Tile-palooza!

We’ve gotten a TON done in the bathroom in the past couple of weeks, and have been furiously trying to get the toilet and sink in before hosting some Christmas parties – so there was no time to post! But I’m going to try to get you caught up this week!

After the floor was done, we moved to the walls! First, we put up a ledger board all around the room. Since the floor was sloped to make it a wet room, this kept us level, since the floor isn’t!

Once the ledger board was up, we installed a marble bullnose to act as a cap for the marble baseboard – we’ll get to that soon!

On top of that, we started gray subway tile for the lower half of the room, on all four walls. There was a LOT of tile to put up, but it punches a nice impact in the space, and it’s really cheap. And easy to install, once you’re in a rhythm!

Doug also started working on the marble door transition. Since you can’t make any mistakes, and he’s pretty darn meticulous, I’m glad he gets this task! (Look how proud he is of his crazy awesome cuts!)

In it goes!

All the subway!

We used a tile hole saw for the first time to get around some plumbing, and it was fantastic!

We marked (and marked out….and re-marked……) where the subway was going to stop, and the border was going to begin. Which was nice, because it gave you a visual reminder all of the time that you had at least 473 more square feet to go. (Just kidding. It didn’t really take that long!)

We also started work on the shower niche, since we knew it needed to be in place before we got to the wall tile in this area, so we started by cutting the marble shelf for the bottom. This was a cast-off from the shower curb at our previous house, and it worked perfectly here!

At the top of the subway, we put a pencil tile, and cut a border from 12×12 sheets of yellow penny tile!

The empty space on the left hand side of the picture is where the sink back splash will go. 

Our friend Jason came to help, and at one point, I looked over my shoulder and all four of us (including Marina) were in the perfect spot for a selfie. The bathroom is JUST big enough for four creatures.

Progress makes me happy!

As we got around to the niche wall, Doug had to start making some pretty tricky cuts.

Like, this. Seriously – he’s so good at this.

Perfection! I like being the perfectionist installer, because he gets to do the tricky stuff like make these crazy cuts. Totally cool by me.

We also put the penny tile in the back of the niche for a little pop of color!

And then…. it was time for the Arabesque! I’ve been in love with this tile for a while, and was thrilled to find three different brands of gray (subway, arabesque, and pencil) that all look like they were made to go together. This is JUST going in the upper part of the shower.

Whenever we knew we were going to hit obstructions (like, pipes), we just decided we would just keep our fingers crossed and hope we didn’t hit anything at a weird place and if we did, just deal with them when we had to. So of COURSE, the pencil tile was right in line with the pipes for the shower fixture, which would have been completely awful looking and impossible to make look right. So after staring for a few minutes, I decided to just make the shower fixture more of a feature by bumping the yellow border up to enclose it. Whew! Also, right now it really looks like a creepy set of eyes looking at us. 

I love all the crazy texture so much!

We grouted the back of the niche, so we could install the glass shelf in it and not have to worry about grouting later.

We used leftover marble pieces from the kitchen floor to enclose the niche, and use as supports for the glass shelf – which we ordered online using the measurements of the niche.

The top piece of marble we taped into place until it dried, to keep it from falling down.

Next, we used the same marble bullnose from the baseboard to create a frame for the niche. 

Tape was our friend here, as well!

When we built the master shower at our house on Jackson Street, we WAY overbought the marble subway tile.

So I thought it would be a GREAT use of leftover material to re-use the leftover marble as the baseboard. It would look great, and (kind of) help the slope of the floor melt away.

It was a little tricky because each bottom piece had to be angled to match the angle of the floor. But, again, Doug was great at the math, and we also knew caulk would hide a multitude of sins.

We had never used those little plastic ramp spacers before, and THEY ARE AMAZING.

Holy Moly. This looks like my sketch. Or, it looks better than my sketch. Because I can’t draw.

So. Happy.

Next up? Grouting. The Arabesque was kind of terrible to do with the bevel. But we got there.

The floor, however, was SO EASY!

We also did some drywall mud magic, to blend the top of the cement board into the drywall. And then, the walls were (mostly) done! Next up comes wallpaper, mouldings, paint, and caulk!

We’re both SUPER excited with how it’s turning out, especially since the room was going so slow for so long. It’s amazing to see it coming to life!