Tiling the Walls, Part 2

Sunday

Cass and I went out to lunch with our friends who're moving to Rochester, NY. Hope your move went well, Dittys! We'll miss you guys.

I flew solo putting up the last two courses of 12"x12" tiles. So, without further ado...


Bought a paddle for mixing the mortar. WAAAY easier and faster than mixing it by hand.











Now, for the most exciting work from Sunday! I had to drill a hole in a tile big enough for the shower head pipe to fit through. After lunch, Cass and I stopped at Home Depot to see what sort of tools existed for such a job. We found this diamond grit hole saw.

Any time your cutting porcelain tile, the cutting area needs to stay wet. Otherwise the blade will either get too hot, or it'll seize up. So this little contraption came with a cup that you tape down to the tile and pour water into.


Then, you just kinda go at it with the drill and hole saw bit. The hole in the bottom of the cup is really close to the same diameter as the bit, so it was pretty easy to get the hole started.


Presto! Perfectly round hole for the shower head.


I had to twist the tile as I was putting the shower head pipe through the hole I just drilled because of where the hole was positioned on the tile.


Swabbing the excess mortar so it doesn't get all over the pipe.

After that I finished off that same course of tiles all the way around and with that, I was done putting up 12"x"12" tiles! Monday would be just working on the crown.

Monday

Time to work on the crown. Funny story about the crown. We had originally come up with a design that would have followed the brick pattern in the 12"x12" tiles. You can get an idea of what that design would've looked like in the 3D mockup I created at the beginning of the entire project. Because I started the bottom course of tiles in the wrong pattern, the crown design wouldn't have followed the brick pattern properly had we done what the illustration shows. So we had to come up with a new pattern that doesn't rely on the brick pattern. I'm actually glad we had that problem, because I like what we came up with as a workaround better than the original design. Not to mention it involved less cutting tiles! Cass gets the credit for the new design. Way to go babe!


I love using that paddle. It's so much easier!


Half way through the middle wall.


The main wall's crown almost finished!


Another funny story, similar to the beginning of Monday. After reexamining the dimensions of the interior of the recessed shelves, we realized that our initial plan of just using a sheet of the shower floor tile in there wouldn't work. So we came up with this design. Granted it was much more difficult to do and probably was the reason we didn't finish on Monday, we're really glad we did it.

More to come in Part 3!