The Shower That Was Not and Tiling tricks!

Well, remember last Friday when I said that we would be showering upstairs this morning. I should have known the instant I said that, the instructions on the grout drying time would morph from being 48 hours to a week! [of course they were always a week, I just thought they were 48 hours]. So, while we got most of what we wanted to done over the weekend, we are not showing upstairs until next week. Bummer.


[Putting up the subway tile]

The subway tile went up sort of as planned. It did go up on Saturday, however it went up on Saturday afternoon rather than Saturday morning. Saturday morning we spend SHOPPING.... no not fun shopping, Home Depot shopping [fun for some, not for me early on Saturday morning for approximately 2 hours].

Tiling itself, yet another not-so-fun activity. It took 6 hours from start to finish and that was with using a tile saw. I can only imagine how long it would have taken otherwise.


[Subway Tile, before grouting]

While tiling about 400 subway tiles is very tedious, I did learn a trick along the way that made the second 200 go much quicker.

My tile tip: apply the mortar using a spackle knife rather than the smooth side your toothed trowel. When I used the trowel, half of the grout wound up flopping onto the tub [very frustrating]. I had a lot more control with my 4 inch spackle knife, which made everything go much faster and cleaner!

My second tiling tip: This tiling tip is for those of you who are planning on getting your tub refinished. Tile before you get your tub refinished! This way you don't have to worry about getting grout and thinset all over your newly refinished tub and most of the clean up is left to your tub refinishing guy. [This tip came from our tub refinishing guy-who did an amazing job!]

Our tub refinishers came on Monday morning and got our tub looking all shiny and new.

It went from:

[Tub abuse]

To this:

[Can you hear the angels singing?]

I will leave you with one last photo of the bathroom:

[still a little finish work left, but looking so much better!