Thursday, February 20, 2014

The bathroom renovation

Now I'm going to backtrack and show off the renovation to date. I just had to get the sink/plumbing details out of the way first. Here is a quick comparison of what I started with and where I am today.
I have now accepted that the only real fun part of a project is the dreaming. I thoroughly enjoy the dream state where I come up with all these lovely plans and fill in the details with mental and physical trips to the home improvement store. I get a little excited about demo work but I actual despise it because I cannot get through it without at least a couple broken nails and multiple booboos. On this one, I thought I broken my pinky, sliced open my palm and now have a lovely scar up the inside of my right wrist compliments of an unseen screw tip. Removing a Corian counter top is not for the faint of heart. You really must be ruthless and mean because there is no nice way about it. If I had a sledgehammer, I surely would have just used that and gotten it over with. After enormous amounts of pulling and whacking with a hammer, I finally loosened it enough to slide it forward and off the vanity. Who knew that shit was so heavy?!

As you can see, it's quite massive for a single sink vanity. I couldn't be happier to say goodbye to that ugly outcrop above the toilet which was heavily "re-engineered" to make toilet tank access easier by some previous homeowner. Next I removed the doors, drawers and toilet paper holder. I carefully scraped the adhesive from the wall and made sure everything loose was gone before patching the walls. Matching this unique texture on the walls has taken me some time. I had to first figure out how it was done then try to successfully duplicate it. I think I've done acceptably well. When painted over, you can't tell where the pros stopped and I repaired.
The first thing I needed to do was get a new sturdy base on the top to support the marble tile. I went with regular OSB because it's inexpensive and easy to cut. I then added a 1/4 inch thick piece of tile board to give extra support and water resistance. I used the extra strong Liquid Nails to adhere the OSB and screwed the tile board to that. You really want a strong surface to lay tile on so the grout and tile don't crack. Lay your tile for a dry run first and, once you are happy with the look and pattern (yes marble tile needs to find it's visual appeal because the veins run through at various angles), mark where you need to cut for your faucet and sink. Drill or cut your holes in the substrate first.


Using my tile saw and a diamond blade for the smoothest cut, I sliced several lines to my mark and broke them out with tile nips. After my dry run, I spread my mastic and laid the tile in place. It's imperative that you level each tile as you go and make sure your mastic is distributed evenly. If not, your tiles will sink from their own weight and you won't realize this until you are getting ready to grout. You want each tile to meet on the same level and you need to have grout lines that are uniform and straight. I always let my mastic set up a full 24 hours. I decided to go with minimal grout width and used unsanded grout in chocolate.
Make sure you press your grout fully into each gap so there are no voids to collapse afterward. Don't smear more grout on that necessary because you'll just make a bigger mess to clean up with it's time to strike it. I prefer to let my grout set about twice as long as the package recommends and here's why: The grout isn't going to harden completely in an hour and since you didn't slather on grout like basting babyback ribs, it won't be difficult to clean up. I find I have less of a tendency to over-strike my grout if it's had more time to set up. I like my grout lines full and level, not sunken in. You can experiment until you figure out what works for you but I've done enough tile over the years to know what I like and what looks better when it's done. I am severe OCD so any flaws will drive me to drink. I taped off with blue painters tape before installing my custom backsplash which I will follow up with in the next installment.




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