The Window Styx

If I could do this window one more time I know I could do a kick-ass job on it. The first thing I would do is rent a much better tile saw. I know, you’re not supposed to blame the tools, but really, the little $80 wet saw I borrowed is not well suited for this type of work.

Regardless of which saw I used, much of the blame is mine. I just didn’t check the top of that window to see if it was level. A rookie mistake. Oh well, I did it over, and it came out better, and I didn’t smash the bathroom up with a sledge hammer. That’s the important thing.

The best part is, I’m now finished setting the Subway Ceramics subway tile. As soon as those last few pieces I put in today set I can remove the sticks in the window and be officially done with it. The sticks are holding up the tile I just set up under the window jamb. After that, all there is to do is grout, and that’s just like a 5 minute job, right? At least that’s what the guy at the home center told me.

I must admit, despite the little set back with the window, the room looks really, really nice at this point. My goal was to finish the tile and get the walls plastered before this weekend. Well, I don’t think that’s going to happen, but I am starting the plastering today. If I can get the scratch coat completely on it will go a long way to making the room look more like a bathroom. This will give me something I can show off to the family that’s arriving for a visit next week.

So why am I sitting here at the computer writing when I should be making a big mess with plaster….

Upgraded Condition

The re-tiling operation was a success. I’ve upgraded the condition from Total and Absolute Crap to Not Bad.

I’m leaving the plywood brace on for another day, because the horizontal quarter round I put up yesterday is supporting, albeit just a little, the new tile above it I put in today. Once that comes off I’ll really know how well this Tile Do-Over has worked.

Before the repair


After the repair


Already you can see improvement by comparing the two pictures above. If you look at that first piece of lath just above the tile, you can see that the gap is even in the second picture, and very uneven in the first picture. Also, the first row above the window is now done with all full tiles, and the horizontal quarter round are reasonably even in length.

I’m not going to call this a top-notch tile job, but I no longer want to take a sledge hammer to it. Anytime I don’t have a strong urge to take a sledge hammer to my work, I’m going to consider it a success.

Oops, I Did It Again

I guess that should be, F*ck it! I Did It Again.

I tried to convince myself that the tile job around the window was ok. I don’t think I ever posted a picture of it, and for good reason. I knew it looked bad, but I didn’t want to do it over. Several times last night, and even a few times this morning before work, I went back to the bathroom to look at it. The sides were ok, but the top was hosed up bad.

The problem, or at least one of the problems, was the top part of the window jamb. It sags a bit, from age I guess, and I didn’t really notice when I attached the cement board to it. I also didn’t do a very good job building a temporary wooden ledge to support the quarter round while the mortar set. Instead of building the ledge and making sure it was level and straight prior to putting on the quarter round, I tried to level the quarter round with shims after they were in place. It just didn’t work.



In the picture above, you can see how thick I had to make the gaps just above the quarter round to try bring the next row level. Even with that, all of those tiles just above the window sag a bit. It’s only about 3/8th of an inch, but I noticed it a lot. Especially considering how level all of the other tile came out. In the picture, I’ve already removed one tile, but look at the wooden lath above the tile and you can notice the sag. Also, look at the top of the window sash where it meets the quarter round. You can see how it all sort of swoops down from left to right. It's really bad.

The other thing that bothered me was the sizes of the quarter round. Notice the 3 horizontal pieces in the middle. There are 2, 6-inch pieces, and 1, 4-inch piece. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I really wasn’t thinking when I did that. When I was putting that all together yesterday I knew it was coming out crappy, and just wasn’t paying attention. I was kind of in panic-mode. That should be 3 pieces that are all about 5 & 3/8th inches.

I got home today and couldn’t stop looking at it. I started to put on the wood screeds for the plaster on the walls, but after about 15 minutes I started ripping tile off. The mortar was less than 24 hours old, and while the tiles did not come off without a fight, most of them came off without breaking.



I also decided to fix a third issue with the window. If you’ll notice in the top picture again, I had to cut the tiles down for the first row above the quarter round. Also, I had to cut the tiles on the left more than the ones on the right. I had to graduate the tiles from one side to the other. It didn’t work that well, and that’s another reason from the screwy gaps in the first row. I decided to fix this at the same time.





I shortened and evened up the vertical pieces with the compound miters. Now, I can use full pieces across the top and have them level all the way across.

I used a piece of ¾-inch plywood for the temporary ledge this time. I first drilled holes in it that were much larger than the screws I would use to secure it to the top jamb. Because the holes in the plywood were so much larger than the 3.5-inch screws I used, I could easily adjust the height of the plywood a fraction of an inch in either direction.

Also, I have more quarter round that is going to go on the floor to separate the tub area from the rest of the bathroom. I can use the 4-inch piece for that, which enabled me to use a fresh 6-inch piece so I could have equal length pieces in the middle of the horizontal run across the top of the window.



I tried to take my time and not rush this time. It’s still not perfect, and if I had more tile to re-cut those compound miters, I might try those again. It’s much, much better than the first time, though…..at this point, anyway. It’s level, I know that. I’ll let that set up over night and tomorrow I replace the missing field tiles. If you don’t hear from me tomorrow, that probably means it came out bad again, and I took a sledge hammer to the whole damn room.

Wish It To The Cornfield

I vacillated quite a bit as to whether I should get rid of the droopy tile. There were good arguments on both sides, but ultimately it came down to how much it would bother Me. Honestly, I don’t think most of the huddled masses would have noticed, and those that did would have thought, “Hey look, that tiles a little crooked”, and then they would have quickly forgotten all about it.

For the most part it wasn’t noticeable at all because it was sort of close to the floor. You had to either sit down on the toilet and stare at it, or you had to view it from afar. Being that the bathroom is so small, viewing at it from afar was not easy.

Today while I was at work, I pretty much decided I was going to leave it. My fear was that I would start a tile destruction cascade event where I would end up replacing a lot more than just the one tile. There are a lot ways a tile removal operation can go wrong for a novice tile remover like myself. I convinced myself it was character, so it should stay, and in 6 months I’d never notice.

I got home from work and walked in to the kitchen just as I always do. As I walked up to the sink to open the blinds the violet light caught my eye from the bathroom window. As I looked in the bathroom from the kitchen to admire the light I could see the dropping tile. It was probably the only spot in the whole house you could view it from a far. To me it stuck out like a sore thumb. It had to go.

Before


After


The whole operation took less than 5 minutes. I scored the tile in 3 or 4 places with the diamond blade on the grinder and popped most of the pieces off with a thin pry bar. The last few fragments were removed with a hammer and chisel. It is nice to know that the tile was on there good and I had good coverage with the thin-set. In the after picture, you can see how some of the cement board came off with the thin-set. No sense in making a minute batch of thin-set just for this one tile. I’ll wait until I’m finishing the back wall and I’ll put a new tile in then

Glad that’s over!

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.

Oops! Ran Out Of Tile

It didn’t come as any big surprise, and the new tile I ordered from Subway Ceramics is on it’s way. It would have been nice to finish up this weekend, but that’s OK. There’s plenty to do around this feculant hell hole.

It really is getting bad. Even though I sort of took a day off yesterday from working on the bathroom to get the place cleaned up a little, I didn’t get that far. I’ve been tiling until 6 o’clock every evening and that doesn’t leave much time for anything else.

To be honest, a day off sounds kind of nice, but there is always the salvaged hex tile from Oberon Saloon to work on. I can hear it calling me now.

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.

Two Walls Done!

Boy, it feels good to write that. Yes, the two big walls are tiled and the best part is, they didn’t turn out a hideous mess. I made one little mistake, or maybe I should say, I’ve found only one little mistake so far, but the funny thing is, I kept loosing it. All day today I would forget where it was and then I would have to search it out so I could obsess over it.

I wrote a few days ago that I should finish by Tuesday or Wednesday, which in reality means Wednesday or Thursday. My prediction wasn’t too far off. I think if I had all of the tile here, and I got an early start after work tomorrow, I could finish the last wall. I don’t have the tile, though. I was in denial about having to order more and I put it off too long. It’s coming via UPS from LA, so it could show up before the weekend, but I’m not holding my breath.

The other reason I can’t finish tomorrow is because I still need to polish the end of the marble window sill. That needs to be installed before the tile. I’m embarrassed to say that I never polished the edge of the marble on the kitchen island either. Mainly because I really didn’t know how to do it, but also because the weather turned nice and I started painting the house last spring. So this will be a good exercise.

Sink Wall


Heater Wall


This mess is duplicated in other rooms. Lot’s to do tomorrow.


Of course, what is a blog entry without pictures. Above are shots of the two completed walls and the mess on the floor. Tomorrow, I’m going to work on the marble, as I said, but also clean up the mess I’ve made so far, and maybe take care of some neglected domestic chores.

Regardless of whether the rest of the tiles shows up before the weekend, I still have about 35 sq ft of field tile, and the quarter round needed for the window. I hope that’s enough to get me up to the window and to be able to tile inside the jamb. That way I can get the quarter round on.

Design Changes, Real & Imagined

No matter how you look at it, making design changes after you started setting tile is not a good thing, but that’s what ended up happening today. In fact, there were two changes, one of which took place today, and the other of which, may or may not happen at all.

The first change – the real change - was one of those things that always kind of bugged me in a subconscious way, but when I started setting the tile it rushed to the conscious mind. I may have thought about this a while ago and either forgot about it, or decided to do it but never got around to it. In my rush to start tile setting I sort of blew past it. This has to do with the small corner cabinet.

Originally, or I guess I should say, at some point, I had a concrete plan to do a 36-inch wainscot of tile. I made the small cabinet roughly 36-inches high and the wainscot cap was supposed to go just around the top of the cabinet to meet the door. Well, I switched to a 48-inches wainscot of tile but never really bothered to think about what was going to go in that foot of space above the cabinet. I just always kind of thought plaster like the rest of the walls above the tile, but never really thought about how this would look.

Well, when I got the tile on I realized it would look pretty stupid to have this one small section of plaster below the 48-inch tile mark. So today I framed in the little area and added more cement board. I also had to raise the light switch because it was now smack dab in the middle of where the wainscot cap would go.

When I raised the switch it put it at a slightly uncomfortable 52-inches, but I felt it was better than having a bunch of slivers of tile around the switch. As you can see in the pictures below, it’s a very small are of tile. Only 3 rows (2 installed in the picture).

You can see how odd it would have looked to have the area just above the cabinet with plaster.


So I raised the switch and added cement board.


And then tiled above it. I considered remaking the cabinet to 48-inches and then quickly decided against that.



The other change that almost occurred today was the addition of a highlight row of some sort. As you can see in those pictures there is still one more row of 3-inch high tile to go on. The space remaining though, is 4 and a half inches. There is an inch and a half to add something in there. I went down to the home center to see what was available and it wasn’t much. They had several accent tiles to chose from, but very little that would have complimented this tile. I mean, things like river pebbles and fake distressed Greek facades are not going to work at all.

What they did have was a half-inch high solid color trim piece. They had about 8 different colors and there were two shades of green that may have worked. There were a few problems though. First, I need 56 pieces and they had maybe 25 in stock. When I asked if there was more available the conversation went something like this.

Me: Do you have any more of those trim pieces in stock.

Sales Guy: No, that’s it.

Me: Well, when do you order more.

Sales Guy: We only order when we run out of what’s there.

Me: So, if I buy everything that’s there, then when will you reorder.

Sales Guy: No, we only reorder when we run out of several of them.

Me: So how often is that.

Sales Guy: I don’t know.

Me: Can I order some special.

Sales Guy: Maybe, you’ll need to come back in Monday.


Ahhh, customer service. It truly is a lost art. Anyway, the other problems with those trim pieces are 1) they’re only a half-inch high. It would basically be a pinstripe on the wall and just wouldn’t look right. I could do several rows but that gets way too expensive. For one row I need 56 pieces and they are $2.99 each. With tax that comes to $179.58. Two rows or a 1-inch trim piece is around $360. That’s just not in the budget at this point.

The other problem is that even at 1-inch, that’s still kind of small of a trim for this high of wainscot. I would think something closer to 2-inch would look right. So that idea quickly went the way of the Dodo. I’ll just use that last inch and a half of space as a nailer for the cap. It should be fine.

Arbor Day

It’s like I’ve planted a tiny forest of toothpicks in the bathroom. I’m using the toothpicks as spacers on the Subway Ceramics tile on the walls in the bathroom. The toothpicks are a 16th of an inch in diameter and make for very good spacers. Because the Subway Ceramics tile has flat, perfectly square edges, I can get down to a very thin grout line for a historically accurate looking tile installation. I’ll probably use the same method when it’s time to put the Oberon Saloon tile down on the floor.





Being that I’m not a highly trained professional tile setter, I’m not sure that I’m the one to be giving tips & tricks for tile setting. Not being a highly trained professional has never stopped me before though, so what the hell.

I started setting tile on the least visible wall in the room. It’s a small bathroom, so really, everything is very visible, but I chose the wall with the sink and toilet on it. There is a learning curve to everything, so the logic is, when I get to the open wall opposite the sink and toilet I will be more proficient at tile setting.

The other thing I did was mix small batches of thin-set mortar when I first started. Using the notched trowel took a little getting used to. I’ve actually set tile before, but it’s been a few years. I didn’t feel as rushed with the small batches of thin-set and could take my time with the first few rows.

I set two rows at a time, so I snapped a chalk line 6-inches above the base tile as a guide for the first two rows. After the first two rows were in, I snapped another chalk line 6-inches above those rows, and so on. I made sure the base tile was level before I started, and then checked the tile again with a level after I finished every two rows. I’m dead on level after 10 rows. Whew!

I chose the transition from the 4-foot high tiled wall to the 8-foot high tiled bath surround as the focal point for the tile. It’s important to chose a focal point where the tile will look good. You don’t want to end up in a very visible spot and have a lot of odd sized pieces of tile. I didn’t want a series of 4-inch and 2-inch pieces of tile running up the leading edge of the bath surround. Choosing this as a focal point means that the leading edge on either side of the bath surround will have 3-inch and 6-inch tile as the first tile on every other row. It may not sound like that big of a deal, but it’s the little things that can sometimes stick out like a sore thumb.

I also laid down rosin paper (kind of like butcher paper) on the floor in the bathroom I’m tiling, and a path through the house to the working bathroom. The thin-set occasionally missed the mark and there’s no sense in tracking it through the house. Beyond that, setting the tile is a bit time consuming, but not exactly rocket science.

I was able to finish the base tile and set about 20 sq ft of the field tile today. I think that took about 4 or 5 hours. Working at floor level was slow, and I also had to cut tile to fit around the pipes for the sink. I think I can pick up the pace tomorrow. I think I might be able to finish this up by Tuesday or Wednesday, which in reality means Wednesday or Thursday.

Double Does

I officially started setting tile today. I couldn’t come with any more excuses to postpone it, so I had to start. I got kind of a late start so I was only able to get about 60% of the base tile in. Tomorrow I’ll finish up the base tile and start on the field.

I was going to use Keith’s String Theory to space the tiles a 16th of an inch, but I didn’t want to spend time at the store measuring string to find the right size. Maybe the spools are marked, I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Instead, I’m using toothpicks. I had a box of toothpicks in the cupboard and they are exactly a 16th of an inch thick, so that should do.

I also broke down and ordered more tile today. I think I know what I did wrong. When I measured the area for tile I broke down the room in to a series of squares and rectangles. I measured those and then added them up. It’s a pretty basic way to measure an area. I looked back at my original notes and one of the numbers is 21 sq ft. However, the sheet is dirty and wrinkled - this bathroom is a construction zone, after all - and if you look at it a certain way it looks like 2.1 sq ft. There is no area that even comes close to being as small as 2.1 sq ft but my numbers are off by a little under 20 sq ft. So, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. If I run out of tile again, I’ll just make my own out of joint compound, ‘cause I ain’t ordering no more!

In other news, Mort is doing much, much better. A good indication of his health is how much he attacks me. He can be very aggressive. I wrote last week that he’s only drawn blood on me a few times in the past week or so, and that was no exaggeration. He’s not 100% yet, but he’s definitely getting there.

We have a thing we do on a regular basis. There is a window at the end of the hall that I like to look of and survey the neighborhood. Mort is usually under foot anyway so it’s not uncommon for me to scoop him up and let him take in the view. There are a pair of Huskies across the street and he likes to keep his good eye on them. He usually attacks me when I put him down and he hasn’t done that in weeks. I thought I’d try and catch it on tape, and here’s what I got.



Making up for lost time.

Friday, I Swear

I was able to get the cement board seams taped and mudded today, and I skim coated the lower half around the tub area with thin-set. You would think that I’m ready to start setting tile now, but that would be too easy. The problem is with the floor tile.

The Oberon Saloon tile is a half inch thick. It’s thicker than a lot of other tile, and maybe even thicker than most all tile made today. The Subway Ceramics tile is 3/8th of an inch thick, which is normal, I would guess. The base tile for the Subway Ceramics Tile has a 90 degree cove at the bottom where it meets the floor. So at this point where the Oberon Saloon tile meets the Subway Ceramics tile, the Oberon tile will be higher by an eighth of an inch. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but could you imagine trying to sweep dirt from behind that little ridge for the next few decades. It’s something that would drive you nuts in the first year, and you would be ripping tile out in year two.



The cove on the base tile sticks out ¾ of an inch. So tomorrow I need to cut a bunch of shimming material that is ¾-inch wide, and an eighth or maybe 3/16 of an inch high. I need to raise the base tile enough so it will be even, or a hair higher, than the Oberon Saloon tile. Otherwise it will drive me, and anyone else who owns this house, crazy for ever.

The other thing I need to deal with before I start laying tile is the marble window sill for the window that’s in the shower. I’m also thinking about doing a marble window sill for the other stained glass window as well. I think that would be a very nice touch. I have that big slab of marble the guys gave me from the fabrication shop, but I can’t really go back to them. I thought about cutting and routering it myself, but I’ve got too much going on right now.

I can cut the pieces ok, but my router bits are all too dull to work on marble, and then I would need to sand and polish the edges, and I just don’t want to deal with it right now. I’d rather set tile. The trouble is, I can’t go back to the fab shop that gave me the marble because I told them I wouldn’t be needing any more marble, and that’s when he gave me the big slab of marble.

Instead, I’m going to cut the two sills to their basic sizes and then call a monument place in town and see if they will finish the edges for me. If they won’t then I’ll just do it myself. I’m going to try using the carbide grit jig saw blade I used on the cement board to try and cut the marble.

So, if I can get all of the shims cut and nailed in place tomorrow, and get the marble cut and over to the monument shop, then that should clear the way for me to start setting tile on Friday. I also need to contact Subway Ceramics and order more tile. I should have done that on Monday or Tuesday, but I’ve been in denial over it.

Subprime

Without the full use of my thumbs I’m feeling slightly less than a primate today. I felt like Lobster Boy, or possibly Dr. Zoidberg this morning trying to tie my shoes with just my index and middle fingers. Then walking around with band aids on both thumbs makes me a feel a bit odd as well. I noticed a few people looking at my thumbs and not sure if they should ask what happened or not. I had a great story all ready to go. It was about how my gambling debts had gotten out of control, and about how a loan shark wanted to take my thumbs as payment, but then had a change of heart and only left me with flesh wounds on each thumb. No one asked, though.

I didn’t get much accomplished today. Partially because of my thumbs, but mainly because every day life got in the way. If the two wounds on the thumbs were any place else they would be of little notice by now. But the thumbs…you just don’t realize how much you use them until you’ve lost the use of them.

The one drilled thumb isn’t doing too bad. The swelling has gone down and the wound is closing up a little. It’s down far enough on the thumb that I can still use it some. The other thumb is just raw, though. The picture does not do it justice. On that whole entire side, all the way from the nail to the knuckle it is really soar. I think maybe the bleach that got in to the glove through the pin hole may have exacerbated the situation.

Also today I reevaluated the Subway Ceramics tile situation. After making the design change with the shower window I thought I would be in better shape, but it turns out just the opposite is true. I also screwed up a little in my calculations. I’m not sure what I did. I measured everything again, and then went and got my original sheet. I broke the room down in to areas and measured them, and then added all the numbers to come up with a square footage. On both sheets I had the same numbers, but I just added something wrong the first time. I usually add totals several times, so I’m not sure what happened.

With the window, I had to raise the height of the tile around the tub area because the window is so high. I thought I was going to get an extra 5 sq ft of tile because I won’t be tiling over the window. As it turns out, I’m actually adding almost 10 sq ft of tile, so it’s a net gain (or is it a loss?) of 5 sq ft. All told I’m going to need extra 25 sq ft of tile, and some more quarter round for the window. Oy!

All Thumbs

I was able to get the cement board on the walls, but I didn’t get to the floor. It’s funny that on Tuesday when I got the email from Keith at Subway Ceramics I enthusiastically replied that I might start setting tile this weekend! Yea, well, that didn’t happen. I could have done the floor today as well, but Sunday has become tile cleaning day. This is The Oberon Saloon tile that needs cleaning, not the Subway Ceramics tile.

I really need to stay on the tile cleaning otherwise the whole project will grind to a halt for weeks because I will be stuck cleaning endless boxes of tile. I need to have all of the salvaged Oberon Saloon tile cleaned and de-grouted before I start the installation of the floor. Until it has all been cleaned and prepped I won’t know how much I have. It’s not like I can get more of this stuff any place. Last week I was walking through Old Town and I peaked in The Oberon. The remaining tile is all gone now. What I have is all there is.

So far I have 9 boxes of bleach cleaned tile and two boxes of de-grouted tile. I’m passed the halfway point on the bleach cleaning, which feels good, but there is still a lot of work to do. If I don’t do it a little at a time it will become this monster job that will drag on for weeks.

The next step for the cement board is to seal the seams. You finish the cement board in a similar fashion to sheetrock. You use the fiberglass mesh tape and thinset instead of joint compound. The carbide grit jigsaw blade worked very, very well for cutting the board. It goes through the cement board a little faster than a regular jigsaw blade goes through wood. It also makes cutting holes for outlets and pipes very easy. I highly recommend it. The dust is minimal and the edges don’t need to be cleaned up.

All of this productivity this week was not without a price, though. On Saturday I drove a philips head drill bit in to my left thumb. I had to put in some last minute additional blocking in the framing. I used 3.5 inch screws for this because it was a very tight fit to swing a hammer. I had a 19.2 volt drill at full speed with all of my weight behind it when the bit slips off the screw. The bit drives right in to my thumb. Major bummer. The damn thing has swelled up and the gash is nasty because of the spinning bit.



Then today, I wore a hole through my right thumb while cleaning tile. Remember The Two Thumb Method for cleaning tile? Well, it works great, but not without a cost. Last week I noticed a tender spot on my right thumb. It seemed as if my thumb print had been worn off on one side. I thought it was from the tile cleaning but I wasn’t sure. Then today I was about half way through the two pales of tile and it just started screaming at me. I wore a pin hole through the rubber glove and I had worn so much skin off my thumb it was now bleeding. Geez! I feel like one of those freaks that washes their hand so much they get sores.

Grout Thickness Determined

When you want the right answer, it’s always best to go to the source. However, in this case the source came to me. I got an email the other day from Keith Beineman, the GM of Subway Ceramics. He was just checking in to see how things were going and wanted to know if I needed any advice or guidance before the tile installation started. Advice and guidance I could always use, but maybe a tile installer would be nice.

Keith told me that Subway Ceramics tiles are being installed in a house in Oakland, CA at this very minute. The work is being performed by a master tiler who is a board member of the Tile Heritage Foundation. Yikes! It doesn’t get much better than that, does it? Keith told me that this person will be documenting his installation as he goes so that they may be able to share his knowledge and methods with other installers. Oh, how I would love to be a fly stuck in the thinnest on that wall right about now.

At the time of Keith’s email on Tuesday I couldn’t really think of any questions off the top of my head. I went over my preliminary wall preparations with him, mentioning how I would level the wall and finish up the cement board. He didn’t email me back in horror over what I wrote, so I’ll assume I’m at least headed in the right direction. Then I got a comment from Kathy asking how far apart I planed to space the tiles. It dawned on me that I never really decided that, so I sent Keith another email asking him what he thought. They are his tiles after all.

His advice came the next day. As he put it, the Subway Ceramics tile is able to be installed with 1/16" nominal spacing for that period style. Often the installers of that period used a length of string placed on the top of each course of tile they laid to space the tiles vertically and prevent them from sliding down on one another. He said that mortar will not hold a tile to the wall like mastic, but that I should only use mortar in a bathroom installation.

He went on to say that I can space the tiles horizontally by eye to match the horizontal spacing when using this string method. He advised that I “block the tile” (block of wood and a rubber mallet?) to even-up edges and to maintain an even, planar surface. Any lapping of tile will be accentuated since the tile edges are so square and flat, and the spacing is so tight.

So there you have it. Not exactly no grout, but a 1/16-inch grout lines. I love the idea of the string method. I would have never thought of it.

In other news, I finished up the framing and went and purchased the cement board. That stuff is as heavy as it is expensive. I was going to cut it today, but I never got to that. It was funny that while I was at the hardware store I looked a few books about tile installation. Mainly I wasn’t sure about the best way to cut and hang the cement board. Every book I looked in had a different approach. I settled on a carbide grit jig saw blade, for smooth edges, and a 2-inch galvanized roofing nail. I’m using nails instead of screws mainly because I live in earthquake country. Screws lack vertical shear strength and the heads can snap off. This is going to be a lot of weight on the wall and I would hate to see it come crashing down with the first 5.5 after I’m finished.

Tile’s Here!

Finally, someone who knows what they are doing. After my recent troubles with bathroom parts and marble I was beginning to wonder if anyone either cared or knew what the heck was going on. Last Friday I faxed in my billing information to Subway Ceramics and the tile arrived today!

I was so excited to have it that I wanted to play around with it a little so I made a little fort with all the boxes and sort of hung out for a while. I’m only kidding. I did crack open a few boxes and laid out a run of tile on the coffee table. It is beautiful tile. It is truly a historically accurate subway tile, with squared edges and smooth sides.





Early on I was being swayed by the Iron Gate tile because of the fancy base tile they had, but after looking at more historic bathroom pictures it seemed that that style of base molding is not all that accurate. Aside from that, the quality of the Subway Ceramics tile is superior. For one thing, it doesn’t have the dribbles of glaze over the edges like the Iron Gate tile does. That would have caused problems with trying to get the tight grout lines that I want. If you order the sample board from Subwaytile.com you also get a sample of the Subway Ceramics tile so you can see for yourself.

I worked with Keith Bieneman, the general manager of Subway Ceramics when I ordered the tile. At this point when you go to Subwaytile.com it’s a not quite clear that you are working with Subway Ceramics. As Keith explained it to me, Subway Ceramics distributes Iron Gate tile through the Subwaytile.com web site. Subway Ceramics makes their own tile which is sold under the name “Subway Ceramics”. In Keith’s own words…

Our Subway Ceramic tile is the only true, historically accurate reproduction tile collection for capturing the essence of traditional tile work in new installations. We feature this line on the right sidebar on the homepage of www.subwaytile.com, with a link to its own website at www.subwayceramics.com.

In the coming months we will be making some changes to the way we present the Iron Gate series, and our own Subway Ceramics collection will be given more attention there as we setup up dealer showrooms throughout the country and make the product more accessible to homeowners.

So if you’re having troubles getting pricing, delivery, or ordering information for Subway Ceramics, hold tight, it seems to be coming. For me, the delivery of the product came out of a LA warehouse and was about a third of the cost of delivery I was quoted for the Iron Gate tile off the Subwaytile.com tile. I had it shipped common carrier to my place of business. It came on a pallet in 25 boxes.

I’m going to finish the bathroom cabinets, and then I have a little more framing to do, but after that I can start setting tile. It’s all very exciting. I would think in about 2 weeks I should be ready to start setting tile!