Splish Splash, I've Been Working on the Bath

So, this weekend has been another busy one at the house.  The week was spent mostly prepping guest bathroom for tile.  The cement board was hung, the seams and screws coated with thinset, and the plumbing fixture pipes pulled through.  That meant that on Wednesday night, it looked something like this:

The next step was a trip to Lowe's to buy the tile.  We knew we wanted white subway tiles, but we weren't sure what we wanted for the accent tiles.  That led to this:

The large tile in the middle is our floor tile.  The white strips are our subway tiles, and the outside squares are the potential accent tiles.  After much debate, we narrowed it down to the bottom tile or the right tile.  Both were neutral enough to last, but had enough color to lighten up all the white.  Finally we decided to go with the right tile.  They looked like mini-subway tiles which we liked and they were blue!

We were ready to tile!  Almost...
After a long time spent hanging the first ledger board and measuring the center of the wall, (which took much much longer than we though it would), we did finally get some tile up.  Landon and I worked together on the first few rows with me cutting the tiles as he laid them.

Tile Cutting station.

Working our way up the middle.

By Thursday night we were here:

Friday night was a night off.  We all needed one.  But Saturday it was back to the grid.  While Landon and his dad were busy elsewhere, his mom and I tackled the tile.

Up near the top.  

Gotta get it right.

Landon did stop in to help us hang the ledger board for the back wall.

Did you get it right?

And by the end of the day on Saturday, we were done with the big wall and had a few rows done on the back wall.  The glass accents looked great.  

Sunday, the boys were busy in other places again, so Valerie and I knocked out the rest of the tile.  It was a long day full of lots of stops and starts.  We had to figure out how to navigate the plumbing fixtures on the front wall of the surround.  (Alan and Landon worked the wet saw.)  It took 4 batches of thinset, many boxes of tile, and lots and lots of time, but we got it all done, except for the corner shelf, the edge tiles, and the bottom row.

I needs to be grouted and sealed, but it looks so good!  And since I had never ever tiled before, I'm pretty proud of what I did.

We still have to put in the toilet (we don't have any toilets at the house currently, except for the two that are in the second bedroom), paint and reinstall the vanity, put back in the new vanity top, get a new vanity light, install the new vent fan/light, and get the mirror cut down and rehung, but at least we have a pretty tile surround.

Oh, and if you think that looks great, wait until you see what the boys were working on this weekend.  It's one of the biggest changes we've made so far.....