The Set Up

"Bound and determined not to post again until I've finished titling"...  literally translated to mean "It will take me an entire month to finish the tiling process so I hope someone -anyone- remembers I have a blog by the time I get to posting on it again."

So why did it take a whole month for us to get this bad boy tiled?  Things that slowed our progress with tiling:

1)  Our cement board was not installed exactly level.  The seams where certain boards meet were not flush, meaning that every time we'd tile over a seam, we'd end up with a row of tiles that wouldn't hang perfectly flush, so we'd have to let our work set for about 24 hours before adding more tile weight on top of it.

2)  We opted to get a cheapie manual tile saw for this process.  It was so cheapie that I couldn't cut tiles successfully on my own, so both Steve and I had to be home and available to work on the tiling for us to make any progress.  He cut and smoothed the tiles, I gooped on the thinset and set the tiles.  By the time we had finished two walls, the blade of our tile saw was starting to dull, making the process of tile cutting even more difficult and slow-moving.  I can tell you that the tile saw will be deposited directly into our garbage can as soon as we stick a fork in this project.  If we ever do another large-scale tiling project, we'll be springing for a more efficient tile saw, thankyouverymuch.

3)  Steve and I have both suffered massive colds over the last month.  Nobody feels like tiling when your sinuses are on the verge of exploding.

4)  We announced to our family and friends that we are expecting!  Our little nugget is due on August 8th, and we are very excited to meet him or her (expect a slew of getting-the-nursery-ready posts once this bathroom is put back together!), but baby has been putting a strain on my energy levels.  Much of my evenings in January were spent coming home from work, sitting down for just a minute, and then waking up two hours later.  Whoops.

So if you're planning on taking on a tiling project, make sure your cement board is installed level, invest in a decent quality tile saw, don't get sick, and don't get pregnant.  :)

Enough with the excuses, let's get to the photos!  Be warned- my photo progression feels a little like the way you counted as a kid: "One, two, skip a few, ninety-nine, one hundred!"

First two rows.  I got less messy with the thinset once I got the hang of applying it.

We used 1/8" T spacers to help keep everything square and even.

Prepare to fast forward... here we are, a few weeks later:

All tiled!

I'm still a little incredulous we got the tiles to line up squarely in the corners.

Steve figured out how to tile around the exposed plumbing.

Even the little "bump-out" turned out pretty cool looking.

So now that the tiling's done, we'll be moving on to grout!  I am so ready to be done with this project and have a functional bathroom back!!