Bathroom tiles

Arg, arg, bathroom arg, arg, arg!

May I never write another bathroom post again as long as I live!

Patooey!

We managed to squeak in a few hours of work during a short trip to the cottage last Sunday afternoon (yes, it's come to that - cottage trips shorter than 6 hours in length. *sigh*).

We're still on the final step of the shower enclosure. The eternal "step 26: tile shower walls and floor."

More baby-poo mortar was mixed, and the tile setting began.

We're starting the tiles half way up the wall. Why? I'm not sure. The orange book told us to.

In theory, you set the tiles for the top half so that they're supported by that mid-point rail you see in the photo. Once they've set up, you remove the rail and begin to set the tiles from there down to the bottom. Maybe so it doesn't all just slide off the wall? Honestly. I don't know. I'm just dutifully following instructions here.

Here's most of the first half of a wall done. I picked 12x12 tiles originally because they were cheap (on sale! Ya!) and I figured they'd save us time tiling the shower. While we definitely saved some coin, I'm not sure how much time we're saving. They're proving tricky to cut with the tile cutter when the amount to be removed is an inch wide or narrower. We've been having to score with the cutter and then pry off chunks with the tile nippers or risk cracking the tile in unexpected ways. Shards of ceramic are flying everywhere. This is the time for safety goggles, kids!

And word to the wise: if you can configure your enclosure so that it's a) square and b) the dimensions are exactly divisible by 12, you have very little tile cutting to do.

This is as far as we got before we ran out of mixed mortar/time. We needed to head home before sunset so the kids could get to bed at a decent time (school night).

I had really hoped to finish the whole upper half, but when you've only got 2 hours to work, you take what you can get.

Next up: tile the wall with the nasty cuts for handles and spigots, then start the bottom half, followed by the curb and then the floor.

We. Are. So. Close. To. Being. Done.