to determine where the tile in the doorway should terminate. This turned out to be much easier than my usual technique of finishing a job and then thinking, oh, how am I going to transition to the other floor?

Planning for the Floor Tile

After staring at the floor for hours we finally came up with a plan and drew some guide lines to help us. Tile should look good when one enters the room but we thought it should also look good in the space between the toilet and vanity. This would be the longest space. To keep it from looking too long and narrow and to hide our unsquare walls, we decided to use the brickwork pattern we used on the shower walls.

After lots of Google image searches for pictures of brickwork tile floors, I realized nobody seems to be doing this. Oh, well, we think it will look more interesting...

Bathroom Floor Backerboard

Finally, something went smoothly!

Going through the trouble of laying two sheets of plywood for the subfloor made us comfortable laying 1/4" backerboard. Despite my hatred of the 1/2" Hardibacker, I decided to give the 1/4" stuff a try. It was sooooo much easier to work with. Lightweight and easy to score and break on a straight edge. After getting the toilet discharge and water intake holes cut in the proper place, the rest was easy.

Melissa mixed up the dryset thinset (I think that's what it's called), spread it on the subfloor, and I layed each cut backerboard in place, leaving 1/8" gaps around edges. The Hardibacker screws were available with square head drivers and they went in like dreams. No stripping like the Philips head wall screws Lowes carried. Now it's ready for some tile!

Then we can finally tile the shower curb. Despite the fact that every DIY site fails to say so, logically, it seems better to do the bathroom floor before the shower curb so water running down the curb will land of the floor tile rather than a grout line or silicone bead.

Tiling the Shower Floor

We finally got the shower floor tiles and started laying them. It was not as easy as I hoped. Once down, we realized the drain strainer had been set too low. I guess we didn't expect the thinset to raise the tiles so much.



We decided to fix this by removing the tiles surrounding the strainer and digging out the top layer deck mud a little. This will make the slope around the drain a little steeper than the rest of the floor but I'm hoping it will also be more comfortable to stand on with bare feet. Less chance to stub your toe or kick a tile loose!

Chair Rail Shelf

I added the chair rail shelf to one side of the bathroom. This was my idea to transition from the tongue and groove planks to the uneven plaster/drywall combo on the top half of the walls. It worked pretty well. I had to cut the back of each horizontal shelf to match the bulges in the wall but I can't imagine any better way of making this transition and hiding the wall imperfections.

I think the shelf will look nice when it's painted to match the trim and the tongue and groove planks are painted. We'll see...

Tiling the Shower Walls

While Melissa mixed up the thinset outside, I attached a board to one of the shower walls. The board would be used to rest what would become the second row from the bottom of tile. We decided to start with the second row for several reasons. 1.) We want to install the shower floor tile below the wall tile so water flows down to hit the floor tile. 2.) The board could not be screwed lower because it would puncture the shower pan liner. 2.) Part of the lower row will have to be cut to accomodate our top-layer deck mud slope and because we don't know the exact height of the finished floor tile. Yes, these things take planning!


Melissa applied the thinset to the wall and began setting tiles as I ran in and out cutting tiles on the $88 tile saw we bought from Lowes. There were a lot of tiles to cut because we decided to go with a brick pattern. This brick pattern, along with a grout color closely matching the tile, are part of our plan to hide our non-square shower walls. Anyway, tiling around the window required 2 out of 3 tiles to be cut.

Working with the thinset sucked. The mixing process is long and ridiculous, and the thinset only allows a working period of a little less than 2 hours. This resulted in us throwing away most of our thinset and mixing a batch that didn't work because we attempted to measure out for a small batch (and measured wrong). The thinset drips down the wall and falls all over the place. It gets on your hands, which means it gets all over the front of the tiles you set, which means you have to try to wipe it all off after you've set the tile.

I don't understand why everyone says "tiling is the fun part".

Here's a picture of the cheap Lowes wet saw I bought. It comes with instructions that vaguely match the parts given. The people who wrote the instructions must never have attempted to follow them because they don't make sense. The saw also came with a warped blade. It was so warped that it would not spin because it would hit the table edge. Fortunatly, there was a generic blade in the box (that was not supposed to be there) that seemed to work.