Thursday, April 28, 2011

Guest Bathroom Tile: Success!

I am, to quote Charlie Sheen, "Winning!"

Hahaha, sorry, couldn't help it.

So, remember back, oh, a few months ago when I told you about my big, fat, tiling FAIL in the guest bathroom?


Yep, I totally tiled 80% of the bathroom before realizing that I was out of tiles, and that those tiles I needed had been discontinued months before.

Wop-wop-wop.



So, I commenced to ripping out all of that hard work, leaving a very sticky residue behind. In order to use the restroom, I set out a pair of bright pink cheapo sandals for us to wear, which sounded pretty hilarious when you heard someone go in there - all you'd hear was a really LOUD "stick, stick, stick" noise, and occasionally a loud thump (someone almost falling), and sometimes even yelling or cursing. It was pretty good entertainment, I tell ya.

But in the case of sandals vs. sticky floors, the sticky floors won.


Yep, this weekend BOTH sandals came to a sad, sad end. The floor was so sticky that when Tom was walking in them, first one thong popped through the sandal base and then the other one went!


And that's how I knew it was time to just DO THIS thing!

So I went and found a close match to our discontinued vinyl tiles and bought more than I thought I needed this time (just in case - I learned my lesson!), and spent 5 hours on Saturday tiling.


We used Armstrong vinyl tiles, which is also the same type of tiles we used near the bar area in the rest of the basement, and we've been very happy with those. We chose vinyl tiles for several reasons both times:

1) Vinyl tiles are affordable
2) They're easy to cut (just score and snap using a box cutter)
3) They're easy to install because they're self-sticking (no mastic involved)
4) So there's no drying time
5) They have a long life span
6) And the biggest reason - our basement is not level.

So there ya go! If we had more a choice in the matter, we both prefer real tiles to vinyl, but for us vinyl tiles are just the way to go in our very unlevel basement. Plus the fact that we could install vinyl tiles on top of the existing ones is a plus - ever since our asbestos adventure we'd like to avoid anymore demo of vinyl tiles in our basement, thankyouverymuch. So - it's vinyl tiles all the way!

And since we're doing this cheap-n-easy down here, we didn't bother with removing the toilet or sink like you normally would when you tile a bathroom (although a large part of that is also because we're pretty sure that the toilet and pedestal sink are rigged and we didn't want to bother them!). Nope, I just traced and scored the tiles to get all the wacky shapes and angles I needed to get the tiles cut to fit perfectly around the toilet base and sink base.

And 5 bruised-knees-and-backbreaking hours later, we officially have an updated and more sophisticated bathroom!


Well, if you just ignore the hole in one wall and the water pipes on the other.

Let me just say, it is sooo nice to have a new floor in there - it's not sticky at all (always a plus, right?) and looks a billion times better than the straight-from-the-70's-paint-splotched-and-scratched-and-faded-and-discolored white vinyl tiles that were already in there.

Next up I'll be slappin' some grout in those cracks and really finishing up the floor in here. Then we'll be almost finished with this bathroom! (notice I said "almost", haha! Is home improvement ever REALLY done?).

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3 comments:

  1. Woohoo! Hurray for non-sticky floors. And it looks great, too!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Definitely better than sticky floors and economical is always good.

    Andy

    ReplyDelete
  3. Same type of tiles design look for really wonderful. I have gather many concern tiles information looks for really wonderful.

    ReplyDelete

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