After two long weeks, I bid farewell to our tiler, Sean, on March 2nd. In the end, tiling our irregularly-shaped shower was complicated enough that the job took him fully twice as long as he had anticipated. I certainly didn't mind, though - he did a fabulous job and I'm very pleased indeed with the results! Here's a link to Sean's website:
http://www.tile-with-style.co.uk/
You may be surprised to learn that it was only today, almost a month later, that we reached the major milestone of being able to run our new shower for the first time. It turned out that (as usual!) there was a complication... this time, it was the fact that our limestone tiles turned out to be extremely porous indeed. Sean applied 2 coats of sealant, as promised, but even then, he explained, the tiles weren't fully sealed. This meant that they weren't fully impervious to water, and so he strongly recommended that we didn't run the shower until we had applied enough coats of sealant to make the tiles fully water-resistent. Thus began my journey into the world of tile porosity and sealant types...
It took me about a week to research different types of sealant to find out what, if anything, would be compatible with the sealant Sean had already applied; in the end, I decided to just get the same stuff he had used, although I had to order that online. I also had to learn how to tell when the job would be done, so I would know when to stop sealing. It's actually fairly straightforward: if water forms little beads when you splash some on the tile, you know it's sitting on the surface and not being absorbed.
But by the time I had gotten to the stage where the sealant had been delivered, the applicator purchased, and the knowledge gained, I was off on a week's holiday to see my parents. And I knew André would be back just five days after I returned to London myself, so
naturally I decided that he'd do a better job sealing the limestone than I would!
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| André sealing the Limestone |
But finally, 25 days after the tiling was completed, we reveled in our ability to run our new shower in our beautifully tiled new bathroom. A HUGE milestone!! And a long-awaited one... as
the last big milestone we hit was turning on the heat, back in October. All that remains to be done in the bathroom now is to build the ceiling, add the vanity and sink, hang the mirrors and install the glass shower door... but in the meantime, at least we can now use the shower!
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| The tiled shower! |
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| The shower floor |
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| Montage of the tiled bathroom - eventually there will be mirrors over the plywood walls |
