My DIY Success: A New Marble Tile Bathroom Floor
Day 1: My wrist has a hematoma the size of a golf ball!
Note to self: This is why professional tile installers use electric chisels.
My upstairs bathroom needed an update—badly. I can only assume that the previous owner used this room as a nursery for a little boy. Why else would anyone select baby blue tile like that for a bathroom? I can’t imagine a time when it ever looked fashionable, but to each his own. Anyway, the tile was twenty years old and had rust stains, so time to level up.
I had the brilliant idea of tiling the bathroom myself—after all, I had tiled bathrooms before. The bathroom was only 5 x 6 feet, so no big deal, right? Right.
Tile selection
Since my daughter is the only person who uses that bathroom, I involved her in selecting the new tile. She wanted gray tile with an interesting pattern. Fortunately, the options were nearly endless, and she selected a nice tumbled marble tile mosaic in gray and white from Lowe’s.
After measuring the bathroom carefully. I purchased enough tile to cover the bathroom, with some overage in case of broken tiles. For anyone tiling for the first time, please buy more tile than you think you will need. Tiles sometimes break during the cutting process, and you may need more than you think.
Day 1: Demolition day
The first step was to remove the toilet and the quarter-round at the base of the floor. Note that when you remove a toilet, you should stopper the toilet outflow hole, or your house will be filled with stinky, dangerous sewer gas.
Next, I began demolition of the existing tile. I discovered, much to my surprise, that the previous grout, which had appeared gray, was actually baby blue grout that had been colorized! The only think that could have made that tile look worse was matching baby blue grout.
Demolition day was torture. Sharp shards of baby blue tile were scattered everywhere. The tile, thick terra cotta tile with glaze, proved extremely difficult to demolish. The tile seemed to be solidly fused with the sub flooring. My brain felt like it was rattling inside of my skull, from the hammering and smashing of tile all day.
Day 1 Injury count: 1) Large wrist hematoma from swinging my hammer and misjudging the distance, 2) Several splinters of sharp ceramic tile stuck beneath the skin of my hands; 3) Bruises & blisters on the heels of both hands; 4) A smaller hematoma on my thumb joint, from whacking myself with a hammer a second time; and 5) An eerie sense of heaviness and numbness in both feet. My feet have almost no feeling, and I walk like I’m trudging through concrete. This can’t be normal.
Day 2: Time to lay some tile!
Should only take a few hours, right? Should be done by lunch? Uh…
After an excellent night of sleep, I woke up ready to lay the new tile. I thought it would be a piece of cake, because I was using mosaic tile that was pre-laid on a mesh backer.
Boy was I wrong!
So here was the problem. Previously, I had only ever used square tiles for flooring. Squares are easy; there are four sides and all angles are 90 degrees. Square tile is pretty straightforward. I quickly found out that using tile mosaics on mesh backers is quite difficult. Lining up the tiles with the tiles next to it becomes a frustrating exercise in precision.
By lunch, I realized that I would be lucky to be done by dinner time. With every 12 x 12 inch mosaic mesh, I had to trim the backer, lay out the tiles, place spacers between the tiles, adjust the backer, and wipe any mortar that pushed out from between the small marble tiles. Furthermore, cutting and trimming small tiles is almost an exercise in futility. The tiles frequently chipped or broke, and the detailed finish work around the edges of the room left me wondering why I ever took on this project by myself.
Day 2 Injury count: 1) Feet still feel abnormally numb; 2) Several of the ceramic splinters worked their way out fo my hands; 3) I pinched one of my fingers in the tile nippers when I was day dreaming.
Day 3: Grout, then done!
The grout was the least painful part of the tile project, but it took much longer than I planned.
This was the first project where I had worked with small tiles in a mosaic pattern. I learned that by having so many tiny grout lines to fill, the grouting process takes a lot longer than with larger square tiles. On each square of the floor mosaic, I had to fill in the grout, clean the grout from the small tiles, and clean the haze from the marble before it dried. In the event that the grout started to dry, I then had to scrub dried grout from the marble tiles. Day 3 was the culmination of my frustration.
The bathroom for this project was also upstairs, meaning that I had to walk down two staircases to go outside to dump the grout water about every 30 minutes. When the grout water becomes too saturated with grout, continuing to use the water means smearing grout residue back onto the tiles. I needed to keep the water reasonably clean, and as a result, I had a great stair stepping workout that day.
After almost 6 hours of work, I was finally finished with the grout. I would address the replacement quarter round the next day.
Finishing details
Cutting the quarter round was no big deal. The only difficult part is determining the angle and orientation of the quarter round for cutting. I figured it out, and nailed the new quarter round to the base board. Truly, I was amazed with the transformation of the bathroom. I elevated the room from ugly duckling to updated swan in a few short days.
If I had to do it again, I would definitely hire out this project. My feet remained numb for almost a week, during which time I freaked out that I had nerve damage! It turns out that I did not, which is good. A professional who installs tile every day could have probably been much more efficient with the re-tiling than me. Normally, I love the satisfaction of the good DIY project, but this one was more difficult than I realized. It’s done, though, and I am grateful to have finished the work.
