Tile Part Duex

This week FLEW by with very little accomplished until the weekend. I was still getting over a bit of a cold and my energy level was as close to zero as it's been in a long time. My usual bedtime of 10pm was a serious stretch with me climbing into bed by 8, leaving Scott to entertain himself.

Luckily, I'm feeling MUCH better, pretty close to normal, actually.

We decided this was the time to dive into the tile. Last week we laid the Schluter Ditra (uncoupling membrane that will hopefully reduce the tendency of the tile to crack if there's shifting in the subfloor), so Saturday we raid the tile to get a dry-fit and cut our pieces before actually laying them down.

If that sounds familiar, it's because Mom and I did that two weeks ago, but we didn't have the tile saw yet from my Dad and and we ended up just picking it all up to lay the Ditra. This time we actually laid out the tiles, including the ones we had to cut. We chose to do this because we didn't want to spend time cutting tile while the thinset was potentially drying on us. If we were more experienced we would've just cut as we went. We're just not there yet.

There are about a million videos on the interwebs explaining how to cut tile, very few of them suggest measuring angles/sides, etc. Instead, they recommend laying the tile you need to cut on top of the nearest whole tile, then using a scrap tile to mark the line where the tile will hit the wall. If that doesn't make sense, click here, they explain it better (and with photos). This is all well and good, except we chose to use hexagon tile, so there were times that the corers made the cuts really confusing (well, that and the fact that neither of us have ever laid tile before).

There are a couple things to note that definitely helped our confidence though, the first thing being the fact that we don't have any baseboards up yet. We haven't started baseboards anywhere yet, which feels like we are behind, but it ended up being great for the entry because now the baseboards will fit over the tile, meaning that we have about 3/4" perimeter that you won't see, so even if our cuts weren't exact, you wouldn't be able to tell. The second thing is that even on the areas where we won't have baseboards (the two transitions into the living room and dining room), there is a transition strip that covers about 1/2" of the tile on the edge. So, as long as we didn't screw it up TOO bad, we'd be ok.

After we cut all of the tile and laid everything out we picked it back up, being careful to keep the tiles in stacks so we could just lay them down once we were ready.

It took a lot out of us just cutting the tile, we truly didn't think we would get to laying it, but after a Monster and Pizza for dinner, we were rarin' to go. We started laying the tile at around 8pm (I do not recommend this).

Scott mixed up a batch of the thinset (also called mortar) and we got to work. The Ditra has square holes in it, almost like a waffle texture, that you have to work the thinset into, instead of just laying it on top, so it was pretty time consuming. We worked together, Scott working the thinset into the Ditra, me "back buttering" (covering the back of the tile with thinset), him laying the tile down and placing 2 spacers and one leveler on each side.

This process resulted in me saying (no less than 10 times) "Oh, I'll butter your back" and Scott looking at me like I had a third eyeball while I cackled at my own humor. Sometimes I just think he doesn't get me.

The leveling system we used is from Floor & Decor, the Rubi Tile Leveling System. What this system does is levels each tile to the one next to it so that when you're done you have an even surface. There's a little "T" shaped piece that fits under two adjacent tiles, then a "cap" is placed on top and tightened down with special pliers. Again, this is something we did because we are amateurs, I'm sure professional tiles don't need this. So, after tiles were laid, Scott placed the spacers and a leveler then put the cap on the leveler and tightened it down.

About half way through I started helping lay the thinset just so Scott could get off of his knees. I don't usually wear kneepads, but the Ditra is no joke, it is NOT comfy on your knees, and even with Scott in kneepads, his legs and back were definitely not happy.

In my mind, once we had the tile cut it would be "super fast" to just lay it down. I genuinely thought it would take like one to one-and-a-half hours. Let's all take a moment to laugh at my naiveté. Hahahahahaha! After a little over 3 hours we had the tile laid. We crawled into bed, our bodies aching, to sit in silence and scroll social media to wind down. Whew! It was tough work, but I absolutely adore the tile. It's so fun, adds a pop of color that we don't otherwise have right now (the whole house has a really neutral base, my color will come from accents that I haven't unpacked yet).

With the tile now down, we need to wait 24 hours until we can grout it then another 24 hours before it should have foot traffic. Hopefully this week we'll be able to grout it, but based on the conversation I had with my parents, I shouldn't expect that to be a quick process either *sigh*.

The last two days Scott has been intermittently fishing from the dock. We are still learning what kind of fish we have, when they are here, and how to catch them, but he had some luck this weekend. He caught a couple of snooks, a cichlid, and snapper.

Today we headed to my parents' to celebrate my nephew's birthday and then we came back to the house to try to straighten up and get the house back to somewhat normal condition (a never-ending battle). I finished the second roman shade for the living room and will be writing a how-to post in the near future. I didn't get a picture of both of the shades up before it was dark, but here's one with daylight coming through:

I like that they are cordless, a perfect fit for the windows, filter the light, and add privacy.

I'm not sure what's on the agenda next, there are so many things that can be done and need to be done, it's usually eenie, meenie, miney, mo.