Day Five-thirty-six: new foundation

After clearing away all the old tile in the bathroom there was nothing else to do but lay a new one. More so than with the basement this required some fancy tile work, but then that's why we made the basement bath where we could try and err and learn. For example we had this tricky L-shape to fill.

So we made this little piece with three cuts.

And here's the result, a perfect fit.

Going around the toilet drain was another troublesome area, so we divided it into quadrants because it was easier to make a 90-degree arc than to try for something more complicated. After much time spent hunched over the wet saw to grind out the missing pieces we achieved this.

Here's what it looked like as of last night with all the tile in its places with bright shiny faces.

With the tile securely in place today we grouted the whole thing. We used the same color as the basement bath because after all it's the same tile. Again the experience we gained from the "practice bathroom" helped make this picture-perfect. No stray ThinSet or grout to be found. We'll let this cure over night and then start putting the room back together tomorrow.

Pictures don't do it justice but we took advantage of the room being cleared out to repaint everything. We had not been able to get the space behind the toilet when we changed colors so that had been bothering us for months. In addition we wanted to cover up the not-so-hot Behr paint with our much preferred and superior paint from Sherwin-Williams.

Elsewhere HD surprised us by getting a new blade for the toe kick saw quicker than expected, so when we weren't neck deep in paint, ThinSet, grout, or tile we cut everything we could in the kitchen in preparation for that job. If you've never seen or used a toe kick saw, it's basically a small circular saw with a funky placement that allows you to slide along under the toe kick.

And when it works it produces something like this (any waviness in the line is due to operator error).