Worthwhile Tile Smile

I watched the Simpsons movie for the first time the other day.  It was ok.  I’m not sure if it just hasn’t held up that well over time, or if it wasn’t especially funny to begin with.  I think my favorite part was probably Homer “fixing” a sink hole in the yard by sticking baby Maggie in it, and the fact that “fix sinkhole” was on Homer’s to do list in the first place.  I will try not to spoil a nine year old movie, but suffice it to say that sticking the baby in the sinkhole did not fix it, and because The Simpsons is a cartoon where everything works out in the end, the expanding sinkhole actually benefited the Simpson family, rather than hurting it like it would in real life.  Oh, if only neglecting maintenance,  and a lack of foresight/follow through were as advantageous in real life as they are in the movies.

Hole left over from shower door removal.

Cracked Tile Discovered under shower door support.

When we removed our sliding glass shower doors we were left with some holes in the tile where the shower doors had been screwed to the wall, and a piece of tile that may or may not have been broken before the shower doors were removed.  Even though we plan to completely remodel the bathroom in a few years, leaving the screw holes open and the tile cracked simply was not an option since water from the shower could seep through the holes destroying the drywall behind the tiles, and worse, the subfloor under the tub (ounce of prevention, pound of cure, etc).  It was clear we needed to fix the tile.  What was less clear was how to go about doing it. 

The obvious choice was bathtub appropriate caulk.  After all, it is designed specifically to waterproof the gaps between tile and other bathroom surfaces.  The problem was that, after the initial caulk removal marathon in the bathroom, I was not feeling very charitable toward caulk, also, a big glob of the stuff on the broken tile would look terrible.  So I headed to Home Depot, looking for another solution, and to my surprise found one.

J-B Weld 8277 WaterWeld Underwater Epoxy Putty - 2 oz

JB WaterWeld is an epoxy putty designed to repair moist or underwater surfaces.  Better yet, it can be used on ceramic (like my tile) and many other slick surfaces.  It is also pretty cheap (about $4 for enough to rebuild an entire tile), pretty easy to work with (like a cross between drywall spackle and modeling clay), and cures in only an hour.    It is pretty much an ideal tile repair material in my opinion, but there is a catch.  It dries off white, so it may not match your tile, and like dry wall hole filler, it needs to be sanded if you want your patch to be smooth.  Fortunately for us we were already sanding our tile so that we could paint it, so the sanding wasn’t a problem, and we were painting the tile, so the color of the patch wasn’t an issue either.

As a side note, a lot of people use JB water weld to fix plumbing leaks, and a lot of people complain about its inability to fix pressurized plumbing leaks.  I didn’t use it to fix a pressurized leak, so I do not know if it works well for that application or not.  It worked wonderfully for my application, but I don’t think I would use it to permanently fix my plumbing – I would replace the leaking pipe, or call a plumber. 

One Amazon reviewer also mentioned that he used this stuff to fix his bridgework, and it did such a good job that he was able to “eat corn on the cob” ...  I don’t recommend this application either.

As a side, side note, some of the questions and answers for this product on Amazon are really funny.  My Favorite Question:  “bathtub”.  That’s right, simply “bathtub”.  The answers are the best.

To use JB WaterWeld;

• Prepare the surface to be repaired by sanding (if possible), cleaning, and drying
• Cut off a piece and squish it up for a bit (like sculpey clay), until it becomes soft. 
• Stick it on the surface to be repaired, and kind of smoosh it in to all of the cracks and holes and things that need to be filled. 
• Smooth it out a bit at this point so you don’t have to sand as much later (it cures pretty hard), just be sure all the cracks and holes you filled stay filled while you are smoothing it out.     
• Let it dry/cure.  It should take about an hour.
• Sand it smooth/level with the surrounding surfaces (if desired).
• Paint or otherwise finish the surface (again, if desired).

JB WaterWeld Applied

After Sanding

We of course sanded and painted our patches, and when we were finished the holes left by the shower doors were nearly invisible, and it was even hard to tell the broken tile was ever broken.

After Painting - The repair is nearly invisible!

All in all the easiest fix we have made to this bathroom so far, and I recommend JB WaterWeld without hesitation to fix your tile, but not your teeth.

(This post contains affiliate links, but I was not paid to review this product, I just like it).

Tile doesn't sand

If you have ever watched Supernatural, you know that the beginning of every show starts with backstory.  So much happens in each show that missing a couple of shows would leave you completely lost.  The backstory provides the context for the current insanity and makes it seem like the logical progression of events rather than a complete plot twist.  I feel like this post deserves backstory, so that you will know what brought us to this point.  We got to the current insanity through a logical progression of events.

We started out just a few weeks ago with the dream of a quick bathroom refresh.  A little paint here, some accessories there, and voila, a brand new bathroom.  Sure we wanted to fix a few small things along the way and remove those disgusting shower doors, but those were quick projects that wouldn’t take any time at all, right? 

Wrong!  We were wrong.  So far everything has taken about twice as long as we expected it to.  Well that was until we tried to deal with the tub surround tiles that looked pink after painting the bathroom.  This project was supposed to take a day of work, and 3 days of dry time.  So far  it has already taken 2 weeks, and we are all feeling a bit crazed.

So, what brought us to this point?  Here is the back story;

Sickly Beige Tile.

Next to our swatch of Paper White paint, our tiles looked sickly beige.  While I am not a fan of sickly beige, I felt like it wouldn’t stand out, and I could pretend that they were just slightly off white and I could live with it until we were able to do a full bathroom remodel in a couple of years. 

Tile looks pink after painting.

Once the Paper White covered the entire wall the tile no longer looked sickly beige.... it looked pink.  I will admit, I had been hoping that the slightly cool Paper White would tone down the yellow in the tile a little bit, but it worked a little too well.  The yellow undertones in the tile were nearly eliminated, but the red undertones were accentuated. 

After about a day of trying to convince myself that the pink tile didn’t bother me (and failing miserably), I started looking for a solution.  I had a couple of options;

• Living with the pink tile until we could do a complete remodel, the pink grating on my aesthetic sensibilities every time I walked by the bathroom.
• Getting one of those drop in plastic bathtub surrounds (I would rather live with the pink tile)
• Tiling the bathtub surround (I seriously considered this option, but it was so far out of the budget that this really wasn’t a viable possibility)
• Painting the tile

Painting the tile is not something I would have EVER considered prior to this, but suddenly it was an option that seemed filled with possibly.  Since we had already removed all of the caulk there wouldn't be that much prep work.  It would only take a couple of days from start to finish.  I wouldn't have to spend a fortune on new tile, and I could get the white tile I had wanted in the first place.  I could have my cake and eat it too.  In retrospect, painting the tile was too good to be true, and I should have seen this as a warning sign from the beginning.  

We decided to go with the Rust-oleum Tub and Tile refinishing kit.  It is a 2 part epoxy acrylic paint that can be rolled on like standard wall paint, but should hold up well under high humidity.  It was only $25 on Amazon when we bought it, and it had pretty great reviews.  The only warning we repeatedly saw from the Amazon reviewers was that the tile needed to be well prepared.  "No problem," we thought.  The kit would be delivered in two days (thanks Prime!), and we would do the prep while we were waiting on the kit and dive right into the painting when it arrived.  

What did the prep entail you ask?

1. Removing all of the caulk from the tile that would be painted
2. Sanding the tile. 

We had this in the bag.  We had already removed the caulk - step one done.  All we had left to do was sand the tile.  The Amazon reviewers really stressed this part.  The most knowledgeable (sounding) among them recommended that the shine be removed from the tile so that the paint would be able to grip the tile.  This made perfect sense (its what you do when you refinish wood), so this is what we set out to do.  

Our tub spout just twisted off.

About 40 years worth of hard water deposits.

First we had to remove our newly installed tub faucets, and the tub spout.  The tub spout just twisted off.  We were shocked to find what we think is nearly 40 years of hard water deposits.  It was pretty gross.  The good news is that when everything goes back on we will have a shiny new tub spout to match the new faucets.

We started sanding the tile with the 220 grit sandpaper that the kit recommended.  It didn't seem to do anything at all.

Then we switches to 60 grit (super course) sandpaper.  It made the tile shinier.  

I went to the web searching for a tile sanding solution and found Emery paper, a sandpaper made from silicon carbide.  We grabbed the only kind they had at Home Depot (which did not fit on any of our electric sanders) and went to town on the tile.  It worked, but sanding the tile by hand was maddenly slow.

After the belt sander.

Then finally one day while I was at work Firebeard took out the big guns - the belt sander.  While still at work I texted to ask how it was going, and the above picture was the response.  All of the flat tile surfaces had been throughly sanded and were ready to be painted, but the curved edges of the tiles were as shiny as ever.  

At this point we were starting to get a bit desperate, and I opted for some chemical warfare.  Muriatic acid is a fairly strong acid that when pretty heavily diluted is sometimes used as a hail Mary bathroom cleaner.  It is used heavily diluted and as a last resort because it has the tendency to remove the shine/finish from tile, porcelain, etc.  Fortunately this generally negative tendency of muriatic acid was exactly what we needed.  We strapped on the safety gear, and allowed the muriatic acid to eat as much of the remaining finish off the tiles as we dared (while keeping it off of everything else).

After this we did one last round of hand sanding, and then very through cleaning, and we were finally ready to paint.

Next time on, "This is taking significantly longer than we thought it would Mini Bathroom Remodeling Project,"  the painted tile.

(This post contains affiliate links.)

We have Floors in the Office!

Office to Do List:

• Remove old gross Carpet and Carpet Pad - Check
• Pull out the 12 Million Staples that were used to install the old carpet - Check
• Tear down old cat hairy window treatment and Discover Missing Piece of Crown Molding - Check and Check
• Remove base boards - Check
• Remove piece of crown molding next to missing molding - Check
• Scrap/Strip/Sand Peeling Paint from Molding - Check
• Patch holes and Prime patches - Check
• Prep Ceiling and Walls for paint - Check
• Paint Ceiling and Walls - Done
• Install Flooring - Done
• Sand and repaint Base Boards
• Reinstall Baseboards
• Install quarter round molding
• Reinstall Crown Molding with the addition of Missing Piece
• Finish Painting All Molding
• Make Pretty!

The last I left you in our home remodel saga, we had just finished preparing to paint the office, and now not only has the office been painted, we have floors.  Glorious floors that are neither covered in cat hair, or possessing an odd smell!  Is it weird that this makes me feel like a kid at Christmas time?

The flooring is glue together tongue and groove that does not click together.  We installed it completely on our own, and it was our first time installing this type of floor.  We had read or watched every single tutorial on the subject we could find before we started and read the full manufactures directions, even so, when we first started installing it, we started questioning the sanity of doing it ourselves.  By the time we finished (DAYS later) it had become easier, we we had become faster, and now the idea of doing the next room doesn't seem so bad.  I think I may go into the detail of installing it a bit when we do the next room and share some of the mistakes we made and the solutions we found.

Now that the floors are in, I feel like we have rounded a serious corner in our office remodel and we are finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  The walls and ceiling have been painted, and the floors are installed.  It is looking like a room again.

Ok, I will admit that there is still plenty of work to do, but it feels like I am almost there.  I feel motivated to hurry up and finish up the rest of the tasks on my list, so I can start to move furniture in!

Former formal living room turned office

I promised pictures of our new house when we moved in months ago, and I did not follow through.  I had forgotten just how long it takes to move in, and when you are doing some redecorating/remodeling on top of that, it takes even longer.  So my house has been looking a bit post apocalyptic, and I haven't been super keen on showing that off.  However, I've realized that is part of the process.  The house is going to look worse before it looks better, and it is a tad misleading to show the before and after and not the days/weeks/months of work that it took to get to the after, and say, "It was easy, you can do it!"  So, without further ado, the office/craft room/guest space; a work in progress.

Former Formal Dining Room

Our office is the former owner's formal dining room, which went nicely with their formal living room (to be seen later).  We are not that formal, and an office is a much more useful space for my family than a formal living space would be, so the former formal living room will be our very large dining room, and the former formal dining room will make a nice cozy office.

Office in the Making: To the Left

Office in the Making: To the Right

Carpet and baseboards have been removed, bad paint has been stripped, holes have been patched, and priming is complete.  We are finally just about ready to begin painting.  It has taken us a really long time to get to this point.  Why?  This...

And This...

Peeling Paint.  LAYERS of Peeling paint.

Being a good little worker that doesn't cut corners, I stripped the paint.  And stripped the paint.  And stripped the paint.  And stripped the paint.  

About 7 layers of paint (and many hours) later I was left with this:

And I realized that I had been an idiot, and learned a lesson.  I have no intention of staining that door, and the door is nothing special.  I simply need to make sure that my new paint adheres correctly.  So from now on, I will not strip when sanding will do, and I will not sand when liquid sanding will do, and I will not spend more time and money repairing an object than it would cost to simply replace it.

Next time painting, and figuring out what to do about this;

Mysteriously Missing Crown Moulding