I think the thing that probably surprised me the most when we were picking our bathroom tiles was that Tamara and I agreed on the tiles almost right away.

The tile that is actually on the wall is the tile that we picked as our bathroom floor tile. The one that you see there is a rectangular tile, but we actually chose the square version of the tile.

The white tile that you can see is the tile that we choose as our bathroom wall tile. It looks plain white in the photo, but it actually has a ripple effect to the tile, which makes it look very cool we think and helps to break it up a bit.

The other mosaic tile we are using in feature strips at the head of the bath tub and at the side of the tub.

When we get that bathroom finished I’ll be taking photos so that you can see the final result with the bathroom tiles, but we think that it should turn out looking pretty stunning.

One of the things that helped us agree is that because of the urgency of the bathroom remodeling we had to choose tiles that were in stock, and only from this one tile shop. Despite this limitation we are really happy so far with the bathroom tiles that we chose.

Technorati Tags: bathroom, tiles, bathroom tiles, floor tiles, wall tiles, feature tiles

They finished tiling the front veranda. As a matter of fact I sitting on the veranda right now as I post this article.

As I said in the Waterproofing the Front Veranda post we were a bit apprehensive at first about tiling the front veranda. We had nice hardwood timber on the deck and didn’t really want to cover it up. Now that the tiles are laid on the veranda though we are very happy with the look of the tiles.

It turned out looking really good, but it was a bit of a process to get it done. Here are the steps that I observed them doing to lay the tiles on our veranda:

1. First they water proofed the veranda
2. They then needed to level the veranda where there were low spots
3. Laid the tiles on top of the grout
4. Grout the gaps between tiles
5. Installed a silicone expansion joint down the center of the veranda
6. Finally seal up the small gaps between the tiles and the walls and posts

I think that they still need to put the skirting back against the side of the house, but that should be it. It’s turned out really good.

Because the tiles are quite a lot higher than the original timber decking the tiles are actually higher than the inside floor in a few places. I think that we will need to install a storm door seal on the two french doors and the main entrance door. That way we should be able to stop any water from flowing in off the veranda and into the house.

Tags: Tiles, Tiling, Waterproofing

Our front veranda was originally a timber veranda. Because we are building internal rooms underneath it we are needing to waterproof the veranda so that the water can’t leak through.

We had been give some pretty poor advice previously that we could keep the timber and apply a heavy duty varnish to waterproof it, or we could not bother waterproofing it and actually add what was essentially a roof under the veranda so that the water that leaked through wouldn’t reach the rooms under it. Both of those were certainly not ideal, or even viable solutions.

What we decided to do instead was to tile the front veranda in order to waterproof it.

Before you can apply tile to the timber veranda you need to prepare it. It’s not actually the tile that provides the waterproofing, it’s the products under the tile that waterproof the veranda.

First thing they did was to lay some villaboard over the timber and then apply some waterproofing products to the villaboard. The villaboard provides a solid and level surface for the tile and grout to adhere to once they are laid.

On all the seams of the villaboard they used what looked like a silicone or fiberglass based tape to seal the small gaps.

The most interesting product that I watched them use was the liquid flashing. It was a very heavy and thick paste that adheres to pretty much everything that it touches.

We were very apprehensive at first about tiling over our hardwood timber veranda, but so far we have been impressed with the results.

There is more to come as the tiles get laid.

Tags: Building, Construction, Tiling, Tiles, Waterproofing