Bathroom Project Continues - Tile and the Toilet over Thanksgiving Weekend

After accumulating things and ideas for several months. We blocked out some time to really begin the bathroom project. Thanksgiving weekend gave us three full days that we could dedicate to the project and three full days those were.

We started the weekend before with a free Tiling class at Tile for Less in Seattle. The class was quick and informative, a little of a pitch to get you to buy more products, but generally worth the time if not for the information then for the entertainment of our fellow classmates, that was an interesting crew.

We had a long day of eating and merrymaking on T-day - see previous post on that topic, so we got a late start on Friday. Our first adventure was a trip down to Tile for Less to pick up the Tile, which we ordered a few weeks prior, and all the necessary supplies. Then we began with the demolition.

We took out the linoleum, the cabinets, all the towel bars, the sink and finally the toilet.

Being a one house bathroom, this made me a little nervous, but luckily we live in walking distance to a Fred Meyer that has a decent bathroom, we planned our trips to Home Depot strategically, and we have some nice cousins that let us crash at their place at night.

Our big goal was to get the Toilet back in by Monday morning...

Friday Afternoon - demolition.

When we pulled up the linoleum we found some water damage in the floor boards by the bathtub so we replaced those.

We were charging through and thought we might be able to go all night and get the tile in on Friday.

Then we got to the Toilet hole. The flange style we had did not match anything we found on the internet or in books. We knew the opening would end up lower than the tile tile by almost 1/2 and inch. The guys at the tile class said to get an extra long wax ring, but I wasn't sure about that... So we decided to call it a night and hit Morgan's Kitchen and bathroom (where we got the toilet) first thing the next morning.

Saturday Morning - prepping the floor

We walked into Morgan's, showed them the picture and they said"ohhh, you have a Dutch Flange. You need a flange extender." Hours of debate and internet research solved in quick a trip to the source, and $6 in parts. Nice.

We installed three flange extenders which were glued together with silicone and bolted to the floor. We got extra long toilet bolts and installed them at the same time.

With that chore done, we were ready to lay the DensShield and commence with the tiling.

Saturday Afternoon - Laying the tile
We worked with 2" hex tiles. Austin laid the tiles in the thinset while I made the cuts. Each task was a bit of trial and error. Small tiles are not something I'd recommend for your first tile project, but we like a challenge.

Austin did his best to get the tiles spaced properly. Though they were all on the the net backing we found that to get all loose when it got wet, so many spacers were used and we resigned ourselves to some uneven spacing.

We also had some trial and error with the ThinSet. The first batch was thin and laid down too thick, so it oozed quite a bit through the cracks. We cleaned most of it out, using spacers but this got much cleaner as we progressed and found the right texture and amount to apply.

I worked on the cutting, which I got the hang of after we were about halfway through. I used a dry-erase marker to mark the lines, which worked great. Then used a hand cutter to make the cuts. Here I'm cutting a one-off but by the end I was making special cuts to tiles on the sheet which worked out much easier when laying them on the thinset.


We finished laying the tiles, and cleaning up at about 9:30 pm. We were going to walk over to Naked City to have a Celebratory beer, but I was so tired I couldn't move. So we got a frozen pizza and went to the Cousin's to crash out.









Sunday - The grouting
We had to let the tiles dry for at least 24 hours which meant we couldn't begin with the grouting until Sunday night. That meant we would miss our goal of getting the toilet in by Mon Morning, but we still survived. We spent the day looking for lighting and picking up a few more supplies.
After dinner we began with the grouting. This was also harder than it looks.

We chose a Charcoal grey grout, which I'm very happy with. In the grouting you float the grout over the tiles, then wipe it up with a sponge. With dark grout and white tiles this means you are changing your water bucket every few minutes. We took turns floating the grout, sponging it and getting buckets of water.

We finished somewhere after midnight and I was dog tired, and ready to return to work.






Monday Night - The Toilet!
Finally we came to the moment I'd been waiting for. The Toilet Installation.
We chose a Toto Dual Flush toilet, which has a new fangled installation design, which at first seemed daunting but went surprisingly well, once we found the instructions buried in the box of tank parts.

I was nervous for the test, but it worked! No leaks!













With this huge job out of the way we planned out the rest of the tasks. It looks like we'll be done sometime in February...