Tiling Two Bathrooms in One Day

Yes, you read that right, we tiled two bathrooms in one day.  No, obviously they were not complete from start to finish in one day, but the actual laying of the tiles was done all in one day!  To say the least, we were exhausted by the end of that day! Whew!

We've previously done lots of work to both bathrooms, but we've never got around to redoing the floors.  Now we have!  This is the master bathroom, my favorite!

Since installing the tile floor, it is completely beautiful, well, I think so anyway!

We started out with this lovely 1980's linoleum flooring.  Isn't she a beaut! Nope? Yeah, me too! I hated that ugly flooring, seriously!

The linoleum was a slight booger bear to remove.  My husband took a scraper to it to try and make it a faster job.  There were spots that were curling up around the edges, but then there were spots that were literally stuck like they were adhered with super glue! Crazy!

Almost there!  You can see the left over glue remnants there along the edges.  There was also this super fine dust under there. I guess the actual backing of the linoleum was breaking down after so many years of traffic.

This flooring scraper tool is the best thing to have if you have old linoleum to take up off your floors.  It will save your knees and back in the long run.

Now on to the guest bathroom.  This is what it originally looked like when we moved in.  Those yellow walls were very alarming and that vinyl base board is such an awful thing to have in you home bathroom!  Isn't that stuff for public restrooms?  This bathroom had cheap peel and stick tiles which were only slightly better than the linoleum in the other bathroom, but at least it wasn't that ugly!

Previously we removed the vinyl base board stuff and it made an extremely awful mess of the sheet rock in some spots, so we knew we'd have to use a tall base board to cover all that up in the end.  But in the meanwhile, I updated the wall color to a beautiful shade of gray.  Much better!  We lived with the room like this for quite some time and I was ok with it.

Back to current days, together we removed the peel and stick tiles.  It didn't take long at all, but in the end it was an extremely sticky situation to walk on.

TIP: My honey got the idea to use a small amount of grout powder that we had left over from the entry hall tile job (you can see that here) to sprinkle and spread over the sticky floor.  We spread it around with our patio broom and then used the shop vac to remove the remaining powder.  It worked like a champ, no more sticky floor to work on!

Ok, next we mixed up the mortar to lay the tiles.  We used a 5 gallon bucket and a mortar mixer attached to our power drill to mix it.  The mortar mixer is a must, you need it!  We used one bag (seen below) of mortar mix to do both bathrooms.

Click right here to see the mortar, we got ours at Home Depot.

NOTE: We used gray mortar because we were using a gray grout, but if you use a light colored grout, you will want to use white mortar.

We used 6" x 24" wood look Premium Ceramic Tiles in the color Capel Ash from Home Depot.  They were a discontinued item so we bought all they had on hand.  Since we've done other tile jobs in our home, we had everything we needed tool wise.  You will either need to purchase a tile cutting machine or rent one, because there is no doubt you will have to cut tiles to fit your space.  We have a wet tile saw, but you can use a manual cutting device as well.  The flooring trowel is also a must when tiling and we used 1/8" tile spacers to get a nice even space in between each tile.

Now this sets for 24 hours before we add the grout.  On to the master bathroom!

NOTE: If by chance you get overzealous on the mortar and it comes up through your grout lines, take a flat head screw driver and remove it before it completely sets.  You'll save yourself lots of headache if you do so!  Also, don't forget to remove your spacers after about 30 minutes of sitting.

Before you start your grouting job, you will need at least two large buckets of clean water, grout sponges, a rubber grout float and knee pads! Don't leave off the knee pads!

Here's the sanded grout we used, its from Home Depot.

After all the grout is in, we let it sit for about 15 minutes and then start the sponge clean up process.  Make sure you are using a damp sponge and not a dripping wet sponge.  You don't want too much excess water going on your freshly grouted tile.

Here it is with the all new floor and beautiful baseboards! Now doesn't that look nice? Yes it does, if I do say so myself!

I don't have all the step by step pictures of the master bathroom because we were trying to hurry before our mortar went too dry, so I was helping too and couldn't take the time to snap pictures.  Basically it was the same steps as above for this room.

Here's a little flash back of when I painted over the bright blinding yellow to a softer prettier gray.

And, the previous owners had a leak in the a/c unit (its in the attic) and never painted the ceiling, so I did that too!

I also gave the door a nice coat of white paint and painted the hardware while I was at it too.

Tah Dah! Isn't it pretty? I think so too!  A beautiful tiled floor makes all the difference in a bathroom, so even though its exhausting work, its always worth it in the end!

Click here if you want to see what else we've done to the master bathroom.

If you loved this idea and want to save it for later, be sure to pin it to your favorite Pinterest board.  I have a Pinterest board all set up just for Bathroom Beauty and I'm pinning something new every day. Won't you join me?

GREAT NEWS!  I now have an Amazon Storefront!  If you ever want to purchase anything I'm showing you here, you can pop over to my shop and see what I've picked out for you! Click right here to visit.


It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!

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