Up the wall

Still tiling.....

Before going away at Christmas I cast a new screed next to the shower, as otherwise the water wouldn't have drained from this raised area back into the shower. I am usually tempted to take the shuttering off much too early, so giving it 15 days to harden was a bonus. When I came back I removed the shuttering and covered the floor with plastic sheeting: putting up tiles and grouting is a messy business, and I didn't want to spend all my time cleaning the floor. It then looked like this before I started to tile the section by the shower:



For some reason, probably just procrastination, I decided that the surface under the washbasin had to be done first, which meant cutting a round 30mm hole in a tile for the tap. The tap is tall, to clear the washbasin, and the base is square and about 35mm or less across. If the hole is too large the tap will fall through or chip the tile, leaving the tap wobbly. But does anyone sell a 30mm diamond hole cutter? No, of course not. The best I could find was 27mm, which I enlarged with a grindstone. I made my own jig out of a scrap bit of plywood - the smaller hole cutters don't have a drill in the middle to centre them.



The result wasn't too bad. The hole is slightly wider across one diameter, to get the pipe tails through. And from left to right it's the grindstone, the diamond cutter, and the sponge that you put inside to keep the cut wet.

So I was finally able to start the tiling. This shows the little bit of floor I did. With luck it will look better when it's grouted:



At present the wall on the left (see below) looks a little odd, as I am tiling on top of old tiles part way up the wall, and then on the original surface. To avoid a step where the old tiles end, I've been gluing thin wediboard to the walls above the old tiles, to take up the missing thickness. As wediboard is black the effect is pretty odd above the lighter coloured tiles (and there's also just one narrow row of old tiles showing). I also decided that I'd get better adhesion by cutting the wediboard into strips that would flex a little and fit tightly on the wall: if I'd done the whole 2 meters by 50 cm in one piece the board would have pulled away from low spots as the glue can't hold a curve into the board. It's surprisingly rigid (as it's supposed to be).



I left gaps between the strips of wediboard in the belief that a bit of (thick) adhesive between the new tile and the old untiled wall would give added security to the new tiles. I suspect this was unnecessary, and with luck the tiles won't fall off.

The left hand wall will have two rows of the lighter coloured tiles above the single row of them already there, while above the washbasin it will be all brown with a big illuminated mirror in the middle (you can see the embedded electric cable at the top. I haven't yet decided what to put where the other cable appears on the left hand wall. Possibly a razor socket, or maybe just an ordinary one (French rules are different).

Eventually I ran out of adhesive so it's off to Figeac tomorrow to get some more, and some more stainless steel tile edging. Naturally I'd ordered slightly too little.