Finished sealing the grout and tiles

First of all, I wanted to back up a bit and discuss the grout. We used 1 1/2 bags of grout. We had less, which of course led to an emergency run to HD mid-day.

One of the tricks I'd been told over and over again was to not do the grout over two different days. You're supposed to grout everything in one sitting because it's just too hard to feather wet grout into dry grout, and it makes for a weak spot in the seal.

Secondly, to avoid getting grout all over the white paint around the surround, I used blue painter's tape to protect the walls.

This worked out great, except for the top back wall of the tub where the grout sealed in the tape. I had to use tweezers to pull out the tape the next day after the grout dried. Since I can barely reach the top of the tub as is, that was a real pain in the @ss. I guess I'd recommend pulling the tape while the grout was still semi-damp.

I mixed the grout until it was a peanut-butter texture and rubbed the grout into the joints. This was hard work, and really rough on the hands. I highly recommend the use of gloves. Any gloves. The grout dried out my skin afterwards and needed some serious moisturizing to prevent cracking.

The big blister between the middle and pointer fingers didn't help much either. Nor the scrapes on my knuckles. This one was rough on the hands.

Once the grout was in, it needed wiping down with a soft wet sponge. Many many times. After six or seven wipedowns, I still needed more. As soon as the water would dry on the face of the tiles, I'd begin to see haze.

Time for another sponge bath! After ten times, carefully cleaning the sponge after EACH pass, I was satisfied it was done enough and let it dry for 3 days before starting to seal it.


But now the sealing process is over. Yes, it is finally done.

It took two applications. In both cases I started at the top of the shower surround and worked my way down. I used an empty plastic cottage cheese container to hold the sealer and a regular paint brush. ( I was going to go foam, but didn't find one in time.)

The first application I started off very carefully dipping the brush into the grout sealer (a clear thin liquid sealer) and applying first to the grout until it was soaked in and changed the color darker. Then I went back and made sure the tiles were covered over. I focused on two rows at a time, making sure I had complete coverage before moving on to the next lower rows.

The mixture is very water-like, and I had to constantly catch drips. At the end of the day I had to wash out the tub with soap and water to get the sealer off. I don't know if it would do any damage, but why take chances... (i.e. no, I still haven't gotten all of the mastic off of the floor yet.. it's really ground in. Ugh.)

Once the first coat was on, the instructions said to wipe off any excess. There wasn't any. Those tiles are like little sponges.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: When using travertine marble (I'm not sure about other types, but this warning came in clear from the king of coasters himself about these.) DO NOT USE RED MAGIC MARKERS ON THE BACKS. Black markers are apparently ok, but the red ones.... the red ink WILL seep through. He said he had to redo an entire installation a month after installment because they used red markers on the back to assemble a layout, and lo and behold.... the porous nature of the marble brought that red ink right on through to the front. Not good.

So anyway, after the first coat, I decided to wait a day. When I came back to it, everything was dry and pale again. So the sealer really didn't darken the tile or the grout permanently. Not even for a day.

The second application went a lot quicker. Mainly because I gave up the plastic container and poured the rest of the sealant into a spray bottle and went to town. Muuuch quicker. Still, I had drips, but I was able to catch them easily with the paint brush. I think I may have used more sealer than I did on the first run, but that's ok. Still, after 20 minutes on the second coat, there wasn't much excess to wipe off, so I took an old T-shirt and wiped the tiles down well.

btw: Just a tid-bit of a suggestion to those who will be building their own bathtub area from scratch... not just tiling it, but building it. They do come hand-in-hand, especially if you're the one who is going to be tiling/painting/whatever: Don't make the surround any taller than you can reach diagonally while standing on the outside rim of your tub. I am 5'5" and I almost couldn't reach the corners of my tub for mastic, grout or sealant. I DID NOT pay attention to my reach when planning out the height of the tub. If you're doing a project like this alone, you should seriously take the height of the shower into consideration. Me? I just got lucky. I almost slipped a couple of times and had some sore arms trying to position a 3-1/2" triangle of marble tile on the mastic perfectly at the top of the tub, but I would do it differently (3-4" lower) if I had to do it over again.

After I'd given the second coat of sealant a good 12 hours to soak, it was time to caulk. I used white silicone caulk all around the top (Ugh... another pain in the arse getting it smoothed out while 'on point' at the edge of the tub rim... can you say 'leg cramp'?) and the bottom and a small run on the outsides as it edged up to the painted wall.

Side note: on our upstairs tub we've already noticed some moisture on the wall next to the sides of the tub enclosure. It's getting that 'moisture wrinkle' from long hot showers. We'll be painting that area (as well as in the master bath, learning from the mistakes of the other tub) a water-resistant semi-gloss ASAP.

After caulking on the shower head flange and the water flow knob... I took the new shower-massage-adjustable-head for a spin and doused the opposite wall down with water.

The water beaded up perfectly. Yeah!

Wow-

OK, DW posted on finishing up the tile in the surround a couple days ago.

Now, it wasn't quite FINISHED as it still needed grout and sealing, but I thought it looked really good.




Well, yesterday, DW hit it with grout. That makes things look much more finished. The quality of the job comes through more clearly, too. Pretty darned good for a first time at doing a tub surround. Frankly, I've seen professional jobs that didn't look as good. I'm extremely proud of DW's tile work.

But here's the thing. After wiping down the tiles, most of that mortar comes off. Then, today, I wiped off the last bit of remaining dust.



WOW!


The marble is beautiful! I mean EYE POPPING pretty.

I don't have a shot of it yet, but as soon as DW seals it (unless she lets me do it), we'll do some close up shots. If you can source your tumbled marble tile at a price, I would highly recommend doing this project (though I'd make sure you've got your tiling skills down pat first). It's transformational.

Wow, again.

This week, I'm hooked on my wife's tile job, and I'm going to be trying to get her some of that jewlery over on Hooked on Houses. It's mighty cool for the DIY set.

Bathroom sink & shower surround tile

Well the floor tile for the master bath is finished. The grout still needs to be sealed, but otherwise, it's done. Soon after we finished the floors, our plumbers were really pushing us to get the sinks in.

We'd been looking for a 5' double sink, but the costs for the countertop and base were ranging from $400-$900. A tad much for the budget at this point. We decided to settle for a single bowl sink and Stephanie at Ikea kitchens came up with the brilliant idea of using a kitchen cabinet for a bath cabinet. It's about half the cost, a bit wider (which I like more anyway - I always need more counter space, whether it's in the kitchen or in the bathroom) and worked out just fine. We got a 48" base cabinet in white, then topped it with a 50" laminated countertop. Since this sink was to be a drop-in, I had no problems whatsoever cutting the hole for this one. Viola, bathroom vanity sink. Insert plumber and the next day we had a working sink.

The next step was tiling the master bath shower. First thing's first: Beg wonderful and generous brother-in-law for excess 4"x4" tumbled marble from Italy. (He owns Studio Vertu in Cincinnati and uses these beautiful tiles to make the best marble coasters you've ever seen. btw: if you're looking for the perfect gift for the Democrat in your life, he's selling Obama commemorative coasters. They keep running out, so check out www.MarbleCoasters.com to order yours.)

Anyway, he buckled to the tune of 12 boxes of Botticelli marble, 50 tiles each. We Loooove Mark Schmidt.

We also love, but in a very platonic kinda way, OmniGrip. This stuff is the best. OK, well, I've never used anything BUT this stuff, but a tile contractor at Home Depot said they use it for putting marble tiles on the ceiling ... without supports. Um, ok!

I think I used waaaaay too much. Of course, I figured this out on the last day of needing to know. I used a 3/16 x5/32 V-notched trowel to spread the adhesive on the Hardibacker board, and in my own 'hey, let's do the overkill thing' kept it on a little thick. I liked being able to set the tile on the hardibacker and be able to squish it around and get the spacing just right. (I used spacers at first, but when I realized I didn't need to, gave up on them entirely. Again. )

OK, so how do I know I used too much? Well, somewhere along the way, the design got changed, and I needed to pull off some diagonally cut tiles off of the wall. Knowing I'd probably need them later, I scraped off the mastic from the backs, rinsed them in water, then soaked them in a bucket of water for 2 days. (Because I forgot about them. Ooops.) 2 days later I rinsed them off with fresh water, dried them off and stacked them on the sink, where they stayed for a week.

Today I needed those tiles, and six of them were stuck together so tightly I had to hammer a screwdriver in between them to get them apart.

Yeah, I used waaaaay to much mastic. Good stuff, though, really.

So back to the tiling.

I set my first tile up about 1/4" up from the tub surface (giving me room for caulking) and marked the top of that tile. Then I removed the tile and measured a grout line's distance just above that. (I'm using about 1/8" grout distance). That's where I screwed in a five foot long 1"x3" so that the top of the 1x3 was just at the line I'd marked.

This gave me support for the first row (support I ended up not needing, but if you can't find the mastic I used, I recommend going this way and using spacers to support each row.) and enough room for a row of tiles perfectly spaced underneath, once the 1x3 is removed.

In a previous post I made about the master bath floor tile I had to cut the tiles in front of the tub to adjust the spacing and I used tile trim to make this possible. At the time I said I'd then have to carry it into the bathtub surround in order to make it look like it was an intentional design instead of a screw-up fix-up. So about 8 rows up of tile, I arbitrarily decided that that's where the break between the horizontal tiles and the diagonal tiles would be, and inserted the familiar decorative strip. Above that, I used the 4' level to draw vertical lines to match up the diagonal peaks, and started placing in the tiles at a 45* angle.

Then I realized I'd have to make all the small cuts (with the tile wet saw) at the corners before I could set in the tiles for the left and right sides, and got started on those small cuts. I eventually pulled off the long 1x3 and put the bottom row of tiles in.

Once the small tile cuts were made on the left and right of the back of the shower (into the corners) I cut the 1x3 down to size and started over on the left side of the surround, same procedure all the way up, making sure that the cut tiles that terminated facing outward, were non-cut sides. Meaning: tumbled sides of the marble were on the outsides.

Actually, in order to reduce the number of funky small cuts on the outside of the surround, I started measuring from the outside into the corner. As this would actually be the second row, I lined up the left side of the first tile with the edge of the tub (personal preference) and measured inward to the corner. Then I set another row of tile on top, halfway between, just to see if it would look ok. I think nit turned out ok.


Oh, and there's the Ikea kitchen cabinet in the bathroom on the left of the picture, and you can see both tile trims (on the floor as well as in the shower) balancing off the tile.

It took me about 2 weeks to finish this, piece by piece. Frankly, it took a lot longer than I expected. I think I took 4 hours just on the first half of the back wall, but I did a lot of jiggling and squishing to make things line up. Once the mastic started to stiffen, good luck getting it to move. It would set up in 30 minutes, but not so much as you couldn't force it and re-set it.

The directions say wait 24 hours to grout... so that's next. Luckily, we have a whole bag left over from grouting the upstairs bathroom floor, and it should match perfectly.

We'll see......