Tile Extravaganza

Hello and welcome back to a very action packed week at Wallpaper Acres! Last week’s blog reached over 100 people - how cool is that! We also made it to Dubai the week prior - the farthest away that someone has been to read the blog! I enjoy writing these blogs and hope that you all enjoy the content. What milestone will we hit next?

This week was another week spent in the upstairs hall bathroom with the main focus on tiling the shower/tub surround. To prepare for this, I painted the walls in the bathroom to prep for the vanity install and also had to RedGard the newly installed cement boards. RedGard is a waterproofing membrane that helps ensure that water damage does not occur when the shower is used. This process was pretty self-explanatory however, the RedGard is like painting on peanut butter not paint. We had purchased some brushes and rollers from Harbor Freight that were solely for this project and destined for the trash once used as they would be ruined. The whole process took 5 hours as the first coat of RedGard took 3 hours to dry as it had to be absorbed into the wall. The second and third coat only took 30 minutes to dry - one neat thing about RedGard is that it starts out pink and dries red…hence the name. It is very obvious to know when it is time to start the next coat. Overall, we did 3 coats total to make sure we had a good waterproof membrane. This process was simple and budget-friendly as waterproof panels are very pricey and those just were not in the cards.

(RedGard goes on pink and dries red!)

Taking a step to the side to talk about Harbor Freight - is it the best hardware store…no, but it does have good deals on most things like paint brushes and rollers. Last weekend we purchased a corded DeWalt drill to mix our mortar as the one from the previous projects had seen its last day. Within 30-seconds of mixing mortar, the drill started smoking…John had done his research and it was literally made to do this task. So, John hopped back online to see what other options we had and he stumbled on a mortar drill from Harbor Freight that professionals had reviewed and liked…and the best part, it was $50 less than the DeWalt. So, we returned the DeWalt as it was defective and purchased the Bauer drill.

On Saturday, we started our day with our weekly trip to Habitat for Humanity - no finds for us this week but it was nice taking our time walking through the ReStore prior to diving into tiling. When we got to Wallpaper Acres, we hit the ground running and started the shower tile. Adam came over and joined us for the start of the project and was a big help in getting us going. I had seen a couple of pictures of 3x12 inch subway running vertically and I really liked it. John and I decided to change course and run our subway tile in a vertical stack pattern instead of a traditional subway-style pattern. Three reasons for this decision: 1) It would draw your eye up and make the space feel bigger and 2.) It would use more full tiles and 3.) It looked more modern!

John and Adam went outside to test out the new paddle mixer and it worked great! What a deal! Once we had mortar mixed, we were ready to start laying tile. One small speed bump we ran into was the need to use a ledger board to set the tile on to make sure we had a level line for our first row. We decided to line the full tile up with the bottom of the niche which left a partial tile row for the first row - we were quickly able to install the ledger board and you can see it below in the picture (the white board).

The tiling process went fairly smoothly. John (& Adam when he was there) were applying the mortar to the wall with a notched trowel and placing tiles while I back-buttered the tiles. The process of back-buttering tiles helps with adhesion, similar to an extra layer of glue…on this small of tile it is up to the installer’s preference on whether or not to do it but is highly recommended for large format tile. We were able to move through the first wall at a good pace. The top row required us to use the tile snapping tool as it was a partial tile. Also to note, the ceiling is not square to the wall so we had to measure each tile. Not that big of a deal but a time-consuming process to measure, cut, and snap each tile for the top row. Next, we had to cut pieces for the 2 columns where the niche wall butted-up against the side walls. One hiccup we ran into with this was with the tile saw.. The tile saw does great when it is used to cut the short side of the tile but does not do the best when cutting the long edge. When we cut the tiles to width, they ended up not being the straightest…the nice thing here is that there is a ¼-inch overlap on the side walls as those tiles stick proud so you cannot even tell that there was an issue! We constantly were doing spot checks with the level to make sure that our grout lines were staying level and we were not wandering as it would be very noticeable given the pattern we chose.

John and I were able to move at a good pace for the window wall as it was 6 rows of 11 full tiles with the top row needing to be measured and cut. For this wall, we used a bull-nosed piece of metal Schluter to give a straight edge and finish the shower with a nice and smooth transition to the painted wall next to it. On Saturday, we were able to finish the niche wall and the back wall - we were wanting to get more done but we were tired…we had accomplished a lot in our 10 hours at the house and decided to call it a day!

(You can see the Schluter strip at the edge of the tile, yes we still have to clean up the drywall there!)

On Sunday, we woke up ready to tackle the plumbing fixture wall, below the ledger boards, and the niche. We got to the house around 8:30 and got our game plan for the day ready. We started by cutting the bull-nosed Schluter strip for the plumbing fixture wall and we cut it wrong…not the end of the world but we could not use this piece as we had cut it short. So, we set it aside and got the mortar mixed up and John started laying tiles on the last wall while I back-buttered…let me tell you, I am phenomenal at this process! We had to make some cuts around the plumbing lines and fixtures. The circular ones were not the challenge, it was the square one that was in the middle of two tiles that was difficult. As the square was not perfectly centered between the two tiles, one tile had a very narrow piece left that we were nervous about. John measured the cutout area on the tiles and down to the tile saw we went. This process involved us making several cuts to the correct depth then using a tile blade in the angle grinder to finish the cut…our first attempt on both tiles resulted in the tile breaking. So attempt number two with more precision and patience got us the results we were looking for…and it fit on the wall perfectly! Unfortunately, it will be hidden once we install the fixtures, but just know that it looks really good! Once we got those cuts made and tiles up on the wall, I left to go to Floor & Decor to purchase the new Schluter strip while John worked away. When I returned, John had all the tile laid up to the top row that required custom cuts so we pulled the tile snapping tool back out. Once we had the top row complete, we removed the ledger rows to complete the first row across the entire surround and this was also a partial row so we had to take measurements for each tile and snap them to size. Once again, not a hard process but one that took time.

We then got our newly measured and cut bull-nosed Schluter strip installed and used the tile saw to rip down the tiles needed but we had nowhere to hide the slight wander that the tile saw would make. John did a pretty good job keeping the cut as straight as possible and the last column looks pretty good! One thing to note - you might be thinking, why would you not use the tile snapping tool for this…great question! The tile snapper is used for the short cuts and not for the long cuts as it applies pressure across a scored-line so it does better with smaller cuts/areas of tile.

Our last thing left to complete was the shower niche…the first time for both John and I. We had the general idea and were confident in our abilities but I had a suspicious feeling that it was going to take a good amount of time. The niche we chose was a pre-built one that was 28-inches tall with a shelf in the middle to make two areas to put things. This was already waterproofed so we were good to install tile directly to it. We had also purchased a Schluter-knock-off metal L-channel from Home Depot to provide a finish to the niche as we had forgotten to buy it on our tile run. John started cutting that measuring so we could get the proper mitered angles. We quickly realized that we would need another L-channel as the one we had was not long enough so off to Home Depot I went. When I returned, John had cut and assembled the bottom part of the niche and installed the shelf. The key thing here is that you want to angle the bottom and the shelf so water does not sit and pool, you want it to drain. So we made sure that this part of the project was not level! Now that we had enough L-channel, we were able to start the top portion. John cut the channel while I prepared the tiles. Once all of that was installed, we needed to mix just a little more mortar to install the penny tile which we used for the back of the niche. Why did we choose penny tile for this part of the niche? It is what we are using to tile the floor!

John and I had never laid penny tile before so we prepared the wall the same we had been doing…put the mortar on and use our trowel to spread it across the wall and then apply the tile; however, no need to back-butter these! Penny tile comes in sheets that use mesh on the back to stick them together so you are not laying every single individual tile. We applied way too much mortar and it squeezed through the mesh which left no room for grout. So we pulled that sheet of penny tile off the wall and used a smaller notched trowel to apply the mortar and that went a lot smoother and worked a lot better! I had to use tin snips to cut off some penny tiles from an extra sheet to fill in on the side and cut some additional rows for the top as our spaces were a little bigger than one sheet of penny tiles. Overall, the process of laying the penny tile went smoothly and we learned some tips and tricks for installing the penny tile on the floor!

We wrapped up our day at 7pm and man, we were exhausted from the long weekend! But, we did accomplish what we set out to do! We finished the shower tile and all that is left is grout. Take a look at the pictures below, I absolutely love how it turned out and am happy we chose to run the tile vertically!