No wait, that red coloring is actually the RedGard waterproofing membrane that I sprung for (not the cheapest little bucket of latex paint that I've ever bought) to prep the hardiboard for tile. To me it was important especially around the window edges/corners and since I had plenty leftover I went ahead and did not only the screw holes, but the entire walls of the shower enclosure.
From there the tiling slowly made its way around the room and covered the red membrane. I had never tiled anything before this and I've got to say that it became a little therapeutic after the plumbing headaches. It was really nice having my dad there to handle all of the cuts on the wet saw in the other room after I marked them. We quickly realized after flying through the bare side wall that we had a bazillion cuts to make to get around the window and the 4th wall on the side of the chimney and above the toilet (opposite the window). We made it through after 2 days of tiling with some good results.
Things I learned the hard way were:
- to have a hook tool on hand to get any excess thin-set that squeezes though the cracks off before it hardens. I spent quite a while scraping grout cracks after it dried, which sucked and ended up producing a few chipped tile edges in the process. If this weren't a rental and my first tile job, I'd have been a little more OCD on this.
- to clean the tiles sooner when grouting. If you try to grout too large of an area at once before using the sponge to wipe the excess back off the tiles it takes quite a bit of force to scrub it back off. On a tile wall this big, your arms will hate you for rushing as you work to rescrub it all.
Here are some close-ups of the mysterious blue showerhead pipe and the diverter that lacks a mud cover. You can see how tight the tile got to the diverter without the plastic guide on. Oops.
After completing the tiling of the shower, I painted the ceilings and walls their final colors. I have to say that the Sea Salt color on the walls really looks good with the all white scheme surrounding it. The color changes in the light slightly, but the accent works here well.
And as you can see I started to build out the tile flooring as well with the help of my new tile cutter, Kevin Wolf. I started laying out tile and numbering from the tub and then set them for good with thin set as I worked towards the door. I used a herring bone pattern on a 45 degree so that there were less cuts along the walls. This idea worked out incredibly well in this tight space with the tile working around obstructions like the shelf wall perfectly by happy coincidence. Trust me I'm not smart enough to do that by plan.
Again I'm not sure that I did the toilet flange the best, but the plumber fixed it in the end. I also had a sizable raise in the flooring from the hallway to bridge with a threshold once the hallway flooring was in place. Because I assumed that I would cover this end tile edge, I didn't focus as much as I should have one finishing it straight.
Overall I think it turned out better than I expected and there will definitely be more tiling in my future.
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