Shower Wall Tile

Phew! What a weekend you guys! We started tiling the bathroom shower walls which will eventually be the subject of this post but I also made some real progress on the bathroom door! Yippee!

Oh, and also, um...we had an EARTHQUAKE! Can you believe it? Well, if you're reading this from California or some other place where earthquakes are NBD then yes, you probably can. But if you know anything about Kansas, you know that it goes like this:

Tornadoes: YES Earthquakes: NEVER.

Needless to say, we were a little bit shaken up (pun totally intended) but the tiling continued on Sunday. Here's how it all went down!

Last week Conan and I went to Lowe's and bought 80 square feet of subway tile at 28 cents each it came out to a cool $200 without the cove tile we'll be returning...

So, about that "returning cove tile" thing.

Yeah, the shower floor was a little not-so-straight here and there so putting nice little base tiles was out of the question and as my dad put it,

"We are going to have to get a little creative."

So, we put a piece of wood about a foot off of the floor, you could also use a level if you want but it's going to get messy so...

You use that as a guide and once you've mixed up your wall tile mortar and put it on the wall you can start laying your tile from the center, out. You can kind of see in these pictures that we sectioned the wall like we did with the floor. You can't just throw mortar up there willy-nilly because it will dry so you have to do a little at a time.

Once you've got that first row figured out it's just up and up and up! Cutting tiles when you get to the ends of each row, "buttering" them with a little bit of mortar, squishing them into place and applying the spacers.

Lots and lots of spacers.

It helps to have an assembly line. It also helps to have someone take the pictures of said line. That's where I come in : )

Look at my little worker bees, buzzing about!

You want someone brave to cut the tiles, someone fast to butter them and someone with an eye for detail (and not claustrophobic) putting them up and measuring the ones to be cut!

So as of last night, this was the progress that my mom, dad and Conan had made.

It's uhhhhhh-may-zing!

A little before and after to give you an idea of how far we've come!

And my own personal feelings about this gorgeous shower that's taking shape:

Next up? That door I told you about needs another coat of stain and it should be about ready to share and we finish tiling the third wall and the outside edges of the shower wall!