Feels Good to be DONE

There are few things I find myself getting legitimately ecstatic about.  Ripping down the plastic sheeting in our shower and being able to shower without feeling like the next Dexter victim is definitely on that list.

If you haven’t already heard, the shower is DONE apart from a touch-up here and there and a possible plumbing adjustment.  But we can now check off tiling, grouting, sealing AND caulking from our to-do list.

After having attempted the “grout kit” on the floor project, I decided to go all out and get a good highly-recommended sanded grout that we’d have to mix ourselves.  Luckily we’ve got plenty of buckets around the house and we were loaned a mixer attachment from our landlord, so that made things significantly easier.

Grouting itself is a simple process.  It really is usually.  It wasn’t for us.  The instructions for this grout were crap and by the time the wait period was up, the grout was too hard to wipe off with a damp sponge so we spent 3 hours in the tub with a straight edge scraper.  Luckily, no tiles were damaged during this process, but we were exhausted by the time the whole thing was over.  Really wishing I’d just done what I’d done with the floor grout and started wiping up as soon as I was finished grouting.  Oh well.  The reason there are no pictures is because we were both covered in grout and I was too busy either cursing or saying something in the form of “what the hell were we thinking taking something like this on?!”

Regardless, the bathroom really does look amazing.  Actually amazing doesn’t even really begin to describe the significant improvement.  I couldn’t be more proud.  The grout is actually a much lighter grey than what you’re seeing in the picture above.  This was before it was dry so it looked a lot darker.

The niche was a … it’s almost too easy to use a rhyming curse word here, but it really was!  No tool was designed to grout that stupid space.  We ended up using our hands, but of course couldn’t get it quite right in the corners, so we’ve got a little patching to do there.  We also need to repaint the trim white as we got a little messy with the grout.

The only actual problem would be the plumbing.  The pipe for the faucet isn’t quite long enough.  It was for the original drywall and thin plastic surround, but now that we’ve used mortar and tile it’s about 1/2″ too short.

We’ve gotten around this temporarily by pushing the pipe slightly from behind to force it out a little further until the faucet can catch it and twist on, but I don’t like the idea of this setup for the long-term.  It’s not a good idea to strain the pipe at all – even slightly.  So we’ll have to address that sometime soon.  To be honest, it’s as simple as replacing that little existing PVC pipe with one that’s about 1/2″ longer, but I’m not known for my expert plumbing skills, so I’ll have someone more qualified tackle that one.