Tiling with the Britton's (what the hell were we thinking?!)

Well, like most cases it started with this hair brained idea we could do something we saw on TV. Now I don't mean like the Ron Popeil and the pocket fisherman or the how to sale on ebay guy. We decided to tile a room. Over time I have learned to let my friends feel the pain first and learn from their mistakes or better yet, be there to suffer with them. Sure enough my buddy Andy tiled his bathroom and did a real good job. So we thought, why not. Another big thing we've learned to do is practice on a room or area you don't care as much about (this is why our laundry room is 3 colors at this point). So we chose the guest bathroom. I mean seriously, these people are getting a free room and board, if the tile looks like crap they can't complain. If this goes well, we plan to do our master bathroom. Please, read on....


This is the bathroom stripped of base trim, linoleum and the toilet moved to the shower. We might be from WV but I'm not putting the toilet on the back porch, I mean, it's not even May! All in all, this took about 30 mins to get this far. Wasn't bad at all. Of course we don't have any pictures of our "before" bathroom. Why would we do that?



Here I am cutting the backer board to fit the toilet ring. This also wasn't bad except carrying this stuff up and down the stairs, that part got old. It's a sheet of concrete, what do you expect.



It pretty much went to hell from here. Some how the easiest part (mud floor, lay down backer, screw to floor)didn't go to well. No idea what happened. The floor was all wavy, like big waves. Visible waves. My guess is the thinset sucked and just didn't flatten out right. I'm sure 230lbs on it was bound to help but it just didn't. I about burnt my drill up screwing these darn things down. A burnt up drill wouldn't be a bad thing, I could use some new toys but unfortunately, it lived. Like Craig's dad on the movie Friday said, "you live, you live to fight another day". Stupid drill. Please note rough 'working' beard. Sorry ladies, I'm married.

Mandy was pretty sick (long story) for some time so we lost more than a week working on this. Once she was better we jumped back on it. You'd think she could have laid some tile or something while she was sick rolling in the floor, I mean, she was already down there. Back to the issue at hand. Since the floor was so wavy I thought I'll just pull the board up. So I then removed the 60+ screws that almost burnt my drill up. I put my safety glasses on, got my only stone chisel, ball peen hammer, a deep breath and swung for a grand slam. Nothing. I tried this several times and all I got was mad. So I hit the middle of the floor very hard with the hammer and gave my best Tim Allen grunt. It made an indentation but I considered it progress and it made me a little happy. The next morning I went to home depot to talk to Mike, my new best friend at home depot. Mike said just put some leveling mud on it and I'd be fine. The guy can see me coming a mile away and I'm pretty sure I saw dollar signs in his eyes this last time, it's kinda creepy. Clearly we had to put a 'little' mud down. By little, I mean we almost covered the entire floor. After this dried we had to sand it down. It was somewhere just before this point, it wasn't fun any more. To add insult to injury I e-mailed the manufacture of the backer board asking should we pull the board or just put the level compound on top. They replied 2 days later and told me by no means should I put the level compound on top of the board and the premixed thinset should never be used under the board. Then they pointed out I should pull everything, scrape the floor clean and start over and I'm pretty sure they said something insulting about my mother and threatened to kick my dog if I owned one. They were a day late and dollar short because we said to hell with it and marched forward. FYI, the tub is level.

We did get back to doing things smart for a change. Here we are dry fitting the tiles to we didn't have to do it all on the fly. Now by smart I meant the dry fit, not the day we chose to do this on. On Saturday it was 72 degrees, no, we chose the 45 degree Sunday to use the wet saw. Ah, what fun. At the end of the day my hair was matted together with water and tile particles. I didn't think it would come unglued but with enough hot water and some shampoo it finally broke loose. On the upside if this would have happened with my hair fixed, I would never have washed it and I'd have that always ready look. Mandy really enjoyed using those tile nippers. It was kinda scary honestly.

It was at this point I learned tiling is more of an art form than an exact science. I'm good at 'unbolt, bolt back on'. Not so much at small adjustments. Never have been, no idea why. Any how in hindsight we both think the thinset was too thin. At least it wasn't the premixed crap. Also we might have got our chalk lineup triangle in the wrong spot. It made perfect since while we were dry fitting everything. Not so much when the actual tile laying started. Oh well, to late now, just keep moving and try to keep them straight.


So 2 days later we got everything ready to grout. At this point we took some utility knives and cleaned the grooves out and also wiped the thinset off the tiles.


Mandy gave me the puppy dog eyes and said she never gets to do anything.....thats a lie, she give me the 'tude and said she never gets to do anything and told me I have an intelligent rumpus. Fair enough, I don't do it on purpose but she's probably right. I just jump in and end up doing a good bit of stuff. She's more the Robin to my Batman, the Chewbacca to my Han Solo if you will. So I told her she could grout. Not that I minded. Those stinkin' tile just cut into my knees, so have at it.


She did a really awesome job grouting. The only downside is the epoxy grout we used starts to dry and the work time isn't very long. Since neither of us had done this before we didn't know exactly what to do so we got close to this stuff sitting up by the time she got to the door way. Luckily she made it and got everything done. It was close but we get to take about $20 worth of stuff back to lowes (yes, I shopped at lowes, I'm so ashamed). This is also post first clean up. Which we were warned get as much up as you can and just keep wiping, eventually it will come loose because once it hardens, it ain't movin'. That's the good and bad of epoxy. Currently at 11pm we are on the 3rd round of cleanup. Probably going to hit it one more time with water tonight to wipe the vinegar and water solution off the floor.

Once the trim is down, caulked and painted and the toilet has a home besides the shower I'll post more pictures. If you count actual work time, it hasn't been that much. Cutting the tile took the longest (and it was so cold). It must have been 100 trips up and down the steps. Then Mandy getting sick threw a wrench into everything. I think we could do it again but at this point I'm thinking we'll let somebody else do our master bath. Just have to see how the mood strikes me. I forget stuff easily. I joked with Mandy earlier the grout lines just hide the pain and suffering. It's good enough for the guests.