First Floor Half Bath Tiling

This project marks my sixth tiling job:

Let's recap, shall we?

1) shared bath floor

 2) shared bath shower

 3) master bath shower

4) fire place mantle (count it!)

5) kitchen backsplash

and finally 6) the half bath floor. I have to say, tiling is definitely one of those skills that gets better with practice. This last job is by far the neatest and most professional-looking, and it was pretty tricky too. I think the fact that I had to take my time because of my bigger belly actually helped with the overall quality of the outcome. I guess usually I rush through things too much. tsk tsk.

This bathroom is 6' x 7' and it used to be a full bath --our only usable bathroom for almost the whole first year of living in this house. Pretty early on I cut the power to it, and we showered by a small lamp for a good...6 months?

This pull chain light used to be the (only) working light for this space

 I, uh, opened up some holes in the wall and bead board for electrical, and the plumbers had to run a bunch of drain pipes through this bathroom to the upper floor bathrooms. 

 The area around the toilet was missing the linoleum tiles, leaving the subfloor exposed.

 It did come with one a clawfoot tub in pretty good condition (and a janky shower curtain rod thingy made up of metal, wooden rod, and duct tape) which we moved to the master bathroom.

It was a pass through bathroom (2 doors on opposite walls; one leading to the living room and the other leading to our old bedroom). Carpenter Dan plugged up the door leading to the living room last winter when we had the fireplace put in.

It took me a while mudding and taping up the seams, but after that was done, Dan had to re-create the moulding that runs at the half wall height to match the rest of the room.

the existing moulding

Carpenter Dan's re-creation. As usual, the new stuff looks way better and makes me wonder why I didn't just have him replace all of it. 

 He also framed and drywalled a soffit - one of my favorite parts of the room - all around the ceiling perimeter of the room to hide the drain lines.

 After mudding and taping, Husband Dan painted the beadboard a nice clean white, the upper half of the walls and up to the soffit a light green, and the raised part of the ceiling a white. Then we installed a ceiling medallion (!!!).

raises the glam factor, doesn't it.

And then it was time for me to tackle the tiling. I kept putting it off, cause I was so tired and not feeling so great during the first trimester, but after some traveling and entering the second trimester, I felt up for the challenge. We first had to install some hardibacker onto the subfloor, which was surprisingly tricky because the walls are completely non-square, and the floor wasn't level.

Dan dropped the special square drill bit that came with the hardibacker screws into that tiny slit, and our project was temporarily put on hold until he was able to borrow the required bit from our neighbors. But seriously, how does one do that?!

Then I laid out the tile so that the pattern looked fairly symmetrical, but also so that I wouldn't have to cut a 4" diameter hole in the middle of one tile for the toilet drain.

See how I laid it out so the toilet hole ends up at the corner of four tiles? Much easier to cut out.

I'd decided on this diamond pattern a while ago, and bought a sheet of ming green marble square mosaics. I'd wanted to use carrara for the 12x12, but it was too expensive, so I settled on the creme marble tiles from home depot for 4.88/sqft. Every single tile had to have two corners cut off, and laying tiles on the diagonal always leads to significantly more cuts around the edges, so I ended up having to do a fair amount of tile cutting. But hey, at least I can set up the tile saw outside, and it was nice out (definitely beats tiling in the middle of February).

so dusty and pregnant

It took a few days longer than I'd expected, because I could really only work for 4-5 hours a day before my back started heavily protesting - I blame it on the loose ligaments or something.  But it got done, and then I grouted and sealed caulked the edges. Now I just have to make some decisions on toilets and faucets and countertops, and then it's install time!