Parent Visit and TILING!

My parents came out for a visit for a week.  I was so excited to have them come.  It had been a long time since they'd been to my house.  When my mom found out I was on the Houston "Time Out For Women" team, she decided to come out for a visit.  When I mentioned to my dad that I wanted to have the shower in my bathroom re-tiled, he decided to come out too since he loves projects and has really been into tiling floors the last little bit.

FYI - this is going to be a play by play of the shower transformation with a few other fun things thrown in, so if home renovation doesn't interest you, you may want to move quickly through this post! :)  Step 1 was to take off the door/glass walls to the shower.

My dad was slowly prying off tiles, but it was taking a long time.  He found it was much quicker to beat them with a hammer.

It was loud and very dusty and my entire upstairs was covered with a thin film of dust.

My mom and I cleaned out the old cement board so we could get started on the next phase.

We bought some NEW cement board/hardy backer and used some of the scraps from my Aunt Maylene and Uncle Darrell's house since they've got a contractor working on their house right now.  Luckily, they had their professional shower guys over there so my dad got some tips from them.

My dad taped and mudded the seams between the edges of the backer board.

Once that was dry we painted this waterproof sealer over everything.  I really liked the color.

Alas, I didn't like it well enough to forego the tile! 

So once that was good and dry, my dad decided we should do the bottom layer of tile before we went to be so it would be solid and hold the rest of the tile in place.

I'm sure it wasn't the most comfortable position for a project!

Those tiles did NOT want to stay up so we employed my leopard print duck tape.

Not long after that, my dad really felt like he should take those down, so he did.  We looked online and saw that you should NOT do the bottom first.  He measured space for the bottom layer, the nailed a board around to hold up the second layer from the bottom and then built up from there.

My mom was the official mixer of the thinset.  She found her hand to be the best way to mix thoroughly!

We added a mosaic strip above the 12x12 inch tiles.

I had to get a close-up so you could see the lovely glass pieces interspersed in with the porcelain.

It was then time for the 6x6 inch tiles.

My co-worker, Faye, had a wet tile saw that she let me borrow for this project.

That thing was LOUD, but effective!  Thanks, Faye!

We finally got everything but the bottom row up.  The duck tape came in handy for those edge pieces that didn't have a lot of support.  This was the last thing that my mom and I saw before heading off to . . . 

Time Out for Women in The Woodlands.  Sadly, this is the only picture I took of the whole event which was Friday evening through late Saturday afternoon.  We had a great time.  The speakers were amazing, I enjoyed seeing LOTS of friends, and we had a great lunch with the Chappell ladies!

When we got home, we saw that my dad had got the bottom row of tile up, and he'd grouted everything.  He was just cleaning the grout off when we got home.

Now another tiling break!  I made my parents these shirts for their 40th anniversary.  The front has a picture of them when they were first married.  On top of the picture it says "For Time and All Eternity" and the bottom says "1972 - Forever."

You can probably see the back, but both shirts together read, "Together Since 1972."  Their anniversary actually isn't until Sept 29th, but I wanted to see them get these and get pictures of them wearing the shirts!  Basically, I just couldn't wait.  Not pictured are the ping pong party we had Saturday night and my dad also gave a fireside at the Hafer building for the Single Adults in the area.  It was great as usual!

I did get a picture of our fun Bushman FHE on Monday night.  We had the Calls and the Johnsons & Rascons from my ward.  Also, my cousin's husband, Mark Washburn was in down for meetings so he came too.  Ken Johnson is related to us through the Bushman line and the Turley line.  Patti Rascon is related through the Bushmans and Jesse N Smith.  We had a BBQ then sang and told Bushman ancestor stories.  I really enjoyed it!

I had to get a Turley finger picture while we were all together.  My dad's hands are the two on the right.  Ken's on the far left and his cute little son is in the middle!

Now we're back to tiling.  My parents got the door back on on Monday when I was back at work, and they even made time to come have lunch with me there in The Woodlands.

I had to take a picture of them in the finished product.  It looks FANTASTIC!

I love it and I LOVE THEM!  Thanks, Mom and Dad for visiting me and for ALL your hard work.  You guys are the BEST!!!!!!!!!