Setbacks and Moving Forward | One Room Challenge: Week Five
Welcome back for week five of the One Room Challenge! If you missed anything so far, you can catch up here on my powder room renovation:
Week One: Before Photos & Moodboard
Week Two: Demo & Painting
Week Three: Lighting an Oddly-Shaped Space
Week Four: Tiling Two Ways
So what’s on the docket for this week as I stare down the deadline? Floor tile! If that sounds familiar, you’re right. If you think last week’s post included a photo of my floor tile all laid and waiting for grout, you’re also right. Here’s the bathroom floor now:
Yeah.. it’s been a rough week.
I’ll try to keep the story short but essentially, tile is applied using mortar/adhesive to a smooth, level layer laid on top of the subfloor, usually some kind of backer board with a cement component. When I pulled up the hardwood in this room a board like this was beneath it, and had old mortar on it - evidence that it had been tiled on previously. It wasn’t a product I recognized but the house is 80 years old, I don’t recognize the brand or product names of a lot of things. It looked like cement board, the mortar remnants on it made it feel like cement board, and it had been tiled on previously. I scraped off any residual mortar and got to work.
My tiles were supposed to be dry and ready for grout after 24-72 hours so I kept checking back. 24 hours. Then, 48 and 72. By day 4 I was nervous. By day 5 I was increasing the heat in the house. On day 6 I called the company that manufacture the tile and put a space heater in the room.
On day 8 I went in to check if a tile was set and brushing it with my finger moved it. I was able to pull up 90% of the tiles in the room just using my fingers - something was wrong. So I’ve spent the last few days removing all the tiles and then the backer board. It wasn’t cement board like I thought, it was hardboard. Hardboard is a compressed wood product, it’s flimsy, often used on the backs of cabinets. It never should have been installed on a floor. It definitely shouldn’t have been tiled over. And you know what? I should have noticed.
lessons learned
Never assume. It’s not my first rodeo with this house and I should have known better than to make an assumption, even if the context clues looked right. There are no guarantees, and I should have pulled up a section of the board to verify that all was good BEFORE I started tiling.
Always read reviews. I had used Mapei thinset and Mapei tile adhesive to lay tile previously, both of which can be purchased at Lowe’s. For this project I was already at Home Depot so I bought AcrylPro, a different brand of adhesive. I was in-store so I didn’t see reviews like I would have on the website. It was the only one they carried so I just bought it. Big mistake. Looking back now, the reviews are awful and I would have known immediately it wouldn’t have worked, even if the base layer had been good. If I’d used my normal thinset I probably would have gotten away with the hardboard.
Everyone makes mistakes. This is the biggest thing I want to be transparent about on this blog and on my Instagram. I am not a professional. I work really hard, and I do a lot of research, and by this point I think I have a decent amount of experience - but I still screw up a lot. And even if I’ve done something successfully before, I can still encounter new challenges or obstacles. It’s okay if your project goes awry, and it’s okay to feel sad about that.
what’s next?
Moving forward I’ll be painstakingly removing the old hardboard, installing fresh cement board, and retiling the whole room before I can finally grout and move forward.
I don’t know if I’m going to finish the One Room Challenge in time for the November 29th deadline. It’s certainly possible, but I’m also pretty burnt out - I’ve been working on this room nearly every single day (in some capacity) for 6 weeks now. I can push that hard for a while, but I’m running out of steam so things are going to slow down a little. I still need this bathroom usable so of course I’ll be working as quickly as I can, but I’m also trying to let myself take some breaks.
You can continue to follow the project on Instagram where I’m hopeful I’ll be back into the tiling and grouting stages soon! And of course I’ll be sharing the finished space as soon as I can, right here on the blog. In the meantime, check out all the other awesome participant projects over on the One Room Challenge blog - most of them are not re-doing a bunch of the work they already did!
