MAJOR SCORE….almost

Four hundred square feet of 1902 encaustic tile free for the taking. A beautiful multicolored boarder with a field of 2-inch hex tiles. All free and ready for the taking. The only problem is, someone repaired the floor with a Portland cement base grout.

The 2-inch white encaustic hex tiles were made by Cambridge tile. These are the same people who made my 1895 fireplace tiles. The boarder was made by A.E.T. (American Encaustic Tile). I think both companies are (or were) located in Ohio.

There is a building in Old Town that was recently vacated by a kitchen wares business. The new owner thought the floor was too far gone for the upscale dinner house he wants to open. I had mentioned to some friends about my bathroom and ideas for tile. They told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on…..no, wait, that’s an old commercial. Anyway, anybody who has spoken to me the last two months knows I’m working on my bathroom and when word came that an old tile floor was going to be ripped out I got a call.

I had great hopes for this tile. The floor was in bad shape, there is no denying that. Still, there was plenty of good tile to be had. I only need 100 square feet, or less, for the bathroom and mud room. There should have been plenty.

In days of old, they laid tile floors in a mortar bed of a lime based cement. The lime cement is very forgiving. It holds the tile fine, but not to the point that the tile can never be recovered. The lime based mortar moves with the building as the building settles and ages. Portland cement based mortars are not forgiving at all. They will hold on to the tile until the end of time.

At some point, someone regrouted the floor with a Portland cement based grout. As I tried to pull up the tile it flaked and chipped at the edges when it tried to separate from the grout. This first picture is of the underside of the tile.



These two tiles had some writing in pencil on the bottom so I shoved them in my pocket. I didn’t clean them at all and that is pencil writing from 1902. The tile just lifts away from the old mortar bed with a little persuasion and is left in almost ready to use condition. The writing says “Seconds Della” on one and “Seconds {unknown}” on the other. I think the Seconds refers to the quality. I acquired a single 1902 subway tile from the Vance Hotel, also in Old Town, and it is stamped “Second” on the back. I think because of the cost of shipping from the east coast (all the way around So. America) second quality was cheaper and so that’s what we ended up with.





Anyway, above is a shot of the A.E.T. boarder with the Cambridge Field. Notice the narrow grout lines and notice the dark color of the grout. This is not original. That black grout is the Portland cement based grout that was added later.



Here you can see the side of the tile. There is the black grout on top and then the lime mortar on bottom. The lime mortar cleans up easily. The black grout chips the edges of the tile when its removed. And removing it is not easy at all. It’s really too bad. Encaustic tiles costs big bucks today. If that stuff could be salvaged it would go for upwards of $20 a sq ft. Encaustic tile is the same all the way through. It’s like the linoleum of tiles.

Of course, it's possible that the Portland cement based grout is original, but I don’t think so. In some places there were major repairs made to the floor - apparently this place was a saloon for many decades - when the repairs where made and the tiles were re-laid they use a Portland cement based mortar to relay the tiles. Those tiles disintegrated when I tried to remove them. In some cases they couldn't get the tiles to all fit back the way they came out and they used nippers to reshape the tiles. Then they filled in with this black grout. It was under the tiles in places, like they "back-buttered" the reshaped tiles before putting them in.

My Final Petch House Project

Yep, this is it. The bathroom will be the last project I ever work on on The Petch House. Oh, it’s not that I don’t want to work on any other projects. It’s just that the bathroom project will never end. I’ve come to the conclusion that I will be working on the bathroom until the end of time.

After some serious butt dragging I finally started installing The Oberon Saloon tile. Honestly, I never thought I would write that. One of the reasons for the butt dragging is because of one of my personality traits. I’ve been here before many times. This weekend I was at that point of no return on the tile installation. Once I started there was the chance it wouldn’t turn out well, so in my warped mind, if I never start, then I’ll never screw up. There’s that, and my whole attitude is in the crapper this week.

Well, I sort of pushed through that mental barrier and started this morning. Actually, it was more like this afternoon when I started. Anyway, it was very slow going at first. I’m doing the shower area first, and I will finish it with grout before I move on to the rest of the bathroom. Once the shower area is done I can move the tub in to that area and get it off the floor of the rest of the bathroom.

I started by laying one row of tile along the back wall to see about spacing. I was very close to having no partial tiles on the first row. I then laid two rows in mortar. After I laid the tiles in mortar though, it wasn’t as close as in my test run. I had to quickly try and nudge all of the tiles to make up a half inch near the wall. It didn’t work as well as I hoped, and some of the gaps between the tiles are wider than others.

I almost pulled it all up and started over but I decided not to. You won’t see any of this because it will be behind the tub. As I moved out away from the wall I’m able to slowly fix the problems with the first two rows.

I found one-sixteenth inch spacers at a tile store, so I started using them for this installation. I started and then I stopped. They are really time consuming to put in. There are 6-sides to each tile, and putting in all of the spacers really slows down the process. After 3 and a half rows I just started doing it by eye. I’m able to move faster and the results are the same.

I think that’s probably how they were put in originally. The original installation had an organic property to it. The tiles weren’t all evenly and perfectly spaced. I recall that when I was pulling up the tile, I thought the installation looked a bit amateurish in places. Now I see why. Even with the spacers, it’s hard to keep everything lined up perfectly. It’s hard to explain why. Maybe there is a little too much mortar in places and it prevents you from getting the tile in close, or it could be something else. It’s very odd.

Because I’m creating a giant honeycomb, subtle variations in the grout lines can get magnified over several rows. Just as quickly the variations disappear, or sort of move over and end up someplace else.

Definitely, the first two rows being a little wacky has caused problems in later rows. The good news is, I’ll get a second chance to start over. There will be a divider of quarter-round between the tub and the rest of the bathroom. I will pay closer attention to that first row once I’m on the bathroom side of the divide. The tub area is good practice.

This is all I have to show for my retched self.

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.

Tiles In!

The bathroom anyway. I still have the little mud room. The bathroom is a little over 10X6, and the little mud room is just about 4X5. I’ve gone through 12 of the 20 boxes of tile, so I’m in very good shape. The goal is to finish up the mudroom tomorrow, then let everything sit on Wednesday, and then grout on Thursday. The grout has become a bit of an issue, but first, a picture

Ta-da!


As for the gout, the original plan was to do a light gray grout. I used gray mortar to set the tile and I bought an un-sanded grout called “Delorian Gray”. I first grabbed it because I thought it was called “Dorian Gray”. I think that would have been a cooler name for it, but who am I.

Anyway, I was all set for Delorian Gray until I had the problems with the tile under the tub. I wasn’t happy with my grout lines so at the last minute I switched to “Antique White”. It’s very similar to the color of the tile, or, at least the color some of the tile. There are variations among the different tiles. I was worried about this as well, but I think it’s very pleasant, and actually probably better than having all uniformly white tile on the floor.

Anyway again, I now have all of the tile in the bathroom, and if I was getting a report card on my installation the teacher would probably write “Much Improved”, and I would agree. With the exception of one area, I think the rest of the bathroom came out very nice and I think it would be nice to show off my razor thin, yet asymmetrical grout lines.

Unfortunately I’ve hooked my wagon to Antique White. It seems it would be very odd to have Antique White under the tub area and Delorina Gray in the rest of the bathroom. Don’t get me wrong, the antique white is not hideous. It’s not like I have gag reflexes every time I look at it. I just think the light gray would be better.

I’m left with 2 options. One, I could just do the whole bathroom in Antique White and be done with it. The other option is to move the tub out of the way. Get a grout knife and carve away at the antique white grout, and then regrout the entire bathroom in Delorian Gray. At this point, I’m leaning so far towards option one I’m practically laying on the floor.

Option 2 would push the whole project back a few days. You might be thinking that it’s already been 6 months working on this stupid, God forsaken bathroom, what could a few days possibly matter. Well, IT’S BEEN SIX FREAKIN MONTHS WORKING ON THIS STUPID, GOD FORSAKEN BATHROOM!!!! I’M READY TO BE DONE WITH IT!!!!

I have until Thursday to decide.


A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Oscar Wilde

A Wall Is Reborn

It’s raining again. This does not bode well for me finishing the exterior house paint this year. I haven’t given up all hope, but I am trying to except the fact that it may not happen. It’s not the end of the world because there’s plenty to do around here.

Sometimes a really big project requires that you complete several small projects to get ready for it. That is the case with me and my next big project. A few weeks back I spoke about finishing the rest of the downstairs as the next big project. In order to do that I need to relocate the Living Area to another part of the house, and I need to isolate the kitchen from the rest of the downstairs to try and keep dust and dirt at bay. For the most part the kitchen is isolated except for the door leading from the mud room (unfinished) to the downstairs bathroom (also unfinished).

Both of these areas, the mud room the downstairs bathroom, need gobs and gobs of work. They are basically empty shells at this time. The bathroom doesn’t even have rough-in plumbing yet. Hell, it doesn’t even have a door at this point. The idea is to just get a door up so I can close it off from the kitchen.

The mud room is a small little space roughly 4X6 feet that sits at the confluence off the bathroom, kitchen, and back door. The one wall that has no door has a window on it. It should be a quick and simple room to pound out and finish up. If I sheetrocked the room I could almost to the whole thing with just 2 corner seams because in most places the door casing goes all the way to the corners. It should be simple, but it isn’t. Below is a map of the space.



Both rooms share the porch roof so they only have 9.5-foot ceilings. Originally this was one long room that was about 16-feet long. The outside wall with the double window on it was pushed out a foot or so and a door was added to make 2 rooms. Then the mud room part was opened to the porch. The color coding for the walls goes like this.

Green = Floor to ceiling bead board
Red = 60-inch bead board below plaster
Pink = Exterior siding
Black = New walls I built to re-enclose that area of the porch. Framing only.

The plan is to take all the floor to ceiling bead board out of the bathroom and use it in the mud room. There is just enough to do those walls. Both rooms already have a bead board ceiling. In the bathroom I’ll get rid of the 60-inch bead board and use it to augment the supply I have for the butler’s pantry and laundry room. Eventually the bathroom walls will be subway tile and plaster. Both rooms will share a tile floor that will be something like 1-inch hex or penny rounds. You know, with a nice boarder and the field.

This is sort of where I ran in to problems with the quick and dirty mud room make over. The tile needs to go down before the floor to ceiling bead board goes up. The other problem I discovered was with the wall and doorway that separates the mudroom and bathroom. The door was only 28-inches wide and the wall wasn’t built very well. For some reason they built it with 2X4s turned sideways. It was a very thin wall.

So yesterday and today I tore down and rebuilt the wall. I also removed all the exertior siding from the mud room walls. If I had a tile floor in there right now I could hang a door and start to put up bead board. It’d be nice to get this mud room finished because the entry way from the kitchen to the mud room has no door and I’m kind of sick of looking at the open framing on the walls I built a few years back. So I’m thinking I need to tile the room.

If I bought enough tile for the mud room and bathroom I’m looking at about 100 sq ft. I ran down to the home center in town to look at pricing. They have some black and white, unglazed, 1-inch hex tiles for $6 a sq. ft. A monochromatic floor seems kind of boring, but it might be nice. I’m not sure about unglazed. Seems like it might be tough to keep clean. I’m not sure.

They also had some glazed penny rounds and glazed 1-inch squares that were $9 a sq. ft. Both came in a myriad of colors. One thought, just off the top of my head, was the penny rounds with a pale green boarder and then a white field with rosettes of the green in the field. The mud room, because it has no door from the kitchen, is sort of an extension of the kitchen. The kitchen has green walls with the honied white bead board. If I did the bead board walls of the mud room in the same honied white it could look nice. Or maybe I should do something completely different in the way of color in the mud room. Much thought will be given to this over the next few weeks.

No matter what I do, I’m looking at maybe $1000 worth of tile and supplies for the floor. I wasn’t really planning on that right now, but it needs to be done. It would be nice to just buy all the tile now even though I’m only going to do the mud room at this point. Bathrooms are expensive and it will be nice to have that cost out of the way when I get around to doing it in a year or so.

Some on-line tiles places I'm looking at American Universal Corp.(AUC) and American Restoration Tile (ART). AUC is close, so shipping might be doable if the price is better than I can get locally. ART is not close by, but I'm sure they are out of my budget even if they were a block away. Still, the pictures are pretty to look at for ideas.

Bathroom Tile: Round Two

I dreamt of tile last night. That should give you some indication of how much I’m obsessing about it. I’ve contacted a few other places, and some friends of mine say they have some leftover subway tile they want to get rid of. The selections are many and the prices are all over the place

The tile, of course, is for wainscoting in the bathroom. I’m basically looking at 3 different tiles to complete the project. There is the field tile. This is a 3X6 white “subway” tile. There is the cap. This is the piece that hides the transition from the tile and the wall above. They are roughly 2.5-inches high X 6 inches wide. Finally, there is the base that makes the transition from the field tile to the floor. This can either be a simple cove that is maybe an inch and a half high, or it can be a fancier 6X6 inch tile with a fluted profile. The fancier base is much like a wooden baseboard in other parts of the house.

There are two big differences between all the tiles. The field tile really only has a few distinctions between the different manufactures, and then there are differences in an individual manufactures product line. The really high-end field tile has perfectly squared edges and is an exact match for antique subway tile. After that, some manufactures offer either a matte or gloss line. Some also offer other colors besides white to chose from, but I will be doing white.

The real differences are in the selections of Cap & Base. I’m mean, let’s fact it, a 3X6 white tile is a 3X6 white tile. It’s hard to do a lot with that. The subtlety between a square edge or a slightly round edge will be lost on most people. So the real issue is picking the cap and base I want, and then buying all the field tile I need. The issue here is, I can’t mix and match from different manufacturers. I can’t buy the field tile for $5.00 a sq ft from one manufacturer, and then buy the cap and base from another manufacturer because the color white is not a universal constant. I have to buy everything from one supplier to ensure the color is consistent throughout the different tiles – field, cap, and base.

So, here are my choices so far.

Subwaytile.com: This was the first place I looked, and I really liked their tile, especially the base.

Field Tile = $10.95 sq ft
Cap = $23.00 lineal foot
Base = $28.00 lineal foot

Designs In Tile: Someone left a comment on my blog about Designs In Tile and I was very excited about these tiles. They are within a days drive so I could pick them up and save on shipping. They do a historically accurate tile. Problem number one: Their web site says they are booked with orders until 2008. They won’t even send out a catalog! I kind of want to finish the project before 2008. However, they do list over-runs and odd lots that are available now.

I had high-hopes for the over-run stuff because I have a pretty small space to tile. I emailed them on Friday with my needs and they got back to me yesterday. Not bad. The woman who contacted me said the over-runs were no longer available, but they were about to start a new run for a customer, and because mine was a small order, they could add it on. I was very excited until I found out about Problem Number Two: The prices.

Field Tile = $25.00 sq ft
Cap = No price given
Base = No price given

Next I went to The Tile Center here in town. They had two lines of tile to chose from. I walked in and saw a display of field, base, and cap selections in about 6 different colors. It was off in the corner with another display shoved up against it. They had one of each tile from each color selection in vertical columns on the wall. A separate column for each color. The only color peaking out from behind the display in front of it was the white. The manufacturer was called something like Art Work Tile in Boston. I don't remember now. The different caps were at the top, followed by a selection of boarders (dental work, swirls, pyramidal shapes, etc), then the field tiles, and finally, the base tile. Very nice stuff.

As I was looking at it a saleswoman walked up holding a 2X3 foot display board of another selection of subway tiles. I looked at it as she approached and nothing jumped out at me. I asked her about the prices of the stuff from Boston and instead of answering my question she held up the display board she was holding and started to tell me about that tile instead. It was the selection from Daltile, and it was nice, but as I said, nothing really grabbed me. The Boston tile was nicer.

We went back to her sales desk and I listened politely as she told me about the Daltile. They had a matte and a gloss. These prices are for gloss. Matte was a little cheaper.

Field = $5.60
Cap = $7.00 lineal foot
Base = I did not write this down. It was just a simple 1-inch cove piece. Probably $2 to $3 a foot.

After I let her give me her sales pitch on Daltile I asked again about the stuff from Boston. When I asked about the base I had to explain to her the difference between the cove piece, which could be used as a base, or a real 6X6 inch base tile. I actually had to take her back over to the display and point it out to her and explain how it was used.

Boston Tile
Field = $13.99 sq ft
Cap = $18.50 lineal foot
Base = $22.00 lineal foot

Finally, I was at dinner with fiends last night and I got to talking about tile. Surprise, surprise, right? They mentioned that they had “a lot” of tile left over form their bathroom project they did 6 yeas ago. They said it was “very inexpensive” and they wanted to get rid of it. It sounds good, but I’m not sure how much there is, and I’m not sure if there is base and cap. They got it at a tile center in Berkeley, so if I needed more, which I’m sure I would, I would need to get it from there, or find another distributor that carries the same tile. I’m not sure if this will work out.

From a purely aesthetics point of view, I’m still leaning towards Subwaytil.com. The simple fact is, I like the base. The cap of Subwaytile.com is almost identical to the cap of the Boston tile. The base, however, is much nicer. As far as cost, the Boston tile seems in the same ballpark as the Subwaytile.com tile. The field is a little more, but the base and cap are a little less. The real difference comes when you factor in shipping and taxes. I wouldn’t have to pay shipping for the Boston stuff or the Dal Tile, but I would pay tax.

Just playing with rough numbers, to give you some idea of the difference, these figures take in to account shipping and taxes.

Subwaytile.com = $4,200
Boston = $3,900
Daltile = $1,350

As you can see, there is only about $300 difference between what I really, really want and what I’d be happy with. The Daltile, of course, is significantly less expensive. The other option is to go with a wooden cap instead of tile. For about $50 I could put the same fluted, wooden, Victorian wainscot cap in the bathroom that I used in the kitchen. That would cut about $1000 off the cost of the Subwaytile.com tile, and I would still get the base I like. This is something I’m considering, and it is something that was done 100 years ago, so it’s not like I’m cheating

There are still other options to consider, so we’ll see what happens. I have plenty of time to decide. I’ve made a few recent bathroom purchases, and there are a few more big-ticket items I have to buy. The biggest big-ticket item will be the tile, so I’ll leave that for last and see if I can afford what I really, really want. Who knows, maybe the lottery ticket in my wallet is a big winner and I can go back to Designs in Tile and order the really nice stuff.

The Shower Drain

The idea here is to have a claw foot tub with a shower but not have that all encompassing shower ring that makes you feel as if you’re showering in a condom. At the same time, I don’t want the shower stall type installation with the 6-inch curb and the thick build up of a sloped cement floor. A large portion of the water will be contained in the tub, but some of it will splash off the body and go over the side. It is this water that presents the challenge. Keep in mind when reading this that it will be virtually impossible to walk on this floor, because the tub will take up all of the space. This is a tile floor made up of half-inch thick tiles under a claw foot tub.

First some ground rules for this series of posts. To all of the nattering nabobs of negativity who will be chomping at the bit to fire off a comment telling me I’m doing it wrong as you’re reading this, please save your keystrokes. With all due respect, just because you read something some place that tells of a different way to do it, does not necessarily make you an expert, so please keep your doomsday opinions to yourself because I don’t want to hear it. If anybody wants to leave a comment regarding any of the topics in the following list, you will be wasting your time. It’s not my fault that you lack the ability of creative thought and are afraid to try something that has not been explained to you by a professional.

Yes, I familiar with the John Bridge tile forum
No, I didn’t ask them what they think about the installation
Yes, I know about Terry Love’s tile forum
No, I didn’t ask them what they think about the installation
Yes, I know this hasn’t been certified by some ANSI geek in a lab coat
No, I don’t think I’m going to destroy my house
Yes, I know about “wet floor” installations
Yes, I know that a traditional shower stall could have as much as 3-inches of cement
No, I’m not using a Kerdi Drain system
Yes, I know how to properly mix cement and sand for this type of mud bed
No, it is not too thin of a mud bed.
Yes, my old redwood plank sub floor is thick enough
No, I don’t think plywood would have made a better sub floor


Now that we understand each other, let’s move on.

The first plan was to use 3M’s 5200 Marine Adhesive Caulk to caulk each tile instead of grout. As a note of interest, when I first mentioned this idea it was poo-pooed by a few readers. Some even sent me emails telling me this was a bad idea and would never work. The funny thing is, none of them said they had used or even heard of the product. I mean, if someone emails me saying they’ve used the product for the last 10 years and said this may not be a good application for it, I would thank them. To just fire off an email when you have no idea what your talking about, I find a little insulting. Another interesting point is that while I was researching the product I found a professional tile installer who regularly uses the 5200 caulk on marble tiles in shower stalls because he doesn’t want grout lines. That’s right, I said no grout.

I bought a tube of 3M’s 5200 Marine Adhesive Caulk. First off, it ain’t cheap at all. It is roughly 10 times more expensive the your average 30 year door and window caulk. I did tests with silicone caulk, polyurethane caulk, and the 3M caulk. I took several tiles and glued them together to see how each caulk held up.

The tiles are the Oberon Saloon tiles and they are a half inch thick, unglazed porcelain tile. Silicone caulk worked about as well as toothpaste on the almost polished edge of the tile. The polyurethane caulk was better, but failed very quickly. The 3M caulk would flex more than a quarter of an inch before peeling away from the tile. Given that I am doing 1/16 inch grout lines, that means the tiles would need to separate 4 times their installed tolerance before failure. I don’t think that’s possible, unless I were to be hit with a 8.0 earthquake.

The real problems with the caulk idea are the installation and the color. The installation would be beyond tedious. These are 2-inch hex tiles and it would take forever to install each tile and clean up the caulk that oozes out as I go. I don’t think it would be a good idea to let this stuff dry on the surface of the tile. After all I’ve been through with salvaging and cleaning the tiles, I’m not sure I could go through that. The other issue is the white color of the caulk. I’m doing gray grout, and it would look odd to have two different colors of grout in the room. So I ditched the idea.

Then Aaron over at HiP told me about an article in the March issue of Fine Home Building. They were doing something similar to me. They wanted a shower that had no curb. Theirs was not a claw-foot tub, but just a regular shower. What they did was frame the floor of the shower area 4 inches lower than the rest of the room. They could then build back up to the rest of the floor in the room and still have the slope towards the drain.

This is great idea, but it is better suited for new construction. For me it would have taken major reframing of the bathroom floor, and I wasn’t really prepared to do that. I thought and I thought and I thought and I thought and I thought and I thought and I thought….and then I thought some more. There must be away to achieve what I want. Then a few weeks ago while I was plastering the bathroom, an idea came to me. It was odd. I was in the yard hosing out the mixing tub and thought, why not lower the existing floor in the tub area just a few inches. I thought, what is the point of going down 4 inches and then building back up with cement.

The tub area is about 5 feet long. With the drain in the center, if I need a quarter inch per foot slope, then that is only about a half inch of slope I need. So I started to wonder what is the minimum thickness of the floor I would need. The drain for a shower stall has a main drain and then a supplemental drain. There is a membrane under the floor that catches water that inevitably gets under the tile. This water makes it’s way along the membrane and drains in to the supplemental drain.

You need to have a sturdy floor on top of the membrane to set the tile. You can't have any type floor that needs to be fastened with nails or screws, because they would poke a hole in the membrane. This is the reason for all of the cement. You build up the floor in layers. You start with a flat floor and build up a “pre slope”. This is for the membrane to sit on and it slopes towards the supplemental drain. Then you pour the main cement floor on top of this. This creates the main slope of a quarter inch pre foot slope so water drains properly in the shower.

So what is the minimum thickness of this floor. Well, at it’s lowest point at the drain it is 1.25 inches (or 1.5 inches, depending on who you ask). It gets progressively thicker as it moves away from the drain. I went to one of the tile forums and asked a serious of questions. I never really said what I was doing, because I would get a hail storm of people telling me I was crazy. I’ll be honest with you, I have no idea if this will work, but you know the old saying, no gut’s no glory. If this is a failure I'm perfectly secure in the fact that I tried and failed, and I will go to a traditional shower ring. But how will I know if it will work or not unless I try.

Anyway, I had a excruciating series of discussions with tile guys and it was eventually decided that if the floor was flat then an inch and a quarter cement surface was sufficient to set tile. That’s all I needed. I just need to come up with an inch and a quarter at the edges, and an inch and three quarters at the drain. I need the quarter inch per foot slope at the drain, that’s the reason for the extra half inch there.

The rest of the room has half inch cement board on it, so you can lop a half inch off all of those measurements. So now I only need to come up with three quarters of an inch at the edge and an inch and a quarter at the drain. If I can do that, I can cover the whole area with an inch and a quarter of cement; create the slope; have the membrane; have the supplemental drain. Wham-bam-thank you mam! There is also the issue of conatainment. Remember, I don't want the curb, but more on that later.

So starting on Saturday, I pulled up the sub floor and started shaving joists. I basically created the entire slope of the shower area by trimming the tops of three or four joists. I started with the most inelegant of tools – the reciprocating saw – and finished them off with a hand plane. It went pretty well. I had to add in some extra framing, but it wasn’t too bad. You need to consider that I’m starting with full dimensional 2X10 joists so even if I take three quarters of an inch off the top, I still have more wood than a modern 2X10. Still, the floor is open, and I had the lumber and piers from the 2 story addition I took down, so what the hell. One things for sure, this is now the firmest floor in the entire house.

It’s still a work in progress and I’ve been taking lots of pictures. Tomorrow I will put in the membrane and pour the final cement floor. It should be very interesting and I still can’t say how this will work. There are still a few question marks and I’m sort of making it up as I go along. As always, I expect the worst and hope for the best.

Affordable Tile Work

I now have 75 sq ft of salvaged tile ready for installation. There is another 31 sq ft that has either been bleach cleaned or is soaking in bleach at this very moment. That makes up the tile that was in uniformly sized boxes. There are another 5 boxes that have any where from 15 to 25 sq ft of tile in them.

When I first started prying up the tile from the floor of The Oberon Saloon I used just about any box I found laying around in the saloon building. I then found a supply of boxes that were all the same size, so I started using those so I could get some idea of how much I was pulling up, as I was pulling it up. While I didn’t count or stack the tile neatly in the boxes, I did fill them all to about the same level. I could then count one or two boxes and sort of take an average. There was no sense in pulling up the tile without knowing when I might have enough.

As I clean the tile I use the same boxes, but I count and stack the tile neatly so I can get an accurate count of cleaned tile. The variable is still what is a good tile and what is chipped or damaged tile. There are also still some tiles that don’t exactly come out of the bleach bath all pearly white. The original plan was to sort as I cleaned the grout off, but that didn’t happen.

The last box I did was the worst. I let the tile soak for three weeks and they still came out less than white. Not all of them, but enough that I’m going to try something else to get them clean. I can use some of them under the toilet and the built-in cabinets, so it’s not like they all must be cleaned for this to work.

At any rate, it looks like I’m going to have around 120 sq ft of tile when all is said and done. The bathroom and the little mudroom are 90 sq ft, so it would seem I’m in pretty good shape. I now kick myself for not getting more chipped tiles. Because these are hex tiles, I will need a lot of partial tiles at the edges to fill in the gap made by the outer edge tiles. When I was pulling up the tile I passed over a lot of tiles because they had major chips on one side, but these would be perfect for trimming down and using on the edges. Oh well, what are you gunna do.

The best thing about cleaning all of the Oberon Saloon tile is that it doesn’t cost anything. After months of spending every spare cent, and some not so spare cents, it’s nice to go a week without spending money on the bathroom. Tomorrow I’m going to go ahead and grout the subway tile. It’s probably going to suck, but I’m looking forward to it.

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.

Tile Cleaning

Finally, being lazy and forgetful is paying off!

The first day I met the owner of The Oberon Saloon building to see about getting the 1902 encaustic hex tile he gave me a tour of the building. It’s not too big so it didn’t take long. Even though it was a short tour it lasted a lot longer than I would have liked. I was really only interested in the tile.

The floor did not look good the frist time I saw it. The tile was dingy and gray and there were some really bad spots where the tile was almost black where cabinets and counters had been. The owner told me he had tried everything to clean the floor when he first bought the building and nothing worked. He even mentioned a diamond disk on a orbital floor cleaner. I was leery from the beginning as to whether this salvage tile operation would be a big waste of my time but I decided to try anyway.

After I got as much tile as I could I started thinking about ways to clean it. Bleach immediately came to mind, along with things like TSP, Oxyclean, Zud, and Bar Keepers Friend. I decided to start with bleach and go from there. It is the cheapest by far and there was a lot of tile to clean. No matter what way I went it seemed like it was going to be a lot of work. It’s 2-inch hex tile so I figured 36 tiles per sq ft. I salvaged about 100 sq ft so that works out to around 3600 tiles to clean. This was not going to be fun.

Anyway, I started with the bleach. About 3 weeks ago I grabbed one of the worst of the worst tiles. This is pretty much what it looked like.



Now, a lot of that is surface dirt that can come off with a little elbow grease, but remember there are 3600 tiles. I filled a coffee cup with undiluted bleach and dropped in the tile. I put the cup on an out of the way table in the dining room and pretty much forgot about. This was supposed to be the first in a series of carefully planned tests to see what was the best way to clean the tile. Well, I started working on the plumbing in the bathroom and never got back to the bleach test.

Yesterday I finally remembered about it and I went and grabbed the cup. About half of the bleach had evaporated and at the bottom of the cup was pretty nice looking tile. I set the cup in the sink and ran water over for a few minutes and when it was done this is what I got.



No scrubbing or anything. Just soak in bleach and rinse. This is the kind of cleaning job I like. I have two big plastic tubs with lids and tomorrow I’m going to go buy a couple of more tubs along with 10 gallons of bleach. I just fill up the tubs with tile and bleach and put them out in one of the garages to soak for a few weeks.

The other issue is the grout but if I use black grout in the bathroom I will only need to worry about getting the really thick chunks of grout off. Fixer-Upper did the white tile with black grout in their bathroom and I thought it looked pretty good.

Constructive Criticism

Well, that was pretty much the response I was expecting to yesterday’s post. In hind sight, No Grout would not be a good idea. I guess what I really mean are no grout lines that are really visible. If the tiles are butted up against each other there will always be thin gaps here and there. The tolerances on tile just aren’t that good. That would be smooshed with grout.

I must say this has been very, very helpful. It is all a part of the process. You come up with an idea. You play with it. The idea gets changed and modified, and hopefully you end up with a workable plan. In this case the plan starts with the expected results: A Vintage Looking Tiled Bathroom. From there I work backwards, looking at available resources, and ways to achieve that look.

As an example, I’ll point once again to the beautiful tile floor in the foyer of Chicago 2 Flat. I hope Jocelyn doesn’t mind me using her as an example. Anyway, click on the picture to enlarge it and look at it closely. If there are grout lines in between each tile, they are not that noticeable. Also, last week I was talking to a friend who was part of a salvage team that took a bunch of subway tile out of a local 19th Century hotel a few years back. He told me that those tiles were butted up against the other and there were no visible grout lines. I even asked him if it looked like they used grout and he said, if they did there wasn’t much.



As someone pointed out in one of the comments, by the 1920s mosaic tiles came on a backer mesh just as they do today. Someone else said the boarders came with a paper face glued to the front. This paper was remove after the boarder was set. I, of course, am doing an 1890s bathroom, so it seems it would not be appropriate to have uniform 1/8th or ¼-inch grout lines. I could be wrong, maybe there are grout lines, but I just don’t see them. A 1/8th inch grout would probably look nice. After I posted yesterday, I remembered someone else on one of the old house forums said they used pennies as spacers for the tiles. Another idea would be toothpicks.

I was very intrigued by the paper faced tile boarders. This gave me a great idea. I bolted awake in bed last night about 4:00 in the morning and had trouble getting back to sleep. I could make my own boarders before I put them down. In the Chicago 2 Flat tile, those boarders look to be about 10-inches wide (10, 1-inch square tiles). I could take pieces of cardboard about a foot wide and build my boarders on those. I could make a wooden frame out of 1X2 stock and build them like puzzles on the cardboard, maybe 3 or 4 feet at a time. Once the tiles are in place in the frame I would lay down a sheet of stencil paper, then remove the frame and start another section.

The stencil paper has a sticky side that is a little stickier than a Post-It note. You can pull it up and reuse it many times. I only need about 40-feet of boarder. I could make those up in the evening while I’m watching TV. When I go to lay the boarder, I would just slide it off the cardboard, gently smoosh it down, and then peel off the paper. Just like old times. Of course, I’d have to even them out a bit after their in place.

As for the field tile, I think someone mentioned they took an hour to do 2 square feet by hand. I can see the first few feet being tedious and time consuming. After a while though, I’m sure the pace would quicken as I reached a stride. After the boarders are in that leaves me roughly 50 sq ft of field to do. Even if I was only able to do 2 sq ft and hour, that’s still only 25 hours of work. In my mind that is very doable. Most days, when I was painting the house, I was able to get in 3 to 5 hours of work before dinner. Considering I could work longer on weekends, I can see doing the whole floor in a week!

So that leaves the mortar/thin-set debate. Right now the room has a 1-inch thick sub floor. This is the original plank sub floor and the boards are a full inch thick. They rest of 16-inch OC joists. The one transition from tile to other floors is in to the kitchen. That is a 7/8th-inch thick wood floor. There will be a marble threshold between the tile floor and the wood floor. The tile is ¼-inch thick, and if I put down a ¼-inch backer board, that would leave me 3/8-of an inch for a mortar bed. All told then, I would have an inch and a quarter floor on 16-inch 2X12 joists -That is plenty firm - and then the mortar bed with the tile. With the use of screeds I should be able to get a smooth bed. The difference in height between the kitchen and bath would be the additional mortar from the 3/16th-inch notched trowel. Extremely minor.

Well, thank you all. I’m more excited about this than ever now. As for the rotten 1950s walls, it’s hard to say how much of that can be blamed on thin grout lines. Perhaps is was a poorly done job….well, it did last 50 years, so maybe it was too bad. Let’s face it, a lot of bathrooms done in the 70s and 80s are already shot and being ripped out.

The last thing I did want to touch on was this quote.

The low cost of labor and the relative newness and lack of understanding about the physical properties of concrete didn’t hurt either. Backer board, latex additives, plywood sub floors, kiln dried joist material, ect have come a long way to rendering thick bed jobs not necessary for most typical flat floors that aren’t in a shower.

First, as far as I know, concrete was invented by the ancient Greeks and has been in use for thousands of years. I know the Romans made extensive use of. As for the debate of old building materials and methods versus new, well, who knows. I do know that my house was built in 1895 and even after decades of neglect it is structurally in far better shape than most houses built in the last 40 years. I will take any wager that my old redwood plank sub floors and joists will out last any plywood sub floor and kiln dried joist, any day of the week.

There are pros and cons to both methods of laying tile. You said, “…have come a long way to rendering thick bed jobs not necessary for most typical flat floors that aren’t in a shower”. You seem to be implying that the mortar bed method is better, it’s just not needed. Considering what I’m doing in the bathroom, this seems to be a better method.

Much more research is needed.

Edit
I just found this discussion on "mud bed" tile installations...

Mud Beds

Tile Samples Ordered

I ordered some tile samples for the bathroom. They’re not so much samples as just 1 square foot sheets of two kinds of tile. They were out of one that I wanted so I went with something else. I got a square foot of the polka dot 1-inch hex, and a square foot of the spiral pattern.

Polka Dot - $625 sq ft


Spiral - $7.95 sq ft


The tiles is coming from Mosaic Tile Supplies, and at this point I’m not really sure where they are, other than they exist is cyberspace some place. The one thing I liked about them was the comment on the page showing the tiles. It says:

These tiles have completely squared edges rather than a beveled edge, making them perfect for period homes and architectural or historical restoration projects.

The also have 1-inch square tiles in solid colors. The squares come in about 40 different colors. I wanted to get a sheet of white (Chalk) and a sheet of black (Raven) squares to play around with for a boarder but the black are out of stock. I ordered the spiral instead and I’m considering it for a boarder. Originally the idea was to do some kind of design with the black and white squares for the boarder, and use the hex as the field.

Once I get these, and if I like them, I’ll check again to see in the black squares are in stock. The local home center has 1.5 sq ft sheets of black or white squares or hexes. They are also unglazed mosaic tiles but the edges aren’t “completely squared”. They do have a very subtle bevel to them. It will be interesting to see how they differ from the ones form Mosaic Tile Supplies. The local tiles are $5.99 a sq ft.

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.

Day 119

I started The Oberon Saloon tile odyssey on January 9th. That was 119 days ago. Although I am starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel, it feels like I haven’t seen the worst of it yet. At the risk of appearing to be whining about it, I want to say once again just how unpleasant cleaning the grout off the tile is. It’s fun to complain about some things, paint stripping being way up on the list, but something like that just doesn’t even compare to how miserable a job this is.

I got the last of the tile in to the bleach bath today. This allows me to get the most accurate count yet of how much tile I have. Since most of it has now been stacked and counted I only need to estimate what is in the tubs. It looks like I’m going to come in right at about 125 sq ft of tile. I estimated the little mudroom and bathroom to be about 90 sq ft, so it looks very good. Even if you factor in 5% loss during installation that still leaves me with about 30 sq ft of extra tile. This means I won’t need to use a lot of the tile that wouldn’t come clean. Off the top of my head I would say that is less than 10 sq ft of tile.

As I mentioned a few days ago, when I first started pulling tile off the floor of the saloon I was using any box I found laying around. After the first or second day, I started using boxes that were all the same size so I could sort of estimate how much I was getting. Those first 4 or 5 odd sized boxes of tile were the last to go in to the bleach bath today. As it turns out, these boxes contained some of the best tiles. I hadn’t opened the boxes since I filled and closed them up last January, but I guess I was pretty picky those first days. The tiles are some of the cleanest of all and have virtually no chips. Sadly, they have just as much grout as the other tiles.

So, as it stands now, there are 7 more boxes that need to have the grout removed. That's seven boxes of de-grouting hell. Even if I work on it every day that is easily 2 weeks worth of work. Siiigh!!!


PS: It just dawned on me that I'm in Month Five of working on the bathroom. How can it be taking so long? I think I only spent 9 months on the kitchen. Maybe the kitchen was more like 15 months but I blacked out for several of them.

Parlor Pieces

Although the front and back parlor collectively make up more than 25% of the first floor of the house, I'm hoping that the cash outlay over the next 6 months will not be a lot when compared to other rooms. This is mainly because I've already made most of the major purchases for the 2 rooms.



One of the first purchases I made for the house was a collection of 4 light fixtures which came out of an 1890s Victorian in Main. The guy was doing a gut-remodel and getting rid of all of the “old stuff”. I bought 3 chandeliers and a smaller, 2-light ceiling fixture. One of the chandeliers was installed in the dining room. The smaller fixture is in the upstairs bathroom.

The last 2 will be going in the 2 parlors. They are very similar, but one is little larger than the other. This works well in the parlors because the front parlor is little larger than the back parlor. Both fixtures have been rewired and are ready to go.



Years ago I also purchased two new plaster medallions to replace the originals which were ripped out when they put sheetrock up over the plaster. Again, the lager medallion will go in the larger front parlor and the smaller one in the back parlor.

The sheetrock over the plaster was possibly the worst thing that happened to the parlors. This is not so much because I think there is anything wrong with sheetrock. It's because of what the installers did to make their job easier. Not only did that pry off the plaster medallions, but they sawed off the tops of the head blocks.



Head blocks are like corner blocks except they have a crown detail that extends the block a few inches above the top piece of casing that goes over doors and windows. So they wouldn't have to fit the sheetrock around the detail, they sawed off the blocks so they were level with the top casing. Years ago I went down to Blue Ox Mill and had replacements milled.

Also at that time I had new casing milled. I needed casing for a few spots in 3 rooms to fix areas that were modified when the house was cut up in to apartments back in the 1920s. I also had replacement plinth blocks milled at that time, so all of that is just waiting to be installed. I may need to get some baseboard milled, but I am way ahead of the game when it comes to millwork for the two parlors.

Years ago I also purchased replacement hearth tiles. Just as with the dining room, the hearth tiles were beat to crap from heat, tenants, and carpet installers. I would say 40% of the original hearth tiles were just gone, and 20% were damaged beyond use. The original surround tiles are there and in very good shape, but the cast iron fireplace cover is missing, so I've already purchased an antique replacement.



Then of course there is also the pair of pocket doors and pocket door hardware I purchased, restored, and installed. That was a huge job all by itself. Stripping those doors was a lot of work and it took me nearly 3 years to find a set of antique Ives pocket door rollers.

In addition to those expenses that I don't need to worry about now, I have also already rewired both rooms for electricity and ran new cable for phone, internet, and cable TV. I also don't need to worry about dump runs for old flooring and sheetrock, because that was done years ago as well. All told, this amounts to thousands of dollars in material and months worth of work.

Expenses that remain are things like new plaster, which is relatively inexpensive. I need strip paint off woodwork and sand down and refinish the floor. These are also relatively inexpensive things to do. Then there are things like primer, paint, and new rugs. All of these things can add up, but those purchases will be spread out over time, so won't really have a major impact on the monthly budget. The big expense will be be for window treatments. There are 5 large windows, so that could set me back if I do something nice. Then of course there is new furniture. I'm not replacing everything, but it is enough that I will notice the hit on the wallet.

So really what all of this means is that if I were starting from scratch I probably wouldn't be starting at all. I would probably just let out a big sigh as I turned off the lights, closed the doors, and walked away from the rooms.

Impasse

I’ve reached a point with the bathroom were the only thing I can do right now is clean floor tile. It is ever so fun, too.

I can’t put the wainscot cap on until I grout the subway tile. I can’t put the medicine cabinet in or trim out the stained glass window until I get the wainscot cap on because both of these things need to sit flush on top of the cap. I also can’t put on any shut-off valves for the sink until the tiles been grouted. Thinking about tub, sink, toilet, or cabinets is so far out of the question there is not point in me even bringing them up, even though I just did.

The reason I’m holding off on grouting the subway tile is because I wanted to do it at the same time I did the floor tile. Also, I foolishly put down the cement board for the floor tile and I’m trying not to get it grunged up before I set the tile. Ideally, what would have happened is that I would have simultaneously finished cleaning the floor tile when I was finished plastering the walls, and then I could start in on the floor tile. Obviously that didn’t happen.

To keep with my perfectly planned order of things I need to finish cleaning the floor tile. I have 80 sq ft that has been cleaned in the bleach. Of that 80 sq ft, 71 sq ft has been de-grouted. There is an additional 30 sq ft that hasn’t been touched.

On a good day I can de-grout 5 sq ft of tile, but there haven’t been many good days lately. Also, I’ve kind of stalled on the bleach cleaning. I’ve only done about 5 sq ft in the last 3 weeks. That’s down from about 12 sq ft a week I was doing for a month or more. Part of it was the family coming to visit, and the other part was the plastering in the bathroom. There are only so many hours in the day.

The bleach cleaning doesn’t bother me so much. That goes quickly, and while it’s not the most enjoyable work in the world, it is very tolerable, because it goes quickly. I can do 10 sq ft in an hour and that’s pretty much all the tubs will hold. Once I’ve emptied the tubs, I fill them up again and they sit for a week. So, if there’s only 30 sq ft that hasn’t been touched, that’s only a few hours of work spaced over 3 weeks.

It’s the 40 sq ft of tile that needs to be de-grouted that’s the problem. Let’s say I can do 2 sq ft a day, then that’s 3 weeks worth of work. Even if I could do more, it still needs to go through the bleach bath. Anyway you slice it, if all goes well, I have 3 weeks left of tile cleaning before I can start setting floor tile. That’s 3 weeks where I can’t do any work on the bathroom other than clean tile. I’m a bit of a masochist, I’ll admit, but because the tile cleaning is so unpleasant, this is reaching Devil Queen level of old house restoration hell (Just kidding, John).

So now I’m thinking I need a way to be able to work on another bathroom related project, while at the same time continue with the tile cleaning. I need something that is going to show progress to off-set the tile cleaning hell. I think I can protect the cement board to a point where I can grout the subway tile. I could then put on the cap, install the medicine cabinet, trim out the window, install some shut-off valves, and maybe even hang the high-tank. At the same time I could be slowly but diligently working on the floor tile.

Besides, if I don’t find something else beside tile cleaning to do, it will be weeks and weeks of blog entries detailing with the excruciating process of cleaning all 6 sides of every single tile. It would just be hell for everyone.

Tile Scheme or Tile Plan: You Decide

So, if you recall I’ve been trying to come up with a way to have a claw foot tub with a shower, but not have the shower ring. I’m just not a big fan of those things. The tub is going to go at the back of the small bathroom, and a shower curtain will be drawn in front of it. This will keep water from splashing out in to the bathroom, just as with a regular tub with shower. The problem has been the other three walls and the floor beneath the tub.

Naturally, water will end up other places aside from the tub drain at the bottom of the tub. The question has been, how much water. I think more than 75% of the water will go down the tub drain, with the majority of the remaining water hitting the wall on the side of the tub.

I could do a standard shower stall but I don’t want it to look like a tub sitting in a shower stall. The run-of-the-mill modern tiled shower stall has a 6-inch curb in front of it, and the floor is steeply slanted all around the drain. The drain is a 2 part drain, and the whole thing is large and imposing. Not what I want at all.

So what to do, what to do? That has been the big question. I went to a few tile forums and asked about drains for steam rooms. I figured that was a good compromise. Trying to explain what I wanted to do would get me a bunch of answers like, “Why the heck do you want to do that?”. Not very helpful. I figured asking about what type of floor drain would be installed in a steam room might get some creative juices flowing amongst the tile guys and maybe I could come up with an alternative to the 6-inch curb in the bathroom.

Well, I got nothing. One person suggested I use a good membrane. That one person was the only person who responded. I was asking about a drain, and I was told to use a membrane. Membranes are used in shower stall installations. It was like I was asking a zombie to drive a car and all I got was the standard “Groooan”. I can’t fault the tile guys. Few of them want or need to be creative. They know how to do shower stalls and they can whip them out pretty fast and move on to the next job. Badda-boom-badda-bing.

I Googled until my fingers where soar and I got 50 variations – using the word “variation” is a stretch here – but I got 50 variations on the same thing. According to the internet, there is only one way to control water on the floor of a bathroom. It is a 6-inch curbed shower stall. Apparently, without that you are screwed.

I began to wonder again how they used to do it in the days before synthetic membranes. The Romans where big on bath houses, and I’ve seen pre-WWII shower stalls. So how did they do it? Well, I found one reference to a lead lined shower stall. It was pretty much two words in a long description of a modern shower stall with a membrane and a 6-inch curb, so it did me little good. Even if it was step-by-step instructions I doubt I’m going to be getting my hands on a lead sheets anytime soon.

So I thought and I thought and I thought and I came up with The Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. For those of you who don’t know, the 3 “Ms” in The 3M Corp stand for The Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. Thank you very much Stucco House for that little bit of trivia. Now I ask you, have you ever purchased a bad 3M product? I’m willing to be you haven’t.

In my opinion, 3M is the Pantheon of Corporate America. These are the people who brought us Scotch Tape and Post-It Notes, not to mention a plethora of other adhesive and non-adhesive products. I guarantee you every single one of those products works exactly as advertised. It either meets or exceeds your expectations. It’s probably something you’ve never noticed before and that’s the beauty of the company. They don’t ram “The Greatness” of their products down your throat with advertising, they just make great products.

Any way, the miracle 3M product I’m going to use 3M™ Marine Adhesive/Sealant 5200 to seal the tiles in the shower area. I will do a gentle slope towards a standard floor drain, and a slight curb with quarter round tile. The floor of the bath area will be the 3X6 subway tile, as opposed to the 1-inch hex tile that will be on the rest of the floor.

When you Google the 3M™ Marine Adhesive/Sealant 5200 - and you will - you will see things like “EXTREMELY PERMANENT”, “Can be used below the water line”, “cures with no shrinking”, “Stays flexible and allows for structural movement”, and “Stress caused by shock, vibration, swelling or shrinking is effectively absorbed”.

Now, if this were any other product but a 3M product I would be saying to myself, “Yea, right, I don’t think so”. But I’m not saying that. Me, the born skeptic, actually believes something that is written about a product on a retail internet site. Snowballs may actually be flying through hell as I write. To go one step further, I will be using the membrane under the thinnest, backboard, or the mud job - what ever I decide. It won’t be the steeply pitched floor with the 6-inch curb and the 2 part shower drain. No I won’t be doing that. My first line of defense will be the 3M™ Marine Adhesive/Sealant 5200, and it will hold.

So why doesn’t everybody use the 3M™ Marine Adhesive/Sealant 5200? Because it’s $10 for a standard sized caulking tube. That’s ok, though. I’m not going to be paying a tile setter $50 and hour so I can afford the $150 worth of caulk. Big whoop! Of course, there is a bit more to this plan, or is it s scheme, that I won’t go in to now. I really think I’m on to something here, though. If I do this right, it may even be better than what all the tile guys are doing with their membranes and their 6-inch curbs.

How Deep Does The Rabbit Hole Go

Yet again I find myself thinking about tile. I guess I think about it so much because it will be the single biggest expense for the bathroom, but also because it will make the biggest statement. And as we all know, image is everything. For me, it is almost always going to be form before function.

One thing I’ve noticed when looking at pictures of tile work is the old tile work has little or no grout lines. Today, when you buy 1-inch hex or square, or the penny rounds they come on the sheets of mesh and the tiles are spaced evenly. This makes it very convenient to lay the tile and you get a pre-measured quarter inch grout line – or something close to that.

When I look at pictures of turn of the century tile floors, it looks like the tiles are pushed right up against each other, and if there are grout lines, they are almost non-existent. Of course, these tile floors are laid on a mortar bed, so there is a solid, impermeable surface under the tile. Modern floors are generally laid on cement backer board and thin-set. The thin set is a Portland cement based mortar and you trowel it on with a notched trowel.

I’m working on some assumptions here, because I’m not an expert tile layer, but it seems that the notched trowel method would leave some areas where there is very little thin-set between the tile and the board. Don’t misunderstand me here, I’m not suggesting the thin-set is a less effective way to keep the tile down. In fact, I’m sure quite the opposite is true. The question is one of water infiltration. With no grout, and thin-set laid with a notched trowel, water could be a problem. I'm guessing it could be, because I don't know.

If the floor tile is laid with thin-set and backer-board, but without grout lines, is it effective at keeping water away from the substrate (e.g. backer board and/or the wood sub floor). The reason I’m thinking about all this is because I thought it might be cool to do a traditional tile floor without grout lines. If so, then would the thin-set application hold up over time, or would I need to do a traditional mortar bed as well. The one and only time I’ve seen a tile shower installation go in, the first step was a mortar bed.

This, of course, adds more work to the project. Really, it adds a lot more work because it would entail me to not only do a mortar bed, but also lay all the little hex and square tiles one at a time, by hand. I wonder how long that would take? I think I have about 70 sq ft of floor space. It’s a lot to think about. This may require a trip to the library to see if I can find and old book on laying tile, and possibly a trip to a psychiatrist.

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!

More Tile Salvage

If you would have asked me yesterday I would have said I was done with tile salvage. It just seemed to be too far gone to save. Even if I could save some of it, I’m not sure I could get enough. Then there’s the whole labor aspect of it. The thing seems like it’s going to be very labor intensive.

Then I got a few comments from people who think it can be saved. I went back down there last night and my friend Chuck was pulling up the boarder. I think that boarder is too big for my small bathroom anyway, so I was not planning on using it. Besides, Chuck is the one who told me about the tile in the first place, so he has first dibs on it anyway.

Then at work today I started thinking that maybe it can be cleaned up and saved. I mean, what the hell do I know about cleaning old tile. So I figured I would get as much as I can now and worry about cleaning it later. I would never stop kicking myself if I figure out a way to clean and then found out it’s all in the dump.

I spent 2 or 3 hours down there today and got 5 boxes of tile. I was less selective than I was on Tuesday when I only got 3 boxes. There will be a lot of half pieces needed to fill in along the boarders. I settled on two methods for pulling up the tile. There is The Full Pop and The Single Pop method.

With the Full Pop I hammer two 5-five inch scrappers under the tile, spaced 6 or 8 inches apart. I then hammer pry bars under the scrappers and pop up a large section all at once. This is very destructive but it results in more than a dozen tiles coming up at one time. I’m lucky if half of them are salvageable.

With the Single Pop method I use a hammer and a half inch chisel to pop up a single tile at a time. This is more time consuming but I’m able to save more tile. The Single Pop method can only be used when at least 3 sides of the hex tile are exposed. Often times a Full Pop exposes a vein of 3 sided tiles. The two methods sort of work together.

So tomorrow I’ll go down again and maybe Saturday as well. I’ll just keep popping tile until I’m sick of it or feel I have enough, which ever comes first. While I was taking a break I found an old photograph in the building of when the place was a saloon. I photoed the photograph and took some shots of the room as it is today. The big chandelier is still there, and of course, the floor.

As I think I said the other day, the tile floor extends under the front façade of the building about 2-feet out on to the sidewalk in front of the building. It ends with a marble curb and there is some tile patterns along with the word “OBERON” written in tile right in front of the door. I assume the saloon was called The Oberon. Here’s some photos. It's looks like it would have been a nice place to have a beer. I was told yesterday that Jack London stopped in once.