De-Picking a Wall

I pulled the picks out of the sink wall today and they did not come willingly. I ended up needing to use a pair of pliers to get them out and it took nearly an hour to do the one wall. A half dozen or so broke off and I had to dig the remainder of those out with a utility knife. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was more work than I thought it would be.



If I had to do it over I would not have spaced the base tiles by eye. Instead I would have used the toothpicks for those as well. The spacers for the tile pull double-duty. They space the tile evenly, of course, but they also support the tile from sliding down on to the tile below it while the mortar is setting up. The base tiles were resting on the floor, so there was no real need for spacing, but now the spaces are not quite as uniform as the wall tile. It is a very minor detail that know one will notice but me.

A wall de-picked




I now firmly believe that in those Girls Gone Wild videos they must be showing those girls pictures of Victorian bathrooms with flat, square edged subway tile. That’s the only thing I can think that explains their behavior. Hmmmm, I’m going to need to get a woman in here and test that theory.



I also finished the edge of the marble sill and got it installed. That was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I must have honed marble and not polished marble because I only had to take it down to 320 grit to get the newly milled edges to look like the factory milled top. It was so easy I kick myself for not finishing the kitchen island marble. That is getting bumped to the top of the mile-long post-bathroom list of things to do.

After the tile is installed around the window I’m going to finish the back with a piece of half-inch quarter-round trim. There is a small scrap of it in the picture that was left over from another project. I’ll need to make more for the window.

You can also see that dent in the window sash. When I stripped the paint off of it I found that the window sash had been burned there. The odd thing was, it still had a lot of loose charcoal there. They didn’t even bother to sand it down or anything. It must have been a renter who caught the thing on fire with a candle or something. They just blew out the flame and then slapped some paint over it. I thought about filling it, but in such a wet environment, I was concerned that the filler would fail sooner, rather than later, so I decided to leave it. We’ll call it “character”.

Finally, in case anyone’s wondering, gypsum plaster tastes much better than thin-set mortar. Maybe it’s the Portland cement in the mortar that gives it its bitter taste. For pairing, if you get a dollop of plaster in your mouth, wash it down with a nice merlot. For thin-set, a chilled Pinot Grigio goes well.