Basement bathroom, part deux - MORE TILE

So, part two.

We left off with a ripped out backsplash and prepping the floor for tile, right?

John tried and tried to chip out the floor tiles underneath the toilet, but like everything else in this house, professionals did it and thus it is so much harder to undo what a pro did the right way the first time.  Alas, as problems go, it's a good problem to have isn't it?

So on to the tool rental place to rent a demolition hammer.  But of course the guys at the tool place know way more than we do about tools and told John he needed a rotary hammer.  Whatever.  Please let me rent the tool so you can charge me 25% of the retail cost of the tool.  Thanks.

Rant over.

John came back with the rotary hammer and turned that bad boy ON.

BEFORE:  there's the carpet,
blissfully unaware of it's fate

Yea, I wasn't so impressed either.  But did that thing work!  Wow.  10 minutes and it was done.  Done so well that there was no re-leveling or patching needed.  We were ready to tile baby!

So now we take out the blue carpet and are ready to start tiling!

IN PROGRESS:  see how well the rotary hammer
works?  Also, note the awesome job John did at
patching the walls where the tile was before.
There is a surprise for the back wall....

I can not stress this enough.  Plan your layout before you start mixing mortar.  We have done our share of tiling and have already learned this lesson.  We spent a fair amount of time figuring out the cuts and spacing of the tiles and drawing our level lines etc... But this work definitely pays off when you get started.  We were able to do the entire floor in about an hour.  That's with the wet saw acting up and John having to do the cuts without it.  Thankfully, our plan involved mostly straight cuts and it didn't slow us up much.  Tomorrow we grout!  

IN PROGRESS:  Hey, that's me!  Tiling!!

Yea, tomorrow....  was the Capital One Bowl (Nebraska v. S. Carolina) at noon.  We planned on having some friends over and watching the game, setting the backsplash tile, and then grouting the floor.  Who knew that the Huskers would stink it up so badly?  Ugh.  So we decided to let the day get away from us.  Next thing we knew we were ordering pizzas for dinner and watching ALL of the bowl games until way after bedtime.  Oops.  

So the next day we got to the backsplash and grout.  I say so what?  We are on holiday break and deserve a day to lay around with friends watching football and pigging out and not grouting the basement bathroom.  Sam is the only one who cared since he had to come ALL the way upstairs to go to the bathroom.  Poor baby :)

Now that backsplash was a bitch.  No other way to say it.  We didn't plan out the layout as much since it was such a small job and the tiles intersected so long runs wouldn't be a problem.  We knew there would be cuts.  We thought it would take 30 minutes tops.  Truth is, it sucked.  Since the wet saw was out of commission, John had such a tough time cutting the glass tiles with a glass cutter and snips.  We got it done in the end, but our 30 minute timeline was shot to hell.  It took about 2, maybe 2 1/2 hours to finish.    

But it is glorious, look:

IN PROGRESS:  not grouted yet and horrible lighting :)

Now it's mid afternoon and we haven't even started grouting the floor yet.  No worries.  Grout is the easiest thing, it's the cleanup that sucks.  We grouted the floor after dinner and it came out perfect.  So glad we did the planning etc... so we could just be happy with the finished project instead of wishing we'd spent more time on the prep.  I tell ya, it pays to be a grownup sometimes and think before action.  Well, in home improvement projects anyway...

Enjoy the after shots of the tile...

AFTER:  Grouted and still poorly lit

AFTER:  Ahhh, done and looking F-I-N-E

Next, part three - the little things that you don't think are going to take too long that end up taking way too long.