Mud -- inside and out -- outside from the rain; inside drywall mud in the bathroom. Actually the mudding only took 1/2 hour or so. Most of my day yesterday was tiles. I started early and was finished laying the full sized tiles around 1pm. I then took a break from tiles, had lunch and put what is probably the final coat of mud in the bathroom. Later today I may be able to sand it, assuming that it's dry.
After a bit of cleanup I decided to cut some of the tiles. I am able to walk around the perimeter of the room to the closet so I started there -- 4 full sized tiles go down as well as some straight cuts. The difficult cuts though are around the closet doorway -- a 5 inch rectangle cut from the side of the tile to the center. The two straight cuts from the side in are easy. Next I get out the jig saw blade that purports to cut ceramic tiles ... well guess what ... it doesn't. After some pressing it cuts about 1/16 inch in from the side on a test piece and then glows red hot -- there is no way that I'm going to be able to cut the center piece out for the doorway.
The wet saw is a circular saw and does not allow you to make curved cuts, in spite of what it shows on the box. The instructions cover straight cuts only, which makes sense. The water guard (remember it's a wet saw) is in the way of cutting a hole in the middle of the tile so I remove it and have a go at cutting that piece, kneeling on the ground and looking up at the face of the tile, which is inverted towards the saw blade and cut along the pencil mark. It works ! -- as long as I'm cutting a large cut. Well -- I have three of these to do, get soaked from the wet saw, then put the guard back on and do some straight cuts before calling it a day.
Saturday morning (today) I finished off the straight cuts -- another 30 or so tiles, put them all in place ... but cannot really start the mortar work yet. It would be too awkward walking around the perimeter doing this work -- I may tackle some of it this afternoon at the closet end of the room which has now set for 48 hours, but the front of the room has been down less than 24 hours and a mis-step carrying stuff around could knock a tile loose.
Sandy got into Philadelphia around 2pm on Friday having left Oakville at 6am. She then did some running around shopping for bedding and my special request -- a turkey fryer + peanut oil. Aaron and Jeffrey got the car loaded up with the remains of the Ditra, Kerdi membrane for the shower, the shower base, etc. She and Kylie got away this morning a little after 6am headed north. If she feels up to it she'll go straight through -- perhaps having some company for the ride will make it easier, but it's not a drive that she likes to do all at once.
So, in summary, the plan for today is fairly simple -- mortar, maybe; mud, maybe; Mass, definitely; watch some of the Tour de France, definitely; Sandy, maybe ... what more can I say ?
Oh -- prompted by David, I did take some pictures -- I'll hold off posting this blog until I get those downloaded.
..........
ok, I'm back -- the first picture is of the bedroom. You can see the Ditra, which is orange, and 1 1/2 days worth of tiling. The back bunch have now been down 48 hours and I've removed the spacers. The front bunch are mostly less than 24 hours down so I have not ventured on them yet -- later today I'll go over them carefully removing any excess mortar. The one side and the closet are still orange -- actually as I write this they have tiles sitting in place but not mortared.
Jason and I discussed the use of spacers and I'm much happier with the results using them because you can adjust tiles as a group. There is still variation because the tiles themselves vary slightly in width, but you can accomodate that even with the spacers.
The second picture is from the basement walk-out -- the tile saw, which is NOT Dewalt in spite of the yellow, is in the foreground and of course Abby is in the background along with the lake.
No comments:
Post a Comment