Portland Primary Bath: Our First Tile Project

Before I got very far along in the project, after tearing out the original fixtures, walls, glass block, vinyl flooring, but still working on leveling ceiling and floor, Jeff moved to Albuquerque for his new job, so it was time for me to focus. Jeff came up to help for weekends about once a month for the 7 months I remained in Portland to get the house and yard ready for sale in a so-so market. We had lots of plans for the house, and materials on hand, but hadn’t gotten around to them yet.

This first photo is NOT our bathroom; it’s the tile advertisement that inspired me.

The floor and the walls in the corner alcove show the tile we used for our primary bath remodel,
despite how coldly gray they look in some of the daylight photos below.
Looking in from the closet after Jeff and I pulled a frantic all-nighter and minutes before driving away for the last time.
Prior to any tile work, we had to tear out much of the ceiling and level it. The 3/4″ waves would have been very visible with tile right up against the ceiling. The floor also had a 3/4″ bend that had to be remedied through drastic means before installing electric heating cable and tile.
Seeing this brings back memories of never-ending prep, measuring, cutting, laying, cleaning, … Working by myself I could lay about 6 tiles in a session. I couldn’t carry a full bucket of freshly mixed thinset up the outdoor flight of stairs from the driveway, so I mixed half a batch at a time and still sometimes ran up against its spreadable time.
The floor drain is under the narrow tiles. They are attached to a metal cover than lifts out to access the hair filter and drain.
My son Mike came to help for over a week. We did the cutting downstairs on the driveway and laid the tiles out on the newly-coated garage floor. This is part of the wall in the next photo. We were both a mess from working all hours.
With Mike there to carry the bucket of thinset up the stairs and help install the tiles, we were able to lay over a dozen tiles at a time. The horizontal lines of the tile had to line up all the way around the main and shower spaces, without leaving narrow tile pieces at either top or bottom. Also had to make sure not to end up with narrow vertical tile pieces at the doors and corners. Similar concerns for the floor tile, and making the floor tiles line up with the wall tiles, so all the tile placement had to be planned in advance. Had we used different sized tiles on the floor and the walls, it would have been a little easier.
LED strip lighting behind top of mirrors done (photo taken at night makes it look terrible); LED sconces not up yet.
Invisibly mounting heavy mirrors 1″ off the wall was a project in itself.
I designed strip-LED sconces for our long-anticipated primary bath remodel. Jeff fabbed the fixtures and I screen printed, fused, and slumped the glass. The leaf patterns are from photos of a neighbor’s birch tree.
I was determined to have no visible hardware holding the glass panel. Found a place in Portland to install it. I left slots in the tile at top and bottom. They measured carefully, cut the glass to size, slipped it in, and filled the gaps with clear silicone. It cost less than using brackets or frames, but the framing and tile had to be straight and level.
I don’t remember why that strip of yellow tape is on the wall above the hand shower.
We installed the plumbing fixtures the last night we were there, tested without splashing any drops on the glass, but never got to shower in it. Note the marble shelves: I used Bob Heath’s glass lathe and Ann Cavanaugh’s lathe wheel to grind slanted drainage grooves. This project was designed, materials purchased, and started before we found out we were moving away. We even built a powerful, adjustable, extra-quiet shower exhaust system in the attic. (hand-made plastic intake grill at upper left)
The soaking tub is within the shower enclosure, so no concerns about dripping on the floor!
The bath in the new “second primary” that replaced my shop did NOT get custom treatment. I ordered all these pieces on sale from homedepot.com. …ok, the stone backsplash is custom. I had a few tiles left over from the fireplace and my saw was already set up. It goes really well with the vinyl plank flooring. My brother and nephew came over to help install the curved glass shower doors.
This was a wonderful shop for woodworking and glass art when it didn’t have carpet or a closet and bathroom carved out of it. The veranda, which is under the main-floor deck, runs all across the back of the house, with a wooded environmental zone at the edge of the property. We always knew the house wouldn’t be sellable with two bedrooms and two shops so we had a version of the original house plan drawn up with a suite of two normal-sized bedrooms and a shared bath. But when I went to do the conversion, I realized that instead of seeing the doors and windows when you looked into the room, the “view” would have been a dark hallway with doors to the bedrooms and bath. Such a waste, so I decided on one big room, which could be a bedroom, pair of bedrooms, media room, or even a mother-in-law suite if the adjoining mudroom was converted to a galley kitchen.
Another of the many projects to finish was the glass backsplashes in the kitchen and dining area. The upper part is sheets of textured Tekta clear, back-painted with tinted brush-on primer. The lower part is tack-fused mosaics that match stained glass panels, inspired by FL Wright “Wheat” light screens, that Jeff had made for the pantry and office doors (one door is in the reflection above the cooktop). The original backsplash behind the cooktop is basic window glass with black spray primer on the back.
To get the “grout lines”, I used clear glass with a gold irid coating for the bottom layer and placed the mosaic pieces with 1/8″ gaps between them. The backing for the mosaics had to be reflective or the glass looked dead, so I glued the glass to a thin sheet of a specific type of aluminum, brushed grain oriented vertically, with clear silicone, but only at the very edges or you could see the adhesive. If the grain ran horizontal, there were bright reflections. Who knew there would be so many picky details? But this was probably the most enjoyable project in the remodel because it wasn’t overwhelming, just repetitive.