Day Five-thirty-seven: don't try this at home

And no, we're not professionals. Today we continued putting the bathroom back together after the grout had time to set. Here's a step-by-step accounting of our day.

First, we installed a new light fixture, replacing the only item that was held over from when we bought the place. It had been a cost-saving measure at the time and a bad one because lights aren't that expensive and we never liked the old one.

Then we put the toilet back, with a brand new wax ring to replace one that might not have been original (because it had a rubber gasket attached) but certainly wasn't new by any stretch. We also took advantage of the toilet and vanity being gone to repaint all the trim, as we repainted the walls yesterday.

Third, we reinstalled the vanity and attached all the plumbing. You can see our less-than perfect drywall work. But we knew we'd be covering it up anyway.

Then we got down to business. We had to take these 120 tiles and make a backsplash to replace the marble one that was there.

Here we are in action.

When working with such small tiles we had to miniaturize our tools, so we took the term "buttering the tile" to heart and used a knife to spread and a fork to cut grooves in the ThinSet.

The close-to-final result, grout goes on tomorrow, looks like this. The piece of wood on the right side is a temporary shim to give that row of tiles some support because they extend beyond the counter top.

It does a good job matching its big brother in the shower.