Downstairs bathroom starts taking shape

We have slowly been making progress on the downstairs bathroom since our demolition efforts more than a year ago. Wasko fixed the faulty foundation. Then we held our breath: Would we need a “poop pump” to compensate for the bathroom’s location under the master bedroom and at the bottom of the hill? (In addition to providing shelter, our home is basically a retaining wall.) Luckily, the answer was “no,” marking perhaps the only time we saved money on this renovation. (But then we learned we needed a water softener to protect the new plumbing. And out the door the money went.) Sub-contractors put plumbing in place, and the crew poured a “rat slab” to replace the dirt crawl space.

Before the end of last year came framing for the shower enclosure, pan liner, greenboard, cement board...

Once these steps were complete, the project was handed off to us. It was our job to paint and tile. After making the walls grey, we thought we were ready to tile. Ummm... not so fast... During our March 9 “vacation” day, we fixed the inadequate job done by our contractors on the shower area, taking off portions of the greenboard and cement board in the surround and adding our own tile backer, covering the seams with thinset per the manufacturer’s instructions. During the process, Matt got hurt. So we’ve added more blood to the ample amounts of sweat and tears (along with our money and time) claimed by this renovation.

The following weekend, we began to install the black penny round tiles to the floor of the shower and wall behind the “throne” of the “Tinkle Palace.” I randomly swapped black tiles with pricey stainless steel versions, an idea inspired by a tiled storefront. It took five hours on March 14 to tile just these two areas. We made our job more challenging by using the wrong-sized trowel to spread the thinset, causing the mastic to ooze between the penny rounds while making it difficult to get proper adhesion to the wall. Having learned from our mistakes, we had better results about a month later when tiling the bench area in the shower stall (among other projects).

On April 25 and 26, it was time for the next 20-hour challenge: white subway tiles for the interior and front wall of the shower surround. We decided on a columnar versus running pattern, which meant paying close attention to alignment. Matt needed to cut at least one tile for every row on each of the six interior walls, plus around the entrance and front of the shower.

With the shower area tiled and grouted, May 4 was the day to install the radiant floor heating system. The process began with a step backwards: Slicing a hole in the drywall to run the electric. Once the floor was clean, we ran and taped the cables down the hallway and through the bathroom.

So far so good. Until we added the thinset with the large-toothed trowel (required to help avoid slicing through the cable) and placed a set of penny round tiles, which then undulated with the pattern of the thinset. Clearly, this wasn’t going to work. So we quickly grabbed the large “Tweed” patterned tiles purchased for the main downstairs room and put them in place. Much better. Yeah, now we had boxes of penny rounds with no purpose and a no-return policy, and needed to buy more large tiles to complete the downstairs. More money for Standard Tile!

Matt discovered one key time-saving technology for the subway tile project: thinset in a bucket. Each time we open the bag of dry thinset (or grout), it releases more super-fine construction dust into the house. Dust that settles and resettles on each surface. Relentlessly. No matter how often we clean.

Thinset in a bucket is worth the premium price, as it eliminates the need for mixing, waiting 10 minutes for the mixture to set up and being ruled by the amount of mastic we made. And after we are too tired to trowel the traditional product no more, it is time for clean-up in the back yard, with a hose, in the dark, swarmed by bugs. Now when we are done—or cannot stand the idea of placing one more tile—we simply close the lid to the pre-mixed thinset and clean the trowel. We used the same product, in grey, for the floor tiles.

When we ordered the additional floor tiles, we learned that pre-mixed grout had just reached the market. Despite the bags of dry grout sitting in our home, we ordered two tubs. This new technology offers the same benefits as the engineered thinset, plus the color is consistent, set-up is quicker (which we discovered in a panic) and there is no need to seal the grout. Sold!

In planning design for the shower, we did not fully think through how difficult it is to do white over black tiles set in jet black grout. So while Matt grouted the wall behind the toilet area (using the traditional product), I scraped white thinset and grout out of the floor and bench of the shower, regrouting those areas. Messy. Frustrating. Tiresome. Worth it. Our beautiful bathroom is taking shape.