Tiling with Sarah

I spent a lovely afternoon today, tiling the tub surround with Sarah.  It was a lot of fun to do.

Tom and I put up backer board where the tile would go - cement board designed to hold tile and resist moisture.  Once that was up, Sarah and I started tiling with the white subway tile we bought at the Tile Shop on Friday.

We quickly discovered that we have a similar tiling technique - messy.  As the tiling went along, we became more and more coated in thinset.  We dropped the spacers everywhere (including into the thinset), we tracked blobs of thinset across the floor, and we generally made a pretty good mess.

But the tile went up.  We finished at about 6 PM (Sarah is a trooper, staying to make sure it was all done, and even helping clean up afterwards) and it looks good.  There are four rows of white subway tile at the bottom, then a think line of green (matches the floor), then a field of subway tiles, and two rows of green, separated by a row of white, at the top.   We cut the tiles to fit around the spigot and the valve, and despite some minor unevenness, it all looks great.  

Tomorrow, we're going to meet to grout the tile.  Grouting this much space (about 8x5) is generally a pretty easy and fast job, but I'm sure Sarah and I will end up coated in group, to match our outfits that are coated in thinset.

Today was also notable in that we had a lot of visitors on 62nd Street.  Ady came and brought lunch, along with her friend Jenny from Milwaukee.  Dale stopped by with her son Julian, ostensibly to give us a bid on painting the house, but really just to see the progress. Sabastian and Noah came by too - Sab hasn't been in the house since the windows were all boarded up, so it was a big change for him to see it.  

Tomorrow is a vacation day, so other than the grout, and maybe installing a few outlets, not much is planned.  I think Tom is going to steer clear of 62nd Street altogether, spending the day walking the dogs, hanging out with Sabastian and doing taxes.  I'm meeting Eric and Jim Tobias for lunch to work on our new project, and then after the grout and wiring, I'm going home.