The Bathroom Project Part 2 - Flooring woes

I learned an important lesson about measuring tapes while working on the floor. Any increment greater than 1/32 is not only an unneeded amount of accuracy, but also exponentially increases the likelihood of measuring the area incorrectly. I also learned that a jigsaw blade that can cut backer board is worth 100 backer board cutting knives. On my first attempt, I opened the knife I had purchased (with my parents money of course, I'm just helping on the manual labor) and proceeded to war against the backer board. The directions claim that two swipes of the knife was more than sufficient to cut the board. I assure you it is not. But I struggled and toiled with that knife for an hour. And having finally cut the board I bent over to pick it up, only I failed to notice that the tip of my foot was over the board and as I lifted, I broke that board right down the middle.

That, however, was not the end of the woes! For we were willing to have the broken board be the base. It's not like a single piece was going to cover that area anyway, one extra split wasn't going to hurt anything. That's when I learned that a mark ever 1/64 of an inch of a tape measure was just too many marks. I was anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 of an inch off my cuts. Now, the way the floor in that bathroom is makes the length of the board extremely important. The floor slants up from the door to about 2 feet into the room, then from that point back down to the tub. Any backer board or tile lain over this crest would quickly crack. So it was that I went back to Lowe's, purchased another backer board to replace the one that was now worthless as well as this little beauty.


It's a carbide jig saw blade. I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but rather than have teeth like most saws, it's blade is covered in... well carbide I guess. And it makes quick work of that backer board. So it was that armed with this blade, and a better tape measure, I was able to quickly measure and cut the three backer board pieces to cover the bathroom floor. It was perfect.

Of course, I had yet to secure them to the floor. Which is where we hit our next major snag. The concrete screw heads where square. That's right, they were not flat head nor philip's head screws but square heads. After a lot of searching, my mom and I were able to find a screw for the power dill that would mostly fit the square heads. It started out well enough, but for those who don't know, turns out screwing through concrete is hard work. Hard work made even harder by a dill head that kept wanting to come loose and make my square holes circular. But we did manage to get them all screwed down and the floor started looking pretty nice.


Here you can see the three pieces I used with a hole cut out for the toilet flange. You can also see how we cut them to follow that crest I was talking about. With the backer board down, we were able to apply the final coat brown coco paint and prepare to lay down the tile.

Later, as we were inspecting the floor one last time before laying down the tile, we realized that a lot of the heads were not flush with the backer board. Without the heads being all the way flush, it was very likely the tile would shift and crack as people walked on them. The problem was further exacerbated as we could not find the square bit we had been using. Finally, I decided that it would be better just to run over to Lowe's and buy the right sized bit to do the job right. It was as I read the box of screws to see what size I should get that I noticed the following


No, no, look closer


Yes, there in rather plain, "hey I'm just part of the bar code or quantity " text were the unimpressive words "Free square drive bit" All the time I was drilling in those screws wishing I had the right bit, it had been in that box, hidden down underneath all those screws. Fortunately, after replacing about 1/3 of the screws I had down, it was a relatively simple process for mom to lay down the tile such that my back board went from what you saw above to


that. And finally to

The Bathroom Project Part 2 - Flooring woes