Bathroom Tile

Boys' bath tile
Originally uploaded by modernemama.

Real progress was made yesterday. The tiler was concerned it wasn't going fast enough, but he had to straighten the wall before he started and work out a pattern for the window to solve the pesky problem of possible future water leaks form the shower. So I was really happy he got a whole wall done.
I was going for a totally clean look with the glossy 12" tiles but I actually like this. The wall behind the vanity and toilet will be tiled with the mosaic and the other walls with the large field tile. It just adds another accent. I love it when we have a happy solution to a problem. I love it more when we can discuss it rationally and come to an agreement that suits us both.
I finally found out why the plumber installed a generic fill valve in the new Toto toilet rather than Toto's patented G-max system. He says the G-max is an inferior copy of this $10 Korky fill valve and he'll install the Toto one in the next toilet if I want because he'll be happy to get a call to repair it when it breaks down in two years' time.
If he'd told me that at the time, I could have decided whether to try it or trust him but he didn't, nor did he tell me he was ignoring my precise instruction to install the shower base as we'd discussed because he knew better. Working with the plumber is stressful because he doesn't communicate and he complains about everything from the choice of fixtures to the placement of the pipes. Mostly he complains that I'm European and haven't chosen Kohler or American Standard fixtures. Hmm, I'm not about to apologise for either the land of my birth or my taste. But at least he doesn't make fun of my accent like one guy we had (very temporarily) working for us.
Enough rant, I love my tiles, I can't wait for it to be finished so I can see the total effect.

Challenges

If you live in a twelve-sided house, one of your walls is going to be off, probably by a lot. That's a given, and today we found out which one. Of course it's the boys' bathroom wall, the one that you see as you come up the landing. And the bigger the tile the more obvious it will be. And that window in the middle is going to complicate things too. I'm beginning to understand why the original owners went for a busy broken pattern - it's much easy to hide the flaws that way.
The tiler is attempting to mitigate the problem right now, which involves a lot of "oh, c'mon" and "gee whizz", both of which he apologised for. If I were tiling that wall it would be more like "@#!&" and "%~/*". In fact just thinking about it makes my language more creative. And I'm resisting the temptation to run upstairs every five minutes to see how he's getting along, which is also very stressful. I've got a serious case of remodeler's remorse. Right now I can't remember why we started this remodel, the old tiles looked fine didn't they?
At least we've come up with a creative solution for the window frame, involving the accent tile. I think it's going to look ok, of course I hope it will look fabulous, but I'll settle for straight and tasteful.

Decisions

We have actually made some actual decisions. Firstly we ordered the tiles from Porcelanosa. The floor and accent wall tiles are the same ones we chose back in October but I decided that the rectified wall field tiles were too classic and so we chose a more contemporary 12"x12" tile that should also be easier to lay.



Then the champion procrastinators finally got down to business and read through the contractors' bids, then phoned them with follow-up questions. It was a no-brainer. The guy we have used before, who does the work himself, who has worked for our neighbors and who we trust to deliver what he was contracted to do was significantly cheaper than the other guy who arrived without a tape measure and sent me to a fictitious plumbing supply store to look at shower bases because "tiled bases always leak". When I asked this guy how he came to his "Basic 8'x 5' Bath" price he told me that because we had done all the demolition ourselves he used the price of a 8' x 7' bath. Now, normally doing the demolition would make the price cheaper (as it was with the contractor we chose) but it seemed here that it was costing us money. Anyway, I really only wanted the tiler who works for this guy, I don't need a GC who pops in every day or so to check on what his guys are doing, and I certainly don't need a flaky GC.
The Marvin window will take four weeks to arrive so no cement board can go in until that's here. In the meantime we will start the electrical update and the plumber will move the vent and pipes and replace the copper waste pipes with PVC. We need to order the rest of the fixtures this weekend and with room for delays we should be done by Steven's birthday in March.

A little more demo

Although we'd agreed we wouldn't tackle the master bath until the boys' bath is finished I got a little bored today and took off the shower doors and hauled them out to the dumpster. Then I took off the door to the medicine cabinet. The one Steven cracked with his elbow oh, nearly twelve months ago. That baby had twelve screws and took me an hour to get off. It also weighed more than the shower doors combined. Still it has now joined them in the dumpster. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the medicine cabinet out as the screws are bent and somebody nailed it in for added strength, so I'm leaving that job for Steven.

I even tried once again to clean the tiles in the shower, now the doors are off it's much lighter in there but, nope, that dirty grout is not getting any cleaner.


My prediction is that by Sunday evening there won't be any tiles, grubby or otherwise in the shower. Now, if I could only find a tiler who is happy to install rectified tiles with 1/16th grout lines...

Down to the studs

Finally.
I've been taking the wallboard off over the past couple of days and I made a couple of discoveries. One was a few scary alien-like corpses that could be either large insects or small birds or even actual aliens. They were behind the vanity wall and they had been dead for a very, very long time. I would have taken photos but I didn't want to terrify anyone into sending out the exorcist. The other was some clean, white mice skeletons behind the wallboard on the opposite wall.
A way nicer surprise was the extra foot of space I uncovered behind the shower. It seems that those terrazzo shower bases came in a standard size, 4'x 3', so they built the shower to fit the pan. I discovered this when I couldn't get a piece of sheetrock out because it had been framed in. When I demolished more wall I saw that a frame had been built onto the sheetrock and there is no reason why we can't take it out and have a 5'x 3' mud-base tiled shower. It will make the room a little larger and only add another three square feet of shower tiles to the ever-expanding budget.

A lot of old drywall

or a valance of tiles

This is where I finished today. There is a 2" (60cm) border left around the room plus this tiny bit behind the door



I just ran out of boxes to put the debris in, otherwise I might have pressed on to the bitter end. I can't do anything about the "valance" as I'm not supposed to jump on and off ladders at the moment and my arms won't reach up there without a lift.

I had hoped someone would volunteer to help me but so far that hasn't happened, although last Saturday he did carry to the garage one (1) box of old tiles. This morning I suggested that getting a plumber to take out the old toilet would make us look like pussies, we can easily do it. The look I got back means I'll be finding out on my own.

Rot free windows

jane's demo
Originally uploaded by modernemama.

I found out how that window stayed rot free (at least on the inside) for the past 40 years. Teak trim, baby. I demo'ed the frame today and the window is builder's standard pine, but it was framed inside with a sloping lower edge of oiled teak. A brilliant solution and if the tiler can't find a way to tile neatly around the replacement I might have someone build me another teak ledge. And maybe we'll add a teak shower seat while we are at it.

Taking it off

...one tile at a time.
Although the tile was laid in 12x12 mesh backed sheets, it doesn't come off like that. I take the chisel or a long-handle flat-blade screwdriver and tap that with a hammer.This loosens the tile so it pops out or I prise it off. It's slow but it's not too messy. I am doing it in 30 minutes stretches, and I like to complete an even section and then clean that up before I take a break. So far I have filled four boxes, six Trader Joe paper bags and a wastepaper basket.





At least the floor is done-that really was the easiest part.
Steve took off a door from the vanity and turned the water off on one faucet. The other one is apparently stuck. This is a major inconvenience as I wanted to get the countertop out so the garbage guys would haul it away today. Oh well, if he can't budge it at the weekend I 'll have to get the plumber to do it when he takes out the toilet and fits a thermostatic valve for the shower

Now we're demo-ing

Actually, it's less "we" more "I" as Steve has gone to Los Angeles. He said to leave it and he'd get round to it at the weekend. When I asked which weekend it turned out to be Xmas. I think I can have the walls stripped before then.
It was no wonder we had a leak. The wallboard at the bottom of the shower was completely black and rotten. Whoever replaced the shower valve didn't caulk around it and water has been dripping down there for who knows how many years. All that damage for want of five minutes and a $5 tube of caulk. Luckily, the wood behind seems sound and every other piece of board is dry so far. It doesn't really matter as we're going back to the studs and putting in cement backer board but if the wallboard is dry there is less chance that we'll have any structural problems or other nasty (expensive) surprises.

No turning back now

A four-day weekend, no work or outside obligations, so when would you start the bathroom demolition? Three o'clock on Sunday afternoon? Sounds like a plan.
Actually this wasn't supposed to happen at all. After the plumber came back to fix the downstairs shower (the second time's the charm!) I decided that we could take off the shower doors from the boys' bathroom that we aren't using, to replace the broken ones downstairs. An easy and cheap fix that took ten minutes and most of that was taping up the glass so we can put them out for the garbage.
Then Steven decided to take off the frame as well. The screws came off ok, but we had to use a box-cutter (Stanley knife) to cut through the layers of caulk. Still the frame wouldn't budge. So Steven gave it a good tug and as you can see a good few tiles came too.
We weren't sure whether to do the demo ourselves or get the tilers to do it but I guess that problem has solved itself.

Bathroom decisions

Weeks, more like months really, of visiting bathroom showrooms, tile stores and the hell that is HD Expo:
How much is that countertop?
$2500 per linear foot.
Are you sure you don't mean $250?
Salesperson sighs and shrugs, it costs $800 linear foot to ship and $800 per linear foot to install; plus tax.
Could you check that for me?
Salesperson sighs again, rolls her eyes and says she can't find the literature.
Aaaagh.
Obviously I wasn't in the market for a countertop at $250 but $2500, that piqued my curiosity.
I finally found a tile I didn't hate at Expo. But the thought of dealing with the with the winning personalities and sales techniques of the people there was more than I could bear so I took the name of the manufacturer, went home and googled them. Turns out the distributor is less than 10 miles from where I live, they have dealers and showrooms in my area and, big plus, on the website I found a video of the nearest showroom's vignettes.
Their porcelain tiles were exactly what I was looking for, modern but warm with a great selection of red/brown tones that will suit a room that is visible, when the door is open, from most of the rest of the house. So we visited the showroom and found that the tiles were cheaper than at the other store. Phyllis the wonderful, patient tile designer at Porcelanosa spent hours with us selecting tiles that will fit within our palette and wasn't in the least offended when I rejected floor tiles yelling, "no, too Tuscan", "I hate the tumbled marble look". We chose two contrasting tiles for the walls and a coppery slate look for the floor. Phyllis is still looking for a shower floor tile that will fit into the design, but we're almost there.
Once we had the tiles sorted the rest of the fixtures fell into place easily. Now I'm waiting for the plumber and the tiler guys and hopefully in the early New Year we will go from this


to something like this

Back where we started

This time last year we were bemoaning a damp patch that had appeared on the front stairs that we attributed to the master shower. Our temporary solution was to not shower in the master and use one of the other bathrooms. Then we discovered that the boys' shower was also leaking so we were forced to take action. We caulked the hell out of both shower pans and that seemed to work until last month when the master bathroom starting leaking on to the stairs but in a different place than before.
Our solution, however, did not vary. We closed it down, the leak dried up and we continued using the boys' shower. Until this weekend when I noticed a new wet patch on the ceiling below the boys' shower. So we've stopped using that one again and as there doesn't seem to be a problem with the caulk we are facing the probability that we will be renovating two bathrooms at the same time.
Apart from the imminent expense, the mess and the inconvenience, what is bothering us at the moment is having to choose tiles for these rooms.
We spent all last weekend and Labor Day weekend looking at tiles and we saw nothing we liked for our bathroom, never mind the other one. Everything seems to be either very traditional, or Tuscan or blah. None of it would work in our unique space. So if anyone knows a good resource for inexpensive, modern bathroom tiles in NY metro area, please shout out.