Posted on by locho55

Euclid Street Airbnb Week 4: Bathroom Tile and a Million Small Jobs

Woof week 4 and we are definitely starting to feel the pain. Its never easy to feel like you keep adding to the list faster than you can cross it off. I feel like I live at home depot. This week kind of felt like we were running on a treadmill. We had every intention of going somewhere, and it sure felt like we ran a marathon, but we looked up and found ourselves in the same place that we started. Our turning point was getting most of the wall tile in the bathroom. This was a huge morale boost for us. Finally something going up, not coming down! The gleaming white tiles made a huge difference in the feel of the tiny bathroom. No more dingy Pittsburgh Toilet (For those of you aren’t yinzers, a Pittsburgh toilet it just a toilet and sink just chillin’ wide open in the basement so that people coming in from the steel mills and mines could clean up without getting the house dirty). It does feel like we are rounding a corner, hopefully next week will start to really show the end result.

Here is what we did this week:

  • Painted the Bedroom. This included the ceiling tiles, the ceiling cross members and also the walls. Everything is now a fresh coat of white
  • We put in a new sill and also trimmed out the windows in the kitchen and bedroom
  • Decided on the floating shelve dimensions and design. We opted for the floating shelf steel brackets, which were only $15 for a set of 8. We got those set up and ready for the backsplash tile to go around it
  • We started the concrete landing outback, we are about half way through
  • We scraped and painted the exterior door frame along with the lower portion of the back porch and house. This really freshened up the entrance. With the fresh coat on the lower portion, it looks like the rest of the wall needs some love. We are going to paint the whole side of the house now… Hooray for not being able to let things go!
  • The kitchen drywall is perfecto and ready for a coat of paint
  • 2 coats of Redgard in the bathroom, which is a sealant for under the tile.
  • Last but not least, we got a lot of tile done in the bathroom
What do you think of the new fall color? Its allllot of red. This is what the redgard looks like when its up. It actually starts as a barbie pink and dries red. This will provide a vapor tight seal under the tile. We used this on our upstairs bathroom and so far, 3 years later, its been great.
We are…… starting the tile! (Penn state is the other appropriate answer) It is important that the tile is level, which is why you set the tile one or 2 courses up off the floor. We set the wooden guides to level so we can lay the tile starting there. We will run the floor tile next and finish the last row after the floor is in. This allows for straight tile and prevents you from mucking up new floor tile.
6 hours later… so bright and so clean! We still have the 1/8″ spacers in there, they are left up for 24 hours. We might grout next, just because we are doing a dark gray grout on the walls and and white on the floor. Once again, protect the floor. For all tilling we highly recommend a tile saw . This guys has more than paid for itself. If you are DIYing a Bathroom, $150, you wont regret it.
The light isn’t great in this pic, but the walls are painted thanks to Mum for coming an chipping in! I got the ceiling tiles painted as well and Kasey trimmed around the window. You can see the hardwood stacked in the middle of the room has made an excellent table.
I realized after painting this, I really didn’t have a good before picture. We did paint the lower two colors and started on the brick (which is already painted, its just faded) Kasey also pointed out that I may have gone hog wild in painting the metal cabinet… and asked me if I was going to spray the grass green. Oops. You can also see where we had to re-point the brick in some areas. We will paint the entire brick face. Also not shown is the start of the concrete platform and steps going up into the yard. My dad helped get that going, thanks for the help!
Kasey putting up the floating shelf anchors. The floating shelves in the kitchen are going to open the space immensely. These are going up before the tile back splash. It is helpful to do this step before tile; the studs are easy to find and will securely anchor the shelves

I am excited for week 5, we have slipped on our schedule, but we are still plugging away. I think in this next week, we are going to start feeling like a finished space. Tune in next week, byeeee!