Pool House Expansion Project, Day 81 - 85 - 15-19/01/16

Painting, Tiling, Repairs, and Hose Hangers

Days Eighty One To Eighty Five, 15 - 19 January, 2016

Finally getting some color into the inside of the house. This is a blue-colored cement wash. I think it's the second coat here.

Bedroom Is Becoming Blue

Brand new 24" tile cutter. Unfortunately, it doesn't work so well for porcelain tile. The tile is too hard and brittle to make a really clean cut with it. So, the guys are continuing to use their electric grinding wheel to cut the floor tile. It works well, just dangerous and very noisy. Dangerous, because here in Belize, the first thing you do upon getting a new grinder is to take the safety guard off of it.

Brand New 24" Tile Cutter

Here's a shot of the floor tile in the east walkway. It's getting close to being done.

East Side Walkway Is Getting There

George is sprinkling water over the concrete floor prior to applying Thinset. Even with careful sweeping, there's still a fine layer of dust that, unless you wet it, can interfere with the Thinset adhesive qualities.

George Sprinkling Water Prior To Spreading Thinset

Had a bit of a brain-fart this morning. I had talked with Dianna about the subway tile for the shower. Somehow, the measurement of 5" x 7" came up as being the dimensions of the tile. So, I headed off into town to get fourteen square meters of five-by-seven inch, white, subway tile.

I went to Villa's Imports, Lano's Hardware - downtown and in Ranchito, Cinty's - Junior's and the younger brother's, Chan's Hardware out on San Andres Road, and to Creative Tile. No one had five-by-seven inch tile. Several had 8" x 12", but that wasn't what I needed... Or, was it?

After I got back home, I was side-tracked doing something else, when it hit me, that maybe I should measure the subway tiles already up in the original pool house shower.

Hmmmph. Whaddya know? It's eight by twelve. Stupid stuff anyway, I thought to myself.

So, it was back to Creative Tile to get eight-by-twelve inch, white, subway tile. Enough to cover 14 square meters, about ten boxes.

So, the total comes up to be $180 BZD or so. I dig into my wallet. Ooops. Five bucks short. No problem. I'll just use plastic. Except there is a problem. Using plastic of any flavor, the cost goes up to $200. Seems there's a twenty percent discount to use cash.

I told the girl, "Twenty percent is twenty percent. I'll be back." I jumped back in the Sport Trac and headed home for some more cash.

Here's the result after completing the transaction at Creative. Ten boxes of eight-by-twelve, white, subway tile. The grout in the picture wasn't part of this deal. It's just there for effect.

Shower Tile and Bags of Grout

A fancy angle in the walkway tiling project. It kinda pissed off both Dianna and me that they were wasting time with fancy cuts, when we just want to get the job done, till we found out from Omar that, no, it's not a fancy cut just to be fancy, it's necessary because of the built-in slope of one-quarter inch toward the outside, all the way around the walkway.

Oh. OK. Well, in that case, you're doing a damned fine job. Keep up the good work.

They Got Fancy On Us

Here's a look at the floor tile in the area by where the sliding glass doors will be that we're calling the veranda.

Tile Up To Where Sliding Glass Doors Will Be

That is one fine looking tile, if I do say so myself.

West Side Walkway Getting There As Well

And now the interior wood-look tile (also porcelain) is being set.

Shot of the Main Tile Work

In the dining room, the baseboard area had to be refinished because when the baseboard tile was taken up, it pulled quite a bit of the backing block concrete and left gouges and some holes in its place.

Dining Room Baseboard Area Refinished

Errol did the baseboard repairs and here he's patching some nail and screw holes prior to applying some new paint in the dining room.

Errol Patching Dining Room Wall Holes

The walkway on the west side is nearing the stage where they can begin grouting. That should move along fast as we're allowing only an eighth-of-an-inch between tiles.

Looking Down the Walkway

The east-side walkway tiles are speedily nearing completion as well. Here, Dianna is sneaking a peek around to the south-side walkway.

Dianna Looking Down the South Walkway

Is that just fine looking. I can't wait till it's done.

Almost Ready For Grout

The living room tiling is moving right along. That is going to be just spectacular, I think.

Living Room Another Angle

Here's what Dianna was peeking around to see. The south-side walkway. Still needs some tile to be applied, but is close to completion as well.

South Walkway Needs more Tile

Errol has been busy painting the dining room. There's two different shades of blue there. Your eyes aren't playing tricks with you.

Dining Room New Paint

Tile in the office is better than half-way done.

Tiling the Office

While all that was going on, I re-hung the water hose hanger on the back of the pool house and strapped the PVC pipe to the hanger to prevent it becoming broken.

Rehung Water Hose Hanger

There's many more photos than appear in each posting. You can see all the photos of the construction project on Flickr at: https://www.flickr.com/gp/winjama/0wVc3s. There will be new photos added each day of the project.