tile my bathroom floor

...just a few peel and sticks will do.

I decided to just go the less expensive and less time-consuming route and just put down some linoleum.

So I’m going to mark this done.

We still have to grout and seal the grout in a few days.

It was quite a weekend, given that we had no toilet, and it was our first tiling job.

Life lesson: When you’re mixing mortar or concrete, resist all urges to plunge your hands in to mix. It’s fun for a few minutes, but it dries out your hands like the devil, and some of the stuff may even cut your fingers near the nail, and that hurts!

The job’s not perfect (some tiles are a smidge out of alignment) but for a first time I’m very satisfied).

Started cutting out the water-damaged floorboards behind the toilet this morning and discovered that the subfloor isn’t original. I expected 3/4-inch plywood, but found only 1/4-inch plywood over an old vinyl floor. My first thought was to pull it all up, but my wise wife prevailed upon me to leave it be. We just don’t have the time. Shoulda done that a few days ago, which would have saved us from all the vinyl scraping.

And of course I didn’t have any 1/4-inch plywood to replace what I cut out. We made a quick run to the big box home store for plywood and an extra box of tile, just in case we make mistakes cutting tile.

I’m taking Friday and Monday off work to finish the project. I keep praying that everything goes well. Maybe I’ll make a little shrine to Bob Vila.

Made a bit more progress pulling up the old vinyl floor Tuesday night and Wednesday morning before work, but ran into a problem.

We’ve got some water-damaged subflooring and a bit of mold growing behind the baseboard under the toilet. My wife’s quite mold-sensitive, so I have to take care of this right.

I’ll have several hours to work Thursday morning (I pulled a night shift at work) and all Friday morning before the electrician comes Friday after lunch to hook up the radiant floor heat.

My wife, meanwhile, has been working on tile layout schemes to minimize the number of cuts. We bought a tile cutter, but have never done it before, so that should be an adventure.

Also not sure when to pull out the toilet. We want to minimize toilet-less time, but do have a camping Porta-potty.

Sunday we pulled up all the vinyl flooring in the bathroom – well, actually the top skin of the vinyl flooring. The paper and adhesive remain stuck to the plywood subfloor.

We’re not tiling until this coming weekend, but decided to start early after the “walpaper incident” this fall, where we waited until the day before painting to start removing wallpaper.

Last weekend I re-insulated the attic. Next up is re-tiling the bathroom floor.

We’ve always wanted to have in-floor heat, and were excited to see a kit on sale at the local big-box home improvement show.

So we headed out and bought most everything we need:
- In-floor heat kit
- Thermostat
- Tile (on sale for 50 cents a square foot)
- Mortar and grout
- Durock backerboard
- Tile cutter and other tools

The tenative plan is to take a 4-day weekend Feb. 9 to 12 and do the project then. We have vinyl floor to rip up, which could take a while.

The prep and cutting took patience…but the end product looks great!!

Boring, but I’ve hated the carpet in the bathroom ever since I bought my house 10 months ago. Must change it! This is also a catch-all for “sort my house out”. When I’ve fixed everything I spotted and thought “I’ll change that” when we moved in, then I’ll consider this goal complete

My new friend J has offered to help me tile my bathroom floor and do a few other home improvements with me. Yay for handy new friends!