Tiling the Shower

Well, we did it! Mostly anyways. Together we spent hour after hour this past weekend tiling the walls of the shower. Overall, it went pretty smoothly, it just took WAY longer than we thought it would. (Just like our last round of tile...) That seems to be the story of finishing the basement… When is it going to be done?!?

Here is the shower right before we started tiling. We used the wood boards as a level line and began tiling from that point up. You can see the lines drawn on the wall to show where the mosaic stripe will go. That red stuff is called RedGard – it’s a waterproofing sealer to ensure there is no water leakage.

Hubby mixing the thinset. This batch was MUCH better than the last one!

Here’s hubby trying to look tough right before we started – there may have been a little trickery going on (if you can’t tell from the grin)!

Here goes… the first tile is on the wall! Notice he’s wearing his wedding ring – it has been covered in thinset and grout multiples times over the last 10 days or so…

Sconni had to come check things out. Sota wouldn’t come into the basement – the tile saw freaked her out.

Here’s the shower after our first afternoon of tiling. We quickly discovered that we couldn’t continue on tiling above the mosaic because the weight was too much pressure and the mosaic tiles were starting to buckle. Glad we figured that out when we were only two rows in!

Here’s the same view the next morning without the spacers – looks much better!

The mosaic tile is my favorite part!

The bottom tiles are almost all installed (each tile is taped to the tile above to keep them from sliding down). The tile on the front ledge of the shower is also installed.



Here’s hubby making the final cuts. Believe it or not, I did at least half of the tile cuts for the shower! I tried to help as much as I could.

Here’s the bathroom and shower at the end of the night Sunday. (The tape and spacers came down on Monday morning)

All in all, great progress was made on the basement again this past weekend!