The Great Tile Wall

While you might have been expecting me to be posting about our half bath floors being finished, that is currently not the case.  We hit a snag with the floors.  It's pretty much my fault.  I decided that I wanted to replace the marble threshold between the wood floor of the bedroom and the tile in the bathroom.  The one that was in there originally was only 4", while the space can accommodate a 5" width. 

So we asked Matt's dad if we could borrow his wet saw to make a single cut to a new threshold so we can replace it.  After some digging around, it appears that Matt's dad has loaned his saw to someone, who loaned it to someone else, etc. 

On to Plan B.  We were wishy washy over what we wanted to do, but we happened to be in Lowes and noticed they have a wet saw available for use in the store.  Excited, we hurried to the section with the thresholds.  We were so disappointed when we realized they only had them in 4" widths.

So Plan C.  We figure if Lowes has a wet saw, then Home Depot must have one to.  We go there, and find a beautiful piece of 5" wide marble.  We find an employee and ask where their wet saw is.  They don't have one.  They used to, but they took out all of their saws.  Boo.

That's pretty much where we are with the floor.  We're currently looking into renting wet saws, but it's killing me to spend so much time and money on one cut. 

But never fear, good readers!  I still got some bathroom work done this weekend!  I ended up 1) installing the ceiling lighting fixture, 2) removing the wall lighting fixture, and 3) installing the tile wall.

The ceiling fixture adds an ambient glow while the wall mounted fixture provides task lighting at the vanity.

If you look near the top left of the tiles, you can see where there is a line of blue tiles with no lights.  When I was finished laying the tile I cut out some of the darker tiles and replaced them with light ones, to prevent it from looking clumped together.

Overall I think the wall turned out really well.  I also ended up with 12 extra pieces of tile (after putting one aside in case I have to replace any tiles in the future).  That means we can return them, and the total amount spent on the wall tiles was $90.  Score!

I do have to mention, by using the cheaper tiles we saved over $100, but the cheaper glass tiles were a pain in the butt to cut.  They chipped a lot more than other glass tiles I've used, and I have a bunch of tiny but annoying cuts on my hands from the itty bitty glass shards.  I'm not saying it's bad to go cheaper, just expect that the quality may also be lower.


I'm going to wait to grout it until I'm ready to do the floor as well, so I can do it all at once (we're using the same gray grout for the floor and wall). 

I still need to:

• grout
• paint
• install trim
• re-install wall mounted light fixture
• install toilet, vanity and medicine cabinet
• attach toilet paper holder/towel bar
• install door

That's not too bad, right?  We're hoping to be finished before March, so we need to come up with a solution for the threshold ASAP.