Feb 18th...the shower

Let me just start off by saying that $1500 is a lot of money. It's a lot of money to pay someone to install tile in our shower. It's a lot of money that we can certainly use for other things. So, we decided that we can lay the tile and save some cash. Now I don't know if any of you have ever put up tile before, but if you have, then you will fully understand our first experience with tiling. One of the guys that's been working for us worked on the tile last Thursday (I think...) and got most of the ceiling done and a few tiles on the wall. Friday we were out of school and started tiling that afternoon. We helped lacquer cabinets Friday morning, but that's another post entirely. Here's a picture of what it looked like when we started.

We knew that the natural slate tile that we bought was ungauged (very uneven...some parts very thin, some thick, and not perfectly square either) and would be difficult to get it to look right. Our contractor has a wet-saw set up in our bedroom and when he didn't have me sanding cabinets doors, I was cutting tile for Doyle.

Here's a picture of Doyle starting on one of the benches.

We didn't mind that all of the grout lines would be slightly different due to the irregularity of the tile and we really like the rustic look, so we kept on tiling. Hours of tiling...days of tiling. Doyle tiled until late Friday night, all day Saturday and Saturday night, Sunday afternoon until late...

...all day Monday (out of school for President's day), after school Tuesday, after school Wednesday, and after school Thursday! Why did it take so long? Maybe the type of tile, maybe the fact that it was our first tile job, maybe it was because Doyle worked by himself most of the time (dang cabinets), or maybe it was just because the shower is freaking huge! (It's at least 250 square feet of tile!) It's so big that the guys at the bank asked if we were going to have rotating car wash brushes installed so that we can walk in one side dirty and come out the other side clean. I wonder where we can order those...

We finally put up the last tile today and cleaned all of the grout lines. Now we just have to clean the tile, seal it, grout it (which I've heard it pretty difficult) and then seal it again several times. We're beginning to think that $1500 was a bargain.
I just want to tell you that my wonderful, sweet, loving husband, who didn't want to do anything with building the house "Just hand me the keys, please" has earned so many brownie points that I won't ever be able to repay him. He has done such a great job and the shower looks so good!
Here's two more pictures. The one on the left is our bathroom (obviously not finished, but getting much closer. This isn't a picture from today because I forgot to take one.) and on the right is the inspiration bathroom. I can't wait until ours is finished.