Dreaming it up; putting it up

It's done, the bathroom. It started out innocently enough. We just wanted a new tub. That was the beginning, but if you read this blog you already know about tile heaven and hell.








What a process. We took the tiles down to the basement where we snapped some chalk lines on the floor and commenced mocking up our bathroom design to scale.

Our contractor/friend Peter then gave us a morning training session and let us use his saw. After he left the fun really began. Beth laid the tiles, I cut and delivered them.



We saved a lot of money doing it ourselves. We also picked up some skills.









As things went on we both gained confidence in what we were doing and began enjoying seeing things round into shape. It was tricky laying those small, odd shaped decorative tiles but we really wanted a colorful accent to the field design. The only stressful thing was whether we had enough tiles. Beth thought she had brought way more tiles from Portland than we needed. It didn't take long for that notion to give way to the realization that we actually had almost exactly the number of field tiles we needed. It made for some careful work measuring, cutting and laying. When we laid the last tile we had exactly four tiles left over. Four.

Yesterday and today we grouted. The fixtures aren't on yet and we can't seal the grout until the weekend, but the tiles are in place and looking good. We couldn't be happier with how it all turned out.

We are going to start inviting people over to have a shower or a bath.
K

p.s. the colors in these photos vary due to whether or not I used a flash...I decided to use examples of each...the flash tends to bring out the mosaic colors while bleaching the field tiles. Natural light seems to display the field tiles more truly but leaves the mosaic tiles rather dark. If I was a better photographer, I could probably resolve this issue.