Tile Shopping

We had a week of hot weather for San Francisco. The poor cats have been losing their summer coats and getting their winter coats at the same time.

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Above is Bella trying to stay cool.

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Continuing on the shower rebuild in the laundry room bathroom, I made the shower pan. Because I’m using Kerdi as the waterproofing membrane, I use their special drain flange, and cast it into a bed of mortar.

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Above left is the finished shower pan. Above right mole is putting bondo onto the pressure treated wood we used for the back stairs. The wood gets incised when it’s treated, so has all those holes all over it. Looks much better when filled.

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Above: Before and after filling with Bondo.

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Over a year ago I made some balusters for the back stairs. I just got them primed, and will put them up soon.

But the most interesting thing we’ve done lately is go to Fireclay tile and we bought fancy tile for the bathroom. Above right are two nice decorative pieces we’ll add in. The only downside is that this tile is $$expensive$$ !!

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We went to their ‘boneyard’ and bought a couple of boxes of seconds at about 1/4 the price. Now we need to figure out exactly how much more we need and order it.

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Some other tile we looked at was at Latch tile in San Francisco. The person working there was super helpful and patient. Above left, cool shapes, but how to use it? Above right, these tiles are beautiful (reminded mole of her parent’s house) — maybe we’ll use a few as accents.

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We’ve been watching a lot of Downton Abbey lately… Funny, with all the fancy stuff “upstairs”, the thing that caught our eye was the tile in the kitchen. We may do something like this on the floor in the laundry room & bathroom. Above right Bella came to inspect right before I started plastering.

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This is the first time I’ve used basecoat plaster. It’s similar to plaster, but has sand in it. It goes on slightly rough so that the plaster sticks to it properly. Above you can see the ceiling after the basecoat is on and drying.

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On top of the basecoat, I put a finish coat of veneer plaster. I forgot how much I enjoy plastering. Yes, I did get quite a bit in my face and on the floor while working on the ceiling. Still, it’s very satisfying to start out the day with rough uneven surfaces, and end with perfectly smooth white plaster.

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In the laundry room, I taped all the joints. I don’t need to be very careful with the taping, because it will be covered in veneer plaster.

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Next: More plaster!