Hallway Bathroom Tile : Part Two

Part one of the tile process left off with the installation of the cement board. I cheated a little bit by saying that though, because we hadn't screwed the cement board in place. So, the next step was to screw the cement board in place. We placed screws about every eight inches in all directions. I did about half a board in thirty minutes and Luke did the rest of the room in about thirty minutes.

He was so much faster than me!

Next, up was putting down tape between the seams of the boards. I did that and then Luke came back in to do a thin layer of thin-set over the tape.  The first seam he did gave him some trouble. The tape isn't very sticky, so you have to be extremely careful when applying the thin-set. After the first seam, he seamed to get in a groove and had the rest of the floor done in under an hour.

We let the thin-set dry overnight and then my Grandpa (who has built houses for over forty years) came over the next day to help us get started with the tile.

Well, he was supposed to only help us get started, but he ended up doing the work with Luke and knocking it all out.

First up was mixing the thin-set. They used a big drill mixer and, roughly, followed the instructions on the mortar we bought.

They started off by measuring out where the tile would meet the doorway when working back from the far wall. We wanted to make sure we ended on an even tile in the doorway (making sure to take in to account the width of the spacers). We lucked out by discovering that 4 full tiles are the exact length (or, close enough) of the space. From there, we used a chalk line to make sure we had one guide going the full length of the bathroom. After we knew our rough tile layout, we started at the far corner and worked our way back to the door.

Five hours later we had a tiled floor...minus the grout and sealer.
It's a beauty, right?

Part 3 will be coming up with grout and sealer (which we are still waiting to do). Stay tuned.

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