TOO GARISH? TOO BORING?

So the step was ready for tile, but what colors should cover the tile?

I had made so many cool tiles that I initially thought I should use 'em, even though most of my recent tile efforts had exploded all over the kiln:

I quickly came up with this layout:

AARRRRGGGGHHH!  How horrible is that?  Way too garish!  Even for me.

Maybe just white tiles for the step since the walls are going to be so colorful (this white fabric approximates all white tile): 

Too boring!

How about a mixture of white and colored tiles? I wanted the walking pathway in the center of the platform to be large tiles, so how about . . .


But I had a lot of angles to cut and I couldn't find the fancy tile cutter that I bought years ago, but never opened. So I had to do it the hard way with a tile scoring device, my old manual tile cutter, some make-shift tile nippers, and a tile file.  Way too much extra work because it was midnight by then and I didn't want to move both cars out of the garage to try to find the big tile cutter. Oh, you're thinking that I could have waited until the next day? Well, a good thing and bad thing about me is that I set goals for myself that I force myself to meet.  My goal last night was to tile the step so that on my day off (tomorrow/Friday), I could tile the small wall at the left of the shower stall.

I did not take too much time to ponder over it. The mixture was the winner!  I figured out a design that I liked, and cut the tiles to close to the proper angle and filed them down by hand. Then to trowel on the pre-mixed thin-set adhesive over the Hardibacker board.  Just enough for the initial pieces that I wanted to place. Bull-nose tiles went on the front lip.

 This morning before work I wanted to set one of the wall tiles.

Ta Da!

During lunch I would go back to Home Depot and get some plastic spacers, more adhesive, and more bull-nose tiles for the back/shower side of the step.