INTREPID OR CRAZY?

What a day!  After finally putting together my wet saw after it sat for a couple of years in my garage, I was able to finish tiling the step into the shower. While not wholly satisfied with it because some of the edges did not line up as perfectly as I would have liked, it was pretty much done.

Now the fun part. My goal was to finish the small side wall before I had to leave at 2:30 PM to help setup the Elk Grove Artists High School Art Show.  I transferred the layout from the studio into the bathroom so I always had about four rows of tiles/glass ready to put up on the wall.


Trowel time.  I troweled about 15"x13" swaths and pressed and tapped the clay and glass tiles in place.

I was pretty much done with the side wall by 10 AM!


Time to tackle the big wall.


I kept wanting to be sure the colors were not too dark, especially since they were so crazy and bright.  I began to feel that a 36" x 8' wall of intense color was too much, so I altered the plan to curve in toward the shower stall, in step fashion. And I added in more all-white tiles than originally planned.  But as the wall height increased, I did not like the all white tiles in the mix. I WANT BIG COLOR!  So I popped some of the white ones off and replaced them with teal/green tiles.


I put the popped off whites ones in the front of the step.


The stair-step effect was too pixelated, so I added in some of my swirls, some clay faces, some bigger glass pieces, etc., at the ends of the shortened rows.  I hoped it would shorten the blocky end-of-row appearance.  You be the judge.

OK, it was 2 PM and I needed to wash my body and hair - which had been pelted with tile juice from the wet saw earlier in the day.  Then I quickly grabbed some snacks and water and drove toward Elk Grove Park Pavilion after accomplishing a few important errands first.  Four more hours of helping to lift and put together lots of portable art walls, hang artwork, label it, and judge the sculpture entries.  By 6:30 PM I was BEAT, but I still wanted to finish the shower after eating dinner and relaxing watching mindless TV (America's Next Top Model) for 60 minutes.  Then it was back at it to add 4x4 tiles on top of the existing tiled shower stall.  My son had come home from taekwondo, so I quickly showed him how to adhere the tile.

Next was adding some bull-nose tile to the shower pan side.  That's the part that has me the most worried.  Where the step meets the shower pan is the most critical for ensuring that water cannot back up into the step, or inside the wall or under the step. So tomorrow I'll really be sure there is enough silicone to secure the step.

OK, everything was done.  Except the room was a disaster area.

Even though I was dead tired, and sweating profusely, I decided to clean up the bathroom and studio.  An hour and three glasses of water later, it was time to vacuum up the last of the job . . . for tonight.  SO here's what the job looks like.  The design and colors are not for the faint at heart.  Gotta be intrepid (or crazy) to appreciate it.  Which one are you?





Now to decide what color grout to use.  Do you have any suggestions?  I am leaning toward tan for the colored tiles to give warmth to the colored areas.  I'll probably use white for the step.  I want the step to generally be white so it blends into the existing shower pan and makes the area look bigger.