As you know, if you read this blog regularly, we usually have a late start on Sundays. Let's face it, who wouldn't loaf around in bed for an extra 45 minutes if they could get away with it? Yada yada...me too!
This is how the tile looked after the straight edge was removed and we had a good clean up of excess tile adhesive.
Today was fill-in day, so we started with the top edge...
And moved on to the area around the firebox.
Time for the hearth. Started with a layer of thin set mortar to bed in the underlay.
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We're using Schluter's Ditra uncoupling membrane - this allows installation of tile over any load bearing substrate, it says here. I used my Great Uncle Herbert's old wooden trowel to bed down the underlay. I'll be writing a post in the future about some of the tools I've inherited over the years and those friends and family they've come from.
We started tiling at the center of the hearth. Unfortunately the Ditra membrane was shipped to us rolled up, and I didn't think to flatten it out ahead of time. After the first few tiles went down, the underlay was still trying to re-roll itself
That particular problem was solved with a couple of dumbbells we just happen to have kicking around...
Time to mix what we sincerely hope will be the last batch of thinset mortar for this project. To make sure, I took the rest of the bag down to the basement afterwards.....so...um...we will probably need some more now.
The hearth tile required another batch of individually cut tile at both sides, and we took our time installing them and made sure we got all the pieces the right way round.
I screwed down several bits of scrap wood to hold everything in place while to mortar took hold.
After a couple of hours of set-up time we took off the dumbbells and had a good clean up.
After that there was just enough time left to take the first three (3) crates of tools down to the basement and have a preliminary attempt at vacuuming up dust. The grouting can wait for another time...