Forgive the lack of posting. The last work week saw me working my normal 7a-3p, then coming home and working on demolishing the bathroom. Sometime around Thursday, MrsZ found a suspicious wet spot on the cellar ceiling. Saturday and Sunday evenings were spent tearing apart our kitchen cabinets and repairing the drain line. On the plus side of that, we found that someone had kludged the vent for the drain - by putting in an upright with a 90 in a wall space, and stuffing the open end with a bit of pink fiberglass insulation and a bottlecap to hold it in place. That has since been corrected to code, and I expect that we will no longer have funny smells in the bedroom that were blamed on the cats.
Unfortunately, that set back my schedule for working on the bathroom by two evenings. MrsZ managed to get the sanding and priming done, and we did the painting yesterday. (Valspar calls it "Snowy Dusk", I call it "very light gray".) I rolled, she did the finicky details.
This morning I pulled out everything that was in the room and sanded the subfloor, then vacuumed, then wiped the whole floor with a mild bleach solution, then damp-wiped the walls (no bleach). Put a heater and fan in to dry things out, and had lunch.
Lunch complete, I started measuring very very carefully, and then cutting up the underlayment panels. The room was just the wrong size to do the whole thing with two sheets (9x7, underlayment comes in 4x8 sheets) without some inconvenient seams. So, three sheets cut apart, and NINE stubs drilled or cut (washer hot/cold, washer drain, dryer gas, toilet cold, toilet drain, sink hot/cold, sink drain), with only minor corrections necessary. I won't win any prizes for pretty, but they're in. Stapled down according to spec (2" interval on edges, 4" across the body) means there are approximately eleventy-billion staples now in our bathroom floor, and if they ever need to come out I pity the foo'.
Tomorrow I'll be laying tile. Home Depot may be delivering the washer in the afternoon (depending on weather), but it can't be hooked up for at least three days - two for the tile to cure, one day to grout and let that cure. And, of course, we have to find baseboard trim and get that cut and installed as well.
I've taken pictures as the process progresses - look for one large photo post in a week or so.
1 year ago
2 comments:
Z,
Vinyl tile, then grout? I thought vinyl was mastic only. Can you explain a bit about the use of grout?
Wally:
Yep, vinyl and then grout.
Vinyl sheet (aka linoleum, although not quite the same thing) needs only mastic. Vinyl tiles can either be laid with tight seams and left as-is, or can be gapped and grouted.
I waffled a little bit about it, but gapping and grouting actually requires a bit *less* precision when laying the tile, since any tiny variances will just be filled in. Not that I didn't try to lay my tile precisely, but this was my first go. Additionally, IMHO, it just plain looks better. I went with a running-bond pattern - a bit more complex than the standard jack-on-jack but more decorative and not as difficult as running tile on a 45-degree angle.
Lowe's actually sells grout made specifically for vinyl tile, which was remarkably easy to use.
I laid the tile yesterday. It's self-adhesive, but so was the last stuff in there, and that shifted, so I put down a layer of vinyl tile adhesive (1 quart covered our 60sqft bath perfectly), then laid the tile. After about 24 hours of cure time, it was grout time ... just wrapped that up.
It took me about 5 hours start to finish to lay the tile - including open time for the glue - and another two hours to grout it today. And if I do say so myself ... it looks pretty darn good.
Next step: measure and cut baseboard, MrsZ will stain it, and then that will be installed.
Hopefully a progress report with pictures will be up tomorrow (when I'm at work with steady 'net access).
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