I should've paid that guy to tile the shower. Now that I've done this, I see why folks charge so much to do it.
Yesterday morning, all that remained to be tiled was the doorway, the floor, and the step-over. Tiling the doorway would require a lot of sawing, as it was all narrow spaces. The floor I expected to be a piece of cake, since the tiles are on mesh sheets. Because I had some errands to run, it was 11:30 before I could get started. It was nearly 11 p.m. when I quit, and there's still a little more to do before we can grout.
Before leaving to run the errands, I had stood in front of the shower, inspecting my work with a fresh, critical eye. There was another spot that bothered me, a foot above the floor in the front corner. The wall wasn't *quite* straight in that spot, and we'd had to cut the tiles progressively wider as we moved up the wall. The lower three tiles in that corner, the first ones we'd cut, were too narrow. Since I had not yet tiled the doorway, there was nothing to disturb to the left of the tiles, and I could get a pry-tool in there, using the doorway for leverage. I made up my mind to try to pop those three tiles out and replace them with wider ones before I started anything else.
This proved easier than I expected (which kind of makes me worry about the strength of this adhesive). I pried off the three tiles, replaced them with tiles that were 1/4" wider, and felt much better. It was so easy that I turned around and eyed that spot on the opposite wall, the one I said will probably annoy me for the rest of my life, thinking I might just...nah, better not.
Now, onto the rest.
Our shower is in a corner, not angled across it, but squared-up in it. To the left of the doorway is a 7"-thick wall that separates the shower from the vanity. I'd decided to tile the face of this narrow wall in the same design as the shower, itself - square tiles from the floor up to a border, then diagonal tiles from the border to the ceiling. We are using 6" tiles (they are actually 5.75", or thereabout). This meant that the 7" wall would only hold one row of tiles, with a little over 1/2" to spare on either side. At the tile store, we'd looked for trim pieces - we wanted narrow L-shaped things to put on the corners of this wall - but they didn't have any that matched our tile. We had left the store without trim, thinking we'd cross that bridge when we got to it. Well, I was to that bridge, and there was nothing to do but make my own trim. All I could think to do was cut 1/4" wide strips to border the tiles.
Let me tell you, cutting a 1/4"-wide strip of tile is a pain in the butt. First, a strip that small will snap in two halfway through the cutting process if you're not careful (and even if you are). And if you do manage to cut a strip without breaking it, there's still the problem of a raw, slightly-jagged edge that must be ground smoothe. Working with pieces that small, that close to a running saw blade, is a nerve-wrecker. Before I'd cut too many of those strips, I was wishing for a gin & tonic to relax my shoulders, but was scared to have one, for fear of relaxing enough to lose a finger to the saw. It took a long time, but I cut those narrow strips - nearly 30 of those m*th*rf*ck*rs, not counting the ones that broke in the saw - and glued them end-to-end up both sides of the tiles, leaving a space for grout. It doesn't look too bad, but I'm scared one of those strips is going to fall off the first time somebody bumps the wall. We'll see.
The floor was fairly easy. The Husband took over this part of the job. Since the tiles are so small, they contoured themselves nicely over the slope around the drain. Since they are on a mesh strip, spacing them was not a problem. Best of all, we didn't need the saw to cut the rows apart. I'd envisioned tiling the step-over with the same 6" tile we put on the walls, but when we discovered that we'd have to crank the saw back up to do this, we opted to use the tile mesh, instead, no cutting required. It looks good.
Incredibly - how long have we been at this now? - there's still a little stripping and cutting to do today, to finish places we were just too tired to tackle last night, like places where 1" tiles will have to be halved to fit into the space, and one place where I still haven't come up with an idea for finishing the edge. Those places will need to dry overnight before we can start grouting, and then the grout will need to dry for a couple of days before we can seal it, and then the sealant needs to dry a couple of days before we can use the shower. We might be showering by next Saturday, two weeks from when we started.
Yeah, I can see why they charge so much to do this.
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