Pulp Bath Reno 2

Pulp Bath Reno 2

As planned, this past week at the Pulp Bath Reno 2, was all about finishing off the floor tiling and I am happy to report, mission accomplished! The said, certainly a few challenges along the way. I’d mentioned we were using a fairly large format porcelain floor tile (approximately 30” long by 14” wide) which is all fine and good while you are putting down full size tiles. And then…it was time for the cuts!

Now tiles of this size are fantastic for quickly covering up the floors, but that same advantage gets a little dicey when it comes time to “cut to fit” the tile. Let me explain. A few years back (quite a few tile jobs ago) we invested in a very nice, professional QEP table tile wet saw, a real game changer, complete with a sliding feeder tray, and water pump spray feed. It has accompanied us from old Pulpland in Kentucky, through the 1800 Project and is now based here at the 257 Project. Its limitations? It only has 12” of clearance on the side that holds the saw motor and arm, you know, pretty much the goods. So if you need a cut on the long side of a 30” tile, say at the 14” mark, well, you pretty much can’t do that as you just run into the saw arm post. Which means you need to do an additional cut to get your piece less than the fixed 12” mark. Make sense? And then, if you are cutting on the long 30” side, well, the sliding tile table only holds up to a 16” tile, meaning you have to dangle the tile over the end, put in an initial cut on the dangle, shut off saw, slide the tile forward so the blade is now in the saw cut kerf you just made, make sure the saw blade is moving freely in that saw cut, then start it up and push through the rest of the way!

Then there are the specialty cuts, the ones that are round or curved (for drains, water feeds and toilet flanges). Everything you read mentions “diamond” blades for cutting porcelain tile, so figured we could use diamond tile bits to put a few pilot holes in the tile, then follow with a jig saw, using those diamond blades, right? In this particular case, not so much. Burned up 6 diamond tile bits and managed to go about an inch with the jig saw before that blade was toast, all while attempting the cutout for the toilet flange. Plan B? draw the circle for the cutout, cut the tile in half, use the table tile saw to slowly cut out a rough edge semi circle and then join those pieces together when setting on the floor, using the toilet itself as a “cover” for those rough cuts. Using that same method and/or knowing what our cutout was for and where it would be (aka, the tub drain tile cut was all going to be hidden by the tub itself, the water feed for the tub fill faucet to be covered by an escutcheon) and slowly but surely we got the rest of the tile in!

With tile in place and pre-grout, we decided to install our crown molding, which itself, is also a bit of a challenge. It was our first crown molding install experience and while we’ve done a ton of trim, chair rails and cove base molding, turns out crown molding is its own special animal! Watched a couple videos and then did a lot of staring, followed by a bunch of test cuts (most of which were bad). Remembered from the videos that you should cut crown molding upside down (which, trust me, gets a bit confusing as you have to do everything backwards). Also remembered that one video mentioned making a form template to hold the crown molding being that it has to be cut with it sitting on the chop saw at a 45 degree angle (crown molding protruding out from your wall to meet the ceiling), which tends to slide and just gets hard to hold on the long pieces. Also, cut a couple inside corner and outside corner samples which made the thought process a whole lot easier (as in, did not have to think, just followed the samples). Lastly, the length of the runs becomes very crucial when you are matching up the pieces for the inside and outside corners (it’s like angles on top of angles and an 1/8” here or there can throw the entire run off). Anyway, after another run to Lowe’s to pick up more molding, and having quite a few leftover miscues, we eventually got the last piece in. Whew!

From there some wall and ceiling paint and we were able to start putting in the light fixtures. We’ll continue with that till complete, get the floor tile grout done and then it is time to get busy on wall and shower tile. Things are coming together for sure!

Some progress pics adjacent and below. See you next week!