The Saga's Almost Over! Part V

I am occasionally challenging. Strong willed, stubborn, trying; I’ve heard a few words synonymous with “strong personality.” I choose to think of this as having standards and expectations. Toe-may-toe, Toe-mah-toe.

The point of this mini-diatribe is that in working on finishing the bathroom (nope, not done yet!), I’ve had to bring in a few sub-contractors to do things that are past my skill level. For example, I don’t generally do plumbing or electrical. I also chose not to lay the marble floor in the bathroom because I didn’t think I could get the cuts precise enough for the 1”x2” basket weave to up to the aforementioned standards. So I brought in a flooring contractor with awesome ratings instead.

Now, I hired this contractor in June while The Roommate was out of the country for a while. I did it so that I could get a move on with getting the plumbing in and the rest of the room complete. I got the bid early in the week and they were in on Thursday to lay the floor – I’d been pretty clear we were tight on time since The Roommate was set to return in a few days.

The installer got to work and was about 65% through the floor when he realized that the tile supplier had sent about ½ white tile sheets and ½ grey tile sheets and came to tell me. Had we known this before, we could have either come up with a different pattern or just worked with the supplier to send the correct stuff out. But, since the floor was not in a position to be ripped up (read Part III of the Saga to hear all about the original boards and sub-floor!), we had to keep going.

Most of the white went under the tub, vanity, perimeter and any other place that wouldn’t be seen or at least not obvious. But we ran out of grey for good with about 6 sq. ft. to go – right in front of the door. So there are 6 whiter tiles than the rest of the room. I’m choosing to ignore that for the time being and I’ll consider staining them later.

A few days later, they came in to grout and ran out so they had to come back to complete it. Let me tell you, I hated the grout color. It was a light dove grey (I thought it would be darker!) and didn’t give the floor any definition. I went to the Tile Shop and talked through all of the possible options to make it darker and Darrin (who’s the best for any tile-y questions you may have) told me to go home and put some water on it to see if I liked the color it was when wet.

Dry Grout

 

Fortunately, the answer was yes and I got some sealant for the floor. I got a call from the contractor too asking if I was ready for a final walk through. Since the floor wasn’t yet sealed and the transition piece not yet installed, I reminded them of that and suggested we schedule the walk through for after the floor was completed. We went back and forth for a while on whether sealing was included in the proposal for work (which it was) and they agreed to come in and seal the floor.

Wet Grout

Three weeks to the day later, I had a sealed floor. With dirt and dust and anything else that had been on the floor that morning sealed in. It felt dirty just walking on it. Yuck. You can especially see it in the bright spots.

 

 

As The Roommate can attest, I almost lost it. I spent almost FOUR HOURS that night razor blading off the sealant of each little tile (The Roommate stayed up with me to keep me company) so that it wouldn’t set looking and feeling dirty.

I called up the contractor the next day and suuuper nicely explained the situation. With no argument, he cut my balance in half and we moved on. We did a final walk-through of the un-sealed floor and called it good.

Here’s our final product. I love that this bathroom is coming together! Do you love the floor as much as I do?!