The Shower Tile Installation Is Finished!

I was beginning to think that I wouldn’t see this day until sometime in 2022, but I finally finished installing all of the tile in the master bathroom shower last night. It still needs to be cleaned up and grouted/caulked, but that should be a relatively quick project compared to the actual tiling.

Earlier this week, I still needed to tile the shower niche…

…as well as the narrow wall of the shower (i.e., the wall where the bathtub will sit just on the other side).

Well, as of last night, both of those areas are done, which means that all of the shower tile has been installed.

Here’s a look at how I did the niche tile…

That’s not quite what I had planned, but I tried about ten different tile layouts with three different tiles used individually in various layouts, as well as in combinations with each other (the shower wall tile, the glass penny round accent tile, and the shower floor tile), and I just wasn’t happy with any of them. Of all of the options, this simple vertical application of the wall tile was the one I liked the most since I felt like the vertical arrangement was a nod to the smaller vertical tiles around the bottom of the walls. Of course, all of this will be a lot less noticeable when it’s all grouted, so everything will look a lot more subtle than it does now with the dark (shadowy) grout lines showing.

And here’s the entry wall with all of its tile…

That wall took a long time because I hadn’t yet installed the vertical tiles along the bottom, and each one of those has to be measured and cut individually. In other words, it’s not like I can just cut a batch of tiles at 4.5 inches because that floor is sloped. And since I’m not a tile pro, I’m pretty slow at the specialized cuts. But once I got that bottom row done, the rest was pretty simple and straightforward. Sadly, that’s the wall with the main water control that requires the 8-inch back plate that I somehow managed to lose. So I had to order another one, and the shower won’t officially be finished until that arrives. And since that control is on the side wall, we can use the shower even without that plate installed.

When I finished that, I was just about to empty my mortar bucket and get everything cleaned up, and I realized that I had enough mortar to finish up the floor in the toilet area. It has looked like this for quite a while now…

I’ve been dreading this for a while now because the unfinished area at the entry to the toilet area was narrower than the area at the back. And it wasn’t just a little off. It was just over an inch off.

So instead of just installing full, intact sheets of the 2 x 2 tiles, I ended up cutting the sheets into strips of tiles (6 tiles on each strip), and installing the strips very carefully so that the grout lines gradually got wider towards the back wall.

I was both shocked and very pleased that that plan seemed to work out just fine, and I’m confident that once it’s grouted, no one will be able to tell that there’s anything different about those grout lines from front to back. In fact, I can’t really tell with it as it is.

So I’m very excited to have that tile installed as well. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I should be able to get all of this (the whole shower and this floor) cleaned up, grouted, and have the shower fixtures installed this weekend. I will feel such a sense of accomplishment to finally have these things done!!

Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.

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