DIY project Shower – update #3

Our diy project shower – more days than I would like to count. But there are always so much other things to do e.g. writing this blog, taking photos, processing photos, cleaning the house – you get the picture. So in case you are not up to date on our shower, check it out here.

When David returned from his business trip we decided that we liked the tiles and would keep them. This meant it was time for me to get dirty – again. But first I layed out the sheets of tiles the way I wanted to fix them onto the divider. On the shower facing side I did not have to do much cutting, but the other side was a whole different story. You see where the bathtub is attached it is a little curved and also the height and length meant that I had to cut some tiles. I had bought a cheapo set of  tiling tools and it came with a tile clipper. Which worked like magic. Now it was time to mix some mortar, which is kind of like mixing dough for a cake. Not too soft and not too sticky until it feels just right. Put some on the trowel and then fairly thin onto the surface. I will not go into detail, because there are a lot of online how-tos already. Suffice to say that I did get all tiles attached and the divider is now covered again. I let it sit for over 24 hours so the mortar could really dry out and yesterday I did the grouting. Boy, was that messy! To match the tiles I got charcoal colored grout, and in all fairness, it really looks great, but the color pigments in it are so fine they spread extremely easy and it takes a lot of wipes to get it off of surfaces where you do not want it. For example the attached white tiles or the white bathtub. But, as you can see, in the end I got it mostly clean. The bits and pieces you still see, will in the end be covered by silicon. Today I will do a little buffing so the tiles will be shiny. Although both David and I kind of like the hazy look of them now.

Tomorrow I will go once again to HomeDepot and get more silicon to fill in the corners. After that I will have some serious scrubbing to do, because the shower glass panes and aluminum frames look really bad. I guess I could have already done that in between, and I did think about doing so, but as I mentioned at the beginning of the post: Almost so much else to do… Expect the next update of our diy project shower next week!