Hammam

Saturday.

Our first major home improvement job needed to be our upstairs bathroom. The original floor was blue shag carpet which we immediately ripped out before we moved in. That left us with just the plywood sub-floor, again not a real kid friendly surface.

The first step was to remove the toilet and rip out the vanity. Brother  came over and helped with both. Taking out the toilet was simple, just empty the bowl and tank and then take off the two bolts connecting it to the floor. After setting aside the toilet, we destroyed the vanity.

Next up was to remove all staples, nails, or carpet fragments from the sub-floor. Before you lay down your mortar and backer board the surface must be as smooth and flat as possible. Then we mixed up a layer of modified thin-set mortar and cut out our pieces of backer board. AB decided against the traditional backer board and instead bought this stuff called Ditra. It's a German product which she learned about through her work and it claims to be a superior surface (watch the video here). 

We then spread the thin-set down and laid the Ditra down on top. The first piece was easy and went down with no problems; however, I got cocky and started working faster. AB got home from the tile store and noticed a few lumps of mortar under the Ditra, but no problem, we peeled it up and smoothed out the mortar. Then it was time to relax and let the mortar dry and enjoy some cold beers.

Sunday.

Today was the hard part. We were ready to lay the tile. Brother came over again to help babysit and supervise my tile cutting and we were off to the races.

First thing was to rent the tile saw from Home Depot. I had never used a wet saw before, but it was pretty intuitive. Just measure and cut, making sure you keep your fingers out of the way.

AB put a string down the length of the floor to serve as the guide for properly aligning the tile. We couldn't just start against one wall because the room is not square and we would surely have ended up on the other side totally crooked. AB then started tiling around the toilet first. After some inspirational words and some coaching on spacial perception she did a really fine job. Me and bro did cutting, wife made sure they all fit properly.

Everything was going smoothly, but we were getting tired and it was getting late. Also the mortar was starting to dry out. We pushed through and finished up around 11 pm. The final product looks great. Our first mistake however was to not put down a threshold first and then tile up against it. Now we just have tile up to the door and we can't figure out how to attach a threshold without damaging the tile. Our second mistake was to not mix up some fresh mortar. The wee hours affected our judgement and now a few of the tiles toward the door are loose. Nothing a little adhesive won't fix.  Overall the job was a huge success. Thanks to Brother for helping with Babygirl and advising on geometry.

Next up: Grouting, threshold, and baseboards!