Bathroom Diaries Day: Plumb Tuckered Out

Ai Dios Mio - what a day. I took a workshop this morning at Home Depot for setting tile. It was fantastic. There were only two of us, the workshop was free, and we set tile all by ourselves! We were walked through the whole thing, where everything was (that we needed to buy), what kinds of screws to put the board down with, the kind of adhesive - there's a two in one, adhesive and grout - how cool is that? Too bad it won't work for me. We also learned out to cut tile - totally cool. I feel so much more confident about putting the tile in the shower up.
But I must say, it is a TON of work. I didn't leave Home Depot until 2pm because they suckered me into getting a Home Depot credit card and saving 10%. At $400 that's not bad. That makes the tile saw I bought only $44 - instead of $88. I didn't really want to buy one, but to rent one by the day was $68. I would need it for at least two days so I'm actually saving money - right?
I ran a few other errands, got home around 3pm, ate lunch and got to work.
Here's the shower before: On Friday I received precise instruction from Jeff about how to do this. I really wish he'd be on call this weekend, because of course so many other things have come up in the mean time. I bought the stuff he said, Thin-set, but it's really sandy and grainy? And then he kept emphasizing that it need to be flat - flat flat flat - totally smooth. I really hope I did it right.
So I seemed all of the corners, and other seams:
Added the fiberglass tape:
And put another layer over the top of that: Flat Flat Flat - or as near as I could make it.
It looks flat to me, but its awful sandy. I tried sanding some of it that I know is beyond the bull nose tile line - it didn't come off very well. I may have to put the tile up and then spackle so that the wall is smooth. sigh.
I sanded the walls down one more time, spackled a few things, and set to priming.
First layer priming done. It doesn't look great - yet.
This is the hard part of the project. Where you've done all this work, but there's still so much more work to be done, that the payoff hasn't started yet. It will tomorrow. It will be a long day. I've got to put a second layer of primer on, set the tiles, paint my purple ceiling, paint the walls and grout. No problem (she said with clenched teeth).
In good news, my dad called Friday night and said he and Ann were thinking of coming to visit in May. Yeah! I also picked up a great book at the Free Library - My Name is Red, by Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish author. I'm listening to it. It's all about book illuminations in 16th Century Istanbul - it's fascinating from a book arts point of view, the plot is part murder mystery part love story. I'm going to google the author and go to bed. 'Night.