February 6, 2007

Tiling Updater

For the record, we have not been playing hard to get. What with all the suspense, we hope you're as psyched about the tiles as we are.

This is totally G's project. I offered support in the thinset department, but it took her imagination to realize the pattern, draw it in autocad down to the last little hex tile, then to cut it out of the square-foot sheets in real life, and finally to carefully lay it down bit by bit. The tiles may be some of the most inexpensive you can buy, but the value-added is through the (watertight) roof.

Anyway, we looked at using color for accents here and there, but decided to stick to the monochrome black and white scheme. Now that it's down, it really looks like a good move.

Here you can see the first of the tiles going down. We got the hang of the process - mix the thinset, lay it down, rake it out, gently place tiles - but it never really became easy. You have to watch your step as you go, not apply too much pressure to the tiles on the wet thinset (thanks for the tip Bobby P) and leave yourself room to manuever. Also, we sometimes confused ourselves transferring the tiles from the adjacent room where G had carefully laid them all out, back to the bathroom and onto the floor. The thinset has to be remixed every 15 minutes (so says the bag) and it dries out on your floor somewhat quickly if you don't get the tiles down in time. For this reason, you have to work in batches. It's sort of a delicate dance. I don't think we'd get any merit badges for grace or poise during the process, (no future in synchronized swimming either) but the results are pretty good. We think.

Posted by Peter at 8:15 AM | Comments (1)

Comments