Episode IV: A New Bachache

I had arranged to take Monday off from work knowing I wouldn't be done with everything I needed to do in only 3 full days. So I got up Monday morning and got to work on tiling the shower surround walls. We'd agreed to use 4inch by 4 inch white tiles with a 2 by 6 inch bullnosed border around the outter edges. And Heidi selected some scroll and rope tiles to make a decorative border near the top. And we decided to do a layout that's called a "running bond". Instead of lining the edges of the tiles up vertically as well as horizontally, we had every other horizontal row of tiles start with a half tile. It's more of a pain to grout, but we like that look better than a checkerboard layout where each tile is directly overtop of the tile below it.

I started to tile the entire long, back wall. After I got about 2 feet up the wall, I realized I had forgotten about the ceramic corner shelves Heidi and I had selected. Luckily, it wasn't too problematic to pop those couple of tiles off in the corner and put the shelves in. However, remember when I said that my bathroom wall corner joints weren't at a true 90 degree angle? That they were slightly over 90 degrees? Well, that came into play again. When I would stick the ceramic shelf onto the wall, I realized that if the shelf is firmly against one wall, it doesn't touch the other wall. grrrrrr So I attach it firmly to the back wall, and load the other edge up with tile adhesive. I got Heidi to come check on something for me, and while she was looking things over, I go downstairs to use the toilet. I come back up, and I see she's taken the shelf off of the wall and is trying to re-attach it. "What are you doing?!?!? Did it fall?" "No!! You had it in upsdide down!!" Doh!!! Well, at least she caught the mistake and corrected it for me. And honestly, having that joint slightly larger than 90 degrees is better than slightly
under 90 degrees. But a correct 90 degrees would have been preferred...

It's been a while since I gave you one of my home improvement tips, so here's another one. The tile shelves were about 1/2 the height of my 4x4 tiles. So I ended up with a gap between the top of the shelf and the bottom of the next row of tiles. Plus, the shelf's sides were wider than 1 tile, but shorter than 2 whole tiles. So I had to cut some tiles to cover the area left exposed. It would have been smart and more asthetically pleasing, not to mention easier to grout, if I
had cut notches to make L-shaped tiles to fit into place. Instead, I cut straight cuts into my tiles. Instead of an L shaped tile, I had a bunch of rectangles. Which had to be glued onto the wall individually, and then all of those tile intersections grouted. But live and learn. It looked pretty bad when the tiles were naked on the wall, but after grouting, and caulking the shelf joints, it looked a million times better.

I work my way up the back wall and put the 2 large and 1 small corner shelves in. Then I get close to the top and remembered that Heidi had selected some decorative tiles she wanted put in 2 rows from the top of the shower. But I remember this after I put in an entire row that's technically above where we wanted it. I have plenty of extra square tiles, so I would still do 2 rows above the decorative
tiles but that would put the top row of tiles way over the tops of our heads and would require holes for the shower head pipe coming out of the wall. After holding some up on the wall, Heidi says she can live with just one more row of square tiles above the decorative ones, so I finish the back wall and move on to the side walls.

Here again is where the non-90 degree corners of my bathroom come to bite me in the rear. I started on the outside edge and first laid the 2x6 tiles up from the cove tile on the floor. We used a 4 foot level and marked a plumb (level up and down) line up to where the tiles will stop. Then as I start to lay the tiles even with the bottom of the tub ledge the flange of the tub stuck out a little bit from behind the Hardi Backer. Charlie had told me this would happen, so I was ready for it. I just really buttered up the backs of the tiles that fit in those places really well. They stuck to the hardi backer pretty well.

I worked my way up the wall, then as I got about 2/3 of the way up, I realized the horizontal lines of the tiles weren't matching up with the lines of the back wall. And it was significant. So, one row of tiles had the bottom 1/8-1/4 inch nipped off with the tile nippers Charlie left with me. It's not so obvious once the white grout was put in place, but when the tiles were bare, the gap was quite jagged looking. When I did the other side wall, I was more careful that the tiles didn't drift too much vertically. We're pretty happy with the results.

Once the tile was all up, it was pretty late, so I knocked off and had dinner. I grouted the next day after work and it looked pretty good. I of course learned some important tile work rules. Like, when you're putting tile adhesive on the wall, don't "over-spread" past the edges of where your tiles will go. I smeared tile adhesive beyond the edge that would be covered by the 2x6 bull nosed tiles. After it had dried, I thought I would just sand it smooth like you do with drywall compound. But tile adhesive is like concrete. It's pretty tough. I got the sandpaper out and started to work on it. Instead of the sandpaper making the tile adhesive nice and smooth, the tile adhesive made the sandpaper nice and smooth!! Admitedly, the corner by the toilet was the edge where this was more pronounced and since people don't usually look at that wall too much, I wasn't too upset. And once we painted, it looked not bad at all.

OK Lemme do another post immediately after this one. I wanna wrap this up since I've been done for a few weeks now. :-)