I was a bit nervous about the tiling job being finished without André around to oversee things - we've spent an enormous amount of time and effort on this bathroom, and André is a total perfectionist! But it seems to be going well so far. I'm at work during the day, so coming home Tuesday and Wednesday evenings and seeing the gradual transformation of the bathroom as Sean (our tiler) nears the finish line is quite an experience.
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| The bathroom floor nearing completion |
My major contribution has involved colours. Now, if you think about colours in the context of a home-building/renovation project, you'd most likely think of something fun, like choosing paint or tile colours. I had to spend hours yesterday colour-matching – but I was working with grout!
With all the tiling finally finished, Sean now needs to seal the tiles, apply grout, and then seal them again. Grout, for those who are not familiar with it (and I wasn't, at all, until 24 hours ago!) is the stuff that goes in between tiles that seals the joints and makes them waterproof. Normal, bog-standard grout is white, but André had decided that we needed to match the grout colour to our tiles so that it would look right. I hadn't even known that grout came in different colours, but even I could see that white grout would look terrible with the tiles we're having installed.
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| Grout samples: colors straight out of the bag |
For the limestone, it was easy. We bought Mapei Ultracolour grout in "medium grey", and saw straight away that it was going to be a good match. The slate, though, proved to be highly problematic. We bought a bag of a colour called "terra sienna" but found that it was too light, and too orange-y. We thought that Mapei's "brown" would be perfect – but we couldn't find it anywhere in London. Apparently because brown grout is not a product that people ask for very often, none of the suppliers we checked with had it in stock, and we'd have to order many bags in order for them to do a special order. In any case, we'd need about a week for it to arrive if we went the special-order route - and Sean was planning to do the grouting today, Thursday. The next closest colour was "chocolate brown", but that turned out to be too dark.
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| Early mixed sample...too orange-y |
I thought that under the circumstances we'd just use the grey for the slate as well (Sean's suggestion), since the overall colour scheme would work. But André was determined to get everything to match (that perfectionist thing again...!). So, I got up early and spent an hour before going to work yesterday mixing up little test batches of grout (you just mix the powder with water), combining the different colours in various proportions to try and get something that would match the slate! I'm no colour theorist, so it wasn't easy – plus, I'm not a morning person…
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| Another sample...getting closer, but this one is too dark |
I applied the various test batches to several tile offcuts, left them to dry, and went to work. But when I got home in the evening, I discovered that none of them really matched perfectly. I took pictures of the samples and emailed them to André, who was not pleased *at all* with the results. So, I spent the rest of the night - actually, until 1.30am! - doing more colour combinations and test batches. Finally, *finally*, I figured out that the magic combination was 25% "terra sienna", 25% grey and 50% brown.
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| The "Magic" Combination! |
This morning I got up early again, as Sean (who I suspect thought we were a little crazy for taking this much trouble over grout - he said he'd never seen anyone do such a thing!) did not want to be liable for mixing the colour himself. (He did the first coat of sealant yesterday, so today he was ready to start grouting.) So before he started his work for the day, I mixed up a big batch up the magic colour and left him to it...
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| Mixing the final batch of grout |
