Those Pesky Germans

Wow, it really is starting to look like a bathroom now. Although we didn't get the tile in over the weekend as we hoped, we have made some substantial progress since out last post. Here is what we've been up to.

December 31:
Our genius move to have the contractors put up the sheetrock in the bathroom is underway. This is going to save us time but most importantly, it is going to save my back a lot of aches and pains. In time for the year end, we are all set with real walls in the bathroom.


Time to pop some bubbly and celebrate the new year.


January 1:
We are going to take it a little easy today and work on all the prep steps before tiling. First is to fasten the underlayment to the subfloor. After a gabillion stripped screws and two chewed up bits, the underlayment is now down and isn't going anywhere again, ever. It took a while but it is done.

Time to prep the walls for waterproofing but we realize that everything we need is out in the freezing cold and needs to warm up before we can move on to the next step.

I think its time to stop and start tomorrow fresh. Time for a spell of Legos Indiana Jones II on the XBOX


January 2:
Okay, so now we are going to prep the walls and floor with the waterproofing materials. This stuff is supposed to be the bee's knees and help us make sure we have no future water damage, etc. Some stuff from a company call Schluter with products called Kerdi and Ditra, it is made in Germany and "you know Germans make great stuff"... (a little homage to the Sham-wow guy in case you didn't catch the reference).

So, this should go pretty quickly. We mix up the thinset that we got from the tile guys and slap it on the walls, then we put up this Kerdi membrane. Piece of cake. Except, of course it isn't.

First, the tile guys gave us the wrong type of thinset. So, I am off to the Home Depot to get the right stuff. Back home and mixing thinset in 15 degrees with winds gusting is no picnic.

Time to get it on the walls. First part, a small pieces at the edge of the tub, done. No problem.

Next, a few small pieces down the side of the tub, done. No problem. Then the bigger pieces need to go in. The trick is to make sure you have nice moist thinset and that there are no air bubbles when we are done. The problem is that we have cement board which is very very thirsty and wants to dry out the thinset before we can get the wall covered and put the membrane on it. We double back and put more on, still drying out. Ugh. Turns out we should be wetting the cement board a bit more than we thought before slapping thinset all over it.

We finally stick up the membrane and start smoothing it out. Now we turn the corner and continue to the next wall. See previous paragraph. Finally get 2nd piece installed. We look back at the first piece and see there are bubbles. Ugh. Now we pull back the 1st piece to work out the bubbles but now the thinset is dry again and it wont stick. Repeat ad nauseam.

So much for getting this up quickly and tiling today. We are covered in thinset and only half done with the walls and it is 9PM. We gotta take a break and pick it up again in the morning.

January 3:
Back to that darn Schluter stuff. How do you say curse words in German because I think I will need to know a few before the day is through? We need to mix up another batch of thinset and use our lesson's learned to complete the job.

Finally done at around dinner time, eat some meatloaf and then tackle installing the Ditra on the floor. This means mixing yet another bucket of a different type of thinset which again, involves going out in the wonderful weather (notice the occasional wind gusts of 50 mph).





But, compared to the Kerdi, Ditra is a breeze.Got that all wrapped up and time to clean up our mess before bedtime.Here is the before and after of all the work we have done (yes we were messy, but at least we clean up nicely).