tiling like a boss

Well, we finally did it! WE TILED THE UPSTAIRS BATHROOM!

::big belly dancing::

It’s funny, originally we figured it would be years before we began updates on this bathroom. The tile was ugly but in good shape, and it’d be the kids’ bathroom. Getting the carpet out of the master bathroom should have been priority #1. But but, but, we found pretty sweet tile for only 88-cents!  It's a Deal!

You know what?

We wish we’d done it sooner! (Except we would’ve missed out on the killer deal.) It’s just like the kitchen pulls -- we dragged our heels on it, but once it was done, it was sooo worth it!

Okay, enough gushing here. Last you heard from us, Mike had cut and laid the Hardi board to give us a level floor for mortaring the tile. Next came the tricky part - figuring out our “main tile line” that would become our guide for the entire layout. Or, squaring the room for you technical folk. This proved more difficult than we expected.

Making a line

First, just to see, we laid a line of no-cut tile from the tub to the wall  behind the toilet (call this the horizontal tile layout) and squared it up, marking the square on the board to keep us in line. We ended up with a small gap that was too big to hide with the trim, and too small to easily cut a sliver of tile.

Hmm, ok. So the easy peasy full square, half square, full square starting brick pattern wasn’t going to work. I grabbed some cardboard and cut out “templates” for ⅓ and ⅔ tiles, so we could play around with cuts without actually cutting anything. This allowed us to get a good idea on how to negate that sliver of tile on the toilet wall.  

Next, we had to contend with positioning around the toilet stack. Basically, what obstacles would we have to worry about in the ‘vertical tile layout’ direction?  Originally, our starting line was against the back wall, but this would mean 4 circular cuts around the stack. So, we shifted the starting line a half tile from the wall, which allowed Mike to make two half-circle cuts instead of four quarter-circle cuts.

Testing

Now we were in business.

Looking back, we are so glad we took time on this step.  It really set us up for success throughout the whole tile job.  A lesson learned for future tile jobs is to certainly do this step but not to the exacting standards that we had done for our first tile job.  A word from the newly wise, layout the tile as best you can, but don’t stress completely about being perfectly exact.

Next, we opened up multiple boxes of tile and spread them out. We love the variations in each tile, but this means we need to be careful with laying things out. You don’t want clusters of similar tile in one area of the room. We even laid out the tiles that would need to be cut in half, notched out for corners, etc.  

Dry layout with labels

Once we had our pattern, Mike had a brilliant idea: LABEL THEM!

Since they’ll get moved around as we start to mortar, it’d be easy to get the order mixed up. So, Mike grabbed some painters tape and numbered each one and included an arrow for the upper right corner. This was the best idea ever! We could safely move and reorient things as we needed to get the best design possible.  Likewise, this immensely helped during ‘cutting day’ as Mike could simply mark and grab the right tile.  Then we moved tiles to the hallway so that they were out of the way.  

Mike marked the final starting line all the way down the room before clearing that space for mortar. Our game plan was to lay down all the non-cut tile first on a weeknight and then do the cuts on the weekend, since this involved going up and down a lot of stairs (tile cutter was stationed in the patio).

After a considerable amount of internet sleuthing around, Mike still had questions about which mortar to use.  Luckily, our good friends are builders here in town.  Mike went over and looked at the bags of mortar that they were using for their gorgeous tile job in the master.  He wrote down the bag numbers, grabbed them from the store and GAME ON!

While Mike was on trowel duty, I was the official Hander of Things. So, I’d hand him tile, spacers, wet rags, etc., as needed. (Mike says “this saved gobs of time and stress, thank you wifey!”) I’m just glad I wasn’t the one on my knees and messing with the mud. The tile was stacked in numbered order in the hallway, so I could just grab and hand to Mike.  Then, he would trowel on a couple of tiles worth of mortar and begin laying them down.  The first row is CRITICAL, as it essentially determines your entire layout of the floor.  Mike checked each tile to make sure that it aligned perfectly with its neighbors and also that the tile was level.

Rince and repeat.  This was the easy part...

Laying the mortar

Next came the hard(er) part, cutting and laying all of the half and notched tile.  

Cutting Day!!! Mike read about several different ways to cut and shape tile.  The most effective for our tile was the tile saw and a good pair of compound nippers.  Mike tried the manual ‘score and snap’ tile cutter, but it wasn't a good fit for this tile.

Just before the SNAP

The ‘score and snap’ is a pretty ingenious method of cutting SMOOTH tile.  You simply score the tile with the carbide wheel, push down on the handle, and the pressure from the handle pushes tile against a small triangular ridge on the base. The tile should then ‘snap’ along your scored  line.  While our tile is hard wearing porcelain tile, it’s actually roughly textured to resemble slate. The carbide cutter wasn't able to make a consistent line across the tile, and often times the tile would shatter.  

Luckily, we scored on a ‘cheap’ tile saw from Amazon a couple years back. This thing is nothing special but it certainly got the job done.  Mike set up a tiling station on the back patio and went to town. Mike says that it was surprisingly easy to cut the tile and was likely the lowest stress part of this whole project.  He didn't even really use a measuring tape to mark his lines.  Instead, he would line up the tile with the tile spacers and adjacent tile. He would then use a second tile overlaid to trace out the vertical and horizontal cut as needed.  A little later, he found an even better method by ‘connecting the dots’.  

Mike making his dots

In this method, you simply line up the tile that needs to be cut, and make a ‘dot’ with a sharpie on the edge of the tile.  At the cutting station, it was easy to use a speed square to create the needed line on top of the tile.  

The curved cuts were next, and were not nearly as difficult as expected.  Again, slow and steady won this race.  Mike made a series of ¼ - ½ inch vertical cuts into the circular cutout.  Then he would use a hammer to sharply strike near the edge of the circle, most times the tile would break close to the desired circular line. To clean everything up, Mike used a set of compound tile nippers (make sure you spend extra and get compound nippers, the regular nippers are not powerful enough for porcelain/ceramic tile) to clean up any jaggged edges.  

Some of the fun cuts (and our seriously beat up trim)

With the tile all down, it was time to grout. We didn’t want white and we didn’t want something too dark, since it’s not a large bathroom and the tile is already dark. We wound up selecting DeLorean Gray, and it’s a great light-to-medium gray.

Unfortunately, I was no longer just a Hander of Things. Since we had to be cognizant of drying time, I was put on sponge duty. Mike would lay the grout, and then, after about 15 minutes, I followed behind him with two large buckets of water and two sponges. I was not looking forward to this, because wiping up the shower grout was the worst part of grouting the master shower.

8 months pregnant, handing things, cleaning things

This time, things went better, either because of our grout choice or a better technique.

1. Squeeze the sponge out in clean water.
2. Swipe it across the tile (diagonal if you’re going across tile corners).
3. Flip the sponge over and swipe again.
4. Rinse the sponge in the bucket.
5. Repeat.

We had the two large buckets of water, because your water gets dirty pretty fast, and dirty water doesn’t rinse well. The two-bucket method saved us some trips up and down the stairs and out of the house.

Mike wiping

This is also the phase of tiling when we discovered another disadvantage of textured tile: grout gets in all those grooves and ridges, and you really need to scrub them out. Scrubbing was slowing me down and I was running into dryer and dryer grout. Once Mike was done grouting, he followed behind me to spot check grout left behind. Then, a couple hours after we started, we were done! I checked in about an hour later, and the tile had barely glazed over in a couple areas, so I wiped it again. We had a gorgeous and rock-solid new floor for the bathroom. Plus a HEAP of new knowledge on tiling that we’ll use on other parts of the house.

Next up? Painting!

Grouted

Behold, missing and old grout. Not waterproof.

Last weekend I had a grand grout plan. Optimistically, I hoped to clean and score the grout Friday night, grout it Saturday, and paint the floor and seal the walls Sunday. Some of that happened.

Friday went fine, more or less. I scored the wall grout and scrubbed and “brightened” the floor grout. The brightener didn’t really seem to do anything except stink up the room (I wore a ventilator), but we had anticipated painting it white again, anyway. But it was worth a shot, and it needed a good cleaning.

Saturday morning came and I merrily got around to mixing the grout around 9 a.m. The mix seemed a little too runny, so I added more powder and got to work. Although I had a float, I found it easier to push the grout in with my gloves fingers and used the float more was a scoop and scraper. This wasn't too bad. Not exactly a frolicky Saturday morning, but I could think of worse things to do. It’s the timing of things that trips me up.

I had written the timing of steps down. At first, I found that I was wiping too soon with the rinse sponge after finishing a small area. So then I would go a little longer and bigger with the next section. But then it felt like I was playing catch-up by the time I was wiping down the tile. And as time went by, the mix in the bucket was thickening up. My first wall was pretty decent for a rookie, but the third wall was definitely not my best work, plus I was getting tired. Looking back, I should've sucked it up and made a fresh batch of grout instead of trying to use up what was in the bucket.

Left wall untouched, right wall in progress.

Just as all the grouters before me, I had two buckets of water on hand for my grout rinsing sponge. One would be the clean bucket, the other the “dirty bucket.” Of course, each got dirty fast, so there were many trips to the sink. I think Half my time was spent doing that. Just when I thought I’d gotten all the haze, it’d come back … and back … and back. At this point, I was worried that we were hurting the grout that was supposed to be drying.

Along with that, our tile is beveled, so we do not have a sharp, clear edge while wiping off excess grout. When Mike got home, he took a plastic putty knife to the bevel, scraping off the overly thick areas of grout. Sometimes more than the excess stuff came off. Not a fun way to spend your Saturday.

On Sunday, I grabbed haze remover and grout paint for the shower floor. Originally, it looked like the floor grout just needed a good scrubbing and touch up with paint (since the cleaner didn't brighten like it claimed it would). But as I set to painting the grid, my stomach sank. Much of the grout had eroded away, so my paint brush was disappearing between the tile.

“Honey, I've got bad news …”

So, I walked away for a couple of days. Once I'd cooled off, I used painter's tape over the drain to make sure I didn't send wet grout down the drain. When I mixed the new grout, yet another thing went wrong. I added too much water off the bat. The next hour was basically spent adding some more powder, stirring, letting it sit … then adding some more, repeat, repeat, repeat. The mixture I finally started spreading around was definitely more watery than the original batch, but I was getting fed up. So, I let it sit longer between scrapes and rinses, and it seemed to work. As soon as I thought I was done laying grout, I pulled up the tape.

Hazy, grouted shower floor. 

Then I caulked the corners and painted some lines that didn't need re-grouting, just some sprucing. In the photo, you can see the ick on the right that has been resistant to anything we throw at it. Looks like the next option is simply taking a blade to it. Fun!

So here I sit, exactly one week from when I started. The first coat of sealer is on, the window open and fan running (and furnace running, since it hasn't warmed up yet). The second coat is waiting in the wings. I got lazy and bought the spray sealer, which is very stinky and comes with big warning labels about using a ventilator when applying. Which I did! I'm very anti-nasty chemicals, which drives Mike nuts, but in this case, I took the simple route and proper precautions.

What's next? Oh, spray painting some cabinet pulls!

Getting ready to grout

Whelp. There was a project we should’ve done right off the bat but didn’t, because there were plenty of prettier things do, like paint the master suite. It involves the master shower. Who’s going to re-grout it this weekend? This girl! Yeah, you better be jealous. I party down like it’s nobody’s business.

You see, we didn’t get our faces pressed up against the shower tile when we did our pre-purchase walks. Mainly because one of the owners was still living there and all of her stuff was in the stall and it felt weird. And we expected the home inspection to catch issues like that, since it's visible. Shame on us. Upon closer inspection, we discovered that the grout was gross and needed a deep cleaning (normal), but then I realized while taking my first shower that some of the grout on the side tiles is, well, missing.

We should’ve stopped everything there, but we’d just moved into the master bath after removing wallpaper and painting, and I think we were just reluctant to haul it all back. And we had to do some research. We took our sweet time about it.

Quick note: You should seal your grout every 6-12 months. Grout is porous, yo. Then you add in cracks from wear and tear or house shifting, and you’re dripping into the shower pan. I’m terrified that our grout was never sealed, or only once. Hope we’ve got an excellent membrane and mud floor. Eeek.

Originally, we thought we could scrub the grout and refinish it with grout paint, then seal it. That was before I realized there were gaps in the wall grout. So THEN we thought we could caulk between the tiles, because caulk is the duct tape of DIY. Plus, I’m pretty good at it (with the help of painter’s tape) and the stuff formulated for tub and tile is waterproof, so we could skip that step. Genius, yes?

Nope.

Here’s what I learned on whether to caulk or not:

• People do it, but they are in the minority
• Caulk should be used wherever there’s a plane change (corners, seams around tub, etc) so it can flex as the house shifts. Grout will just crack.
• Caulk will wear down faster than grout, and people complain that it gets mildewy faster (even if it’s supposedly resistant)
• I’d be using a lot of painter’s tape, which might not be worth the time and money if I just have to re-do the job in a year or two
• Caulk can be used to patch small areas of missing grout, but it’s not recommended for whole shower walls

It could be that grout companies and their associates have launched a misinformation campaign against caulk, because if people knew how awesome it was as a grout replacement, grout would go out of business. But … probably not. Although I used to fancy myself an individualistic rebel back in the day, I have to say, I’m going to side with majority opinion on this. Grout it is!

Honestly, I’m both excited and fearful of this enterprise. I’ve never grouted before. But we wanted to DIY update the house, so … what’s the point if I cower at some wet cement mixtures? I’m also fretting that the shower has leaked for years and we have a rotting, moldy frame we can’t see until it’s done 5-digits worth of damage. But I’m a worst case scenario girl.

The game plan:

- Tonight - Go to Lowe’s to pick up a rug we ordered (hopefully it’ll be The One); grab grout mix, grout saw, sponge, sealer, etc.; scrub the shower down, dry it, then score out the remaining wall grout, vacuum up dust

- Tomorrow - Grout it! Raise kitchen curtains! Have a drink and watch some TV that night.

- Sunday - Seal it! Get my spray paint on with the cabinet hardware. Pick up box spring and basic frame to complete the "new" four poster bed we scored on Craigslist (post to come).

I SHOULD be working on a presentation and article for my association’s spring meeting later this month, but I feel like this is a much better use of my time. ;-) Oh, and I realize some of you may be wondering where my husband is in this grout scenario ... Well, he's got some other business to attend to ... this house ain't gonna fix itself, you know.