TERRIBLE DECISIONS: I am Grout!

On January 1, 2022 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

It’s my dad’s birthday and we’re watching football, so it may be quiet around here. But the grout looks fantastic.

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: Shower tile!

On December 31, 2021 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

I am so Goddamn happy at how good this looks:

A good look at three of the four major design decisions we made, although you can’t see the wall color in this one. I’m ecstatic. I was not prepared for how the accent tile was going to look like a waterfall coming down from the shower mechanicals. I love it.

(We did go with the white grout. Black grout will be done tomorrow, and then all we have is to put the actual hardware in and the shower door.)

You get a llttle bit of the look of the ceiling color here, and a better look at the accent tile.

The shower niche, with a better look at the white grout and the different shelf that the tile guy recommended; I think it was the right call. God, this is gonna look so good when it’s all cleaned up and the black grout is in.

I think the grouting is the only thing that’ll happen tomorrow; I can’t believe they’re coming out on a Sunday and on New Year’s Day, but they’re gonna. I may or may not post more pictures depending on how stark the difference is.

(Possibly still one more post coming today, believe it or not.)

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: Almost there

On December 30, 2021 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Substantial progress in the last couple of days:

A good look at the flooring, which is completely installed, and the wall color, which is a light grey. I love how this turned out. Love it.

This is the shower, which gets tiled tomorrow, and the fan/lighting sconce overhead. Nice and simple.

The niche and the bench. We’re using a different shelf than the one that’s sitting in there; it’s got holes in it for drainage and is considerably thinner.

The hardwood in the bedroom is a freaking mess, but I love that the transition pieces match the flooring. I don’t know if I should have expected this but I love it as a little detail.

And the first parts of the tile are in! This literally just happened; it was the last of the work for today as this needs to set before they can tile the rest of the shower tomorrow. The wall tiles will be a lot bigger, with an accent stripe going underneath all the shower hardware and more accent tile inside the niche. The grout here will be black; we were going to go with black everywhere but the tile guy thinks it has a good chance of bleeding into the accent tile, which is more the color of the floor, so we might go with white there.

The rest of the shower gets tiled tomorrow, and then all that’s left is trim, the toilet and bidet, the vanity, the closet, the hangers and shelving, grout, and finishing up the last details on the electric. Oh, and the shower door. That’s kind of important. I think they’re planning on working through the weekend, so we should be done Tuesday or Wednesday. I cannot wait to see what the shower looks like.

Adultifying!

On April 10, 2021 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

We met our contractor– the same people that did the roof– at a flooring supply place today and picked out the look for the new bathroom. On the left, vinyl flooring that will extend into the laundry room and looks like tile. On the right, the walls in the shower (12×24, nice big tiles) and, divided into little squares, also the floor for the shower. In the middle, accent tile for the shower. It’s going to run vertically from the showerhead to the handles, form the back of a niche for shampoo and such, and possibly also be a little vertical accent stripe on the bench that’s going to be in there.

We’ll go to a different place for fixtures and a custom vanity in a week and a half or so. Will there be body jets in the shower and a bidet on the toilet? Yep. There sure as hell will.

Whee!

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: The end is nigh

On July 26, 2015July 26, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

We’ve laid every tile we can lay without standing on any of them. I’d prefer to have the job done today, but not at the expense of doing it right.

Almost there, kids.

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: Hell Yeah edition

On July 25, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy5 Comments

Quite a lot accomplished in the last 24 hours or so.
That is the bathroom floor covered in horrid blue glue and Tavy Thin Skin, which is a product I’d never heard of a week ago designed to make it easy to tile over vinyl. I spent a fair amount of time Googling and searching around and discovered that, while I found a lot of contractor types who hadn’t used it going “Man, I don’t see how that will work well,” I couldn’t find anyone who had used it and had bad results from their floor. The biggest complaints were about spreading the glue and that was something I felt like I could deal with. We did not get to the skimcoat yesterday, but we did do it this morning:

So. Nice clean layer of thinset laid down; tomorrow we tile. That is probably going to extend into Monday but I’m hoping we can get it done in a day; it’ll depend on how easy it is to cut around the toilet and the floor register and to deal with the two rows where we basically just have to re-cut the rectangle on the tile.

A day after the tile is set, grout.

A day after the grout, the sink and the toilet (at least the toilet; I’m predicting complications with the sink) goes back in, along with the door, and we are set, son. At least until we decide what to do with the electrical. The lamps are still going to be in the wrong place, and we won’t be putting the mirror up until we decide where to put lighting. But basically everything below the waist will be finished.

Also completed today and yesterday: Cut the trim around the door so that the tile could go under it, trimmed the door itself by half an inch, then yanked a door from our other bathroom and trimmed it by half an inch. That door in particular has been a huge problem since we got the house; at some point some water got between the vinyl and the subfloor in there and bubbled the tile up, and the door’s been extremely difficult to open and close, to the point where we rarely use it.

No longer. Fixed as hell. We’ve both been just opening and closing it for the hell of it.

Also fixed: every folding closet door in the house, damn near all of which were off their tracks. I’m kicking myself for this one; turns out these are extremely easy to fix, it’s just not immediately obvious how to do it.

Important detail: not a bit of this project (and by “project,” I’m extending all the way back to the very beginning) would have been possible without the internet. We would have made so many mistakes. I love being able to look shit up and find videos on how to do stuff any time I need it.

And now I shall go to my other job, and endeavor not to fall asleep behind my counter.

After

On July 23, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Well… uh… the carpet looks *great*, but photographs do not do it justice. Like, my phone is showing phantom dirt, or maybe it’s got a little time machine attached to the lens that I didn’t know was there before, or something like that, and the carpet looks muddy and disgusting despite no longer being muddy and disgusting.

The grout in the entryway actually looks about the same, which is moderately disappointing.

Here; I dry-fit some of the floor tile in the bathroom today. Have a picture of that.

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: Today’s agenda

On July 21, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Got a lot done yesterday, including averting/dealing with one major setback when the floor didn’t turn out to be quite what we thought it was. Ordered new underlayment for the tile today that ought to be here by Friday, so we didn’t lose much time over it.

Anyway, here’s what’s happening today: