Tile Project: Man Power

Todd is a jack of all trades which, especially since my name is Jil, obviously works in my favor in more ways than one. He knows a little, often times a lot about a lot of things: electric work, plumbing, roofing, tiling, construction, landscaping, and baby-making.

His latest project revolved around an interesting feature in our home, an interior window:

The room from which this picture was taken is now our den, but back in the day, it was once a porch. Well, a covered porch, since above me (I'm blogging on the couch) are the beams that are outside on our smaller, current porch. Anyways, the previous owners added walls and a big sliding glass door, so coupling the sun exposure through the glass and the flat, porch-style roof above, this room is basically still a porch since it gets so goddamn hot in summer. But I digress.

The previous owners kept that strange interior window and at first, I was desperate for Todd to wall it in. It was weird, and even worse, it helped sound travel from the TV room to Alex's room. I am a loud woman. I was in a panic. I needed soundproofing. But the longer we stayed here, the more attached we got to it. We could see Alexandra easily, the light passed from backyard to front yard and back again, and... well, honestly, the visual and the sunlight were the only things to make it a now permanent fixture.

But... oh, God, the sill of that window, on the den side, was disgusting. It was covered with this crap ass Formica style linoleum, and if that doesn't sound bad enough, it was two pieces, stapled together in the middle. The years of use and evident exposure to some elements had made it curl up on the edges, bow and buckle in spots.

Finally, Todd had enough. He ripped the shit up, down to the original wood, and ran a few screws through the sill just to make sure the structure was solid, and wouldn't flex and ruin his tile job. Then he painted it with Red Guard, and apparently had a cup of coffee:

Then he laid out the tile, figuring out what pattern he wanted. By the way, my sweet man took these photos, so understand that this next photo does not demonstrate his pattern, but merely shows that the sweet beast did what I asked: "OMG could you take photos of your tile project?? Just show the steps so I can put them on my blog and maybe someone will want to do the same thing!" And, well, he did just that:

They were kinda expensive, but then, the Red Guard is also really fucking expensive. Whatever. We're worth it. Next Todd started laying down the thin set (Todd used an acrylic based glue, and troweled it on), laying the tile and putting those little plastic cross thingies to make sure the grout spaces between each tile are uniform:

After completion, but before the grout was laid out, here's how it looked:

And now, after all is said and done:

`
Now, you have to admit, that is sexy as hell. And that, basically, is life as a wife of a jack of all trades. And, as it turns out, I'm also the mother of a jack of all trades:

"I dunno how this works dada, but I am gonna figure it out. Then, we're gonna BUILD"