A Hybrid Dwarf

I was like a cross between Sleepy and Grumpy all day yesterday. Just not in a good mood and I felt like I could doze off at any second. I ended up going to bed at 8:30 last night and slept 13 hours straight! Man, that felt good.

When I’m like that, the whole world can seem a bit distorted. It doesn’t take much for me to get frustrated with things. I was stressing out on the bathroom all day. It wasn’t anything in particular, just sort of stressing on the whole project. I was worrying about how much money it’s costing and how long it was taking. What if it doesn’t turn out nice. Will it be an embarrassment.

Last night I was flipping through the channels and I came upon the movie Something’s Gotta Give, with Diane Keaton and Jack Nickelson. It was one of the scenes in the movie where they are standing in the kitchen of that fabulous beach house in The Hamptons, or wherever, owned by Diane Keaton’s character. In real life they probably spent more on that kitchen than I’ve spent on my house and the entire restoration up to this point, combined.

Anyway, Diane Keaton is standing in front of the sink and there is a subway tile backsplash. I immediately zeroed in on the tile. It was perfect. Over the next few minutes there were several long takes of the tile and I scrutinized it for flaws. There wasn’t one. I then started to panic over my tile in the bathroom. In my mind it became a moonscape of tile. Any subtle flaws of my tile installation became magnified in my mind. Tiles were sticking out a half inch from the wall. Others were tilted at a 15 degree angle instead of being perfectly level. It was an embarrassment and I was horrified. How could I have been so stupid to think that I could tile a bathroom like that. I was going to have to rip it all down and start over.

I panicked and ran to the bathroom. I flipped on the light and studied the room for minute. It wasn’t too bad. I calmed a bit and looked closer. There were a few areas that I wasn’t completely proud of. On the sink wall there is the occasional tile here and there that is not completely flat with the surrounding tiles. This was due to my lack of experience with the notched trowel. Even so, you had to study the wall to notice. If you got up against the wall and looked down at the floor you could notice it. So long as nobody does that, I’ll be fine.

I also didn’t like the base tile along the back wall. I should have had two half tiles at either end instead of full tiles. The first rows of field tile on the opposing walls ended in half tiles. This meant that the first row on the back wall had to start with full tiles. So what ended up happening was that on the back wall, I have a full field tile on top of a full base tile on the first row. They should be off-set. It’ll be behind the tub, so no one will notice.

Getting the thin-set on was another challenge for the sink wall when I started. I have seen a few DIY shows over the past year where they do tile installations. On these shows they snap a chalk line for an area of tile and then go to painstaking levels to make sure that they only get the thin-set in the lines that they are working on. It’s like first grade coloring all over again. I tried doing this at first, but I found it very difficult to get an even depth of thin-set in the area that I was working on, while at the same time keeping it in the lines.

The notches on the trowel are designed so that as you drag the trowel along the wall, the low part of the notch rides directly on the walls surface, and the high part of the notch will leave the remaining thin-set at a uniform thickness on the wall. This ensures that the tiles will all be at the same level off the wall. They will all sit flush with one and other. In order for this to work it’s important that you get enough thin-set on the wall in the first place. If you have thin areas, they will remain thin even after you drag the trowel over it. Then when you put the tile on it will be a minute fraction of an inch lower that the surrounding tiles.

I quickly gave up on trying to keep the thin-set in the lines. It was just too hard and causing problems, and was just too slow, as well. Instead, what I ended up doing, was purposely going outside the lines. I would spread the thin-set several inches outside the lines and then scrape off the remainder after the tile was in place.

Also, I found it very difficult to drag a trowel full of thin-set horizontally across the wall. Inevitably, large globs of thin-set fell to the floor, and more often than not hit some of the previously set tile on the way down. It was a mess. I worked with a 6-inch high section of wall at a time. This was enough for two rows of tile. Working with smaller amounts of thin-set on the trowel, I applied it in a vertical fashion to the wall. Once I had an area covered with thin-set, I then dragged the trowel horizontally across the area. I made two passes over the area, first the top part, and then the bottom part.





After that, I ran my finger along the bottom of the freshly troweled area, just along the top of the previously set row. This removed any thick areas where two tiles would meet, and ensured that the thin-set wouldn’t squish out between the tiles. When I put a tile on the wall I tried to get it so it was in direct contact with the previously set tile below it, and the one to the left. I then squished it in to the thin-set, gave it a firm wiggle back and forth, and then put in the spacers.



Unfortunately, I missed one of the spacers. There is one tile that droops a bit. You can see it in the picture above. This tile also happens to be in just about the worst possible place. It’s about 18-inches up and is directly across from the toilet. That’s right, from now until the end of time, when ever I sit on the toilet this tile is going to be mocking me. I’m seriously considering trying to chisel it out and replace it. I’ve never done this before, so I’m not sure how easy or hard that will be. I’ve decided to wait a while and make sure the thin-set is cured well because I don’t want to inadvertently loosen any surrounding tiles.