Fun With Bricksaw and Tiles!

The last few days have gone by in a blur! Between work at the Mirror Lab and home improvement projects, the days have been full. But there is progress on the projects! After deciding on tiles and a layout, we've had lots of fun sawing and laying tiles.

We've never had a wet bricksaw before, and got one before our slate hearth project in St Charles. It is likely the best $59 we ever spent! Melinda just loves the idea of sawing tiles, and I can likely use it for small glass shaping too, though I've not tried it yet for that. You can tell from the picture at left that Melinda is having a great time - it is fortunate she stopped smiling while sawing or there would be stains on her teeth too!


We decided on rotating the tile 45 degrees for a decorative look, but first formed a border or frame around the walls. Note also the existing linoleum approximates a similar layout, but now we have real tiles! This layout requires a LOT of sawing. Unfortunately we had to do some of it twice - we set our reference at the door and long wall end and risked being "tiled in" in the back of the room. So we cut a good number of tiles in advance, but once we started laying them out in the mastic, the Earth's magnetic field caused enough drift we had to re-saw a goodly number of them... But by the time we had invested over 4.5 hours in layout, we had long ago given up perfection and in fact, see the slight imperfections as desirable - proof that we indeed did it ourselves!

Still to come is the sealing of the semi-porous tile before we grout, and Melinda will attempt that tomorrow after the 24+ hours of mastic cure. She is back to work tomorrow night, so I see grout in our weekend schedule, and after another sealing job, finally installing our new low-flow toilet in a week or so with company staying over the following weekend - a tight but doable schedule. Then you should see the rest of the plans for the bathroom - stay tuned!