The floor is done

It's been a slow couple of days, because these two steps require a lot of time -- a lot of time that you *can't* be doing work, in fact. Yesterday, I actually took the big step (the one you can't step back from) -- I mixed up my thin-set mortar and went to work placing the tiles.

I had originally bought a 25 lb. of thin-set mortar, and in the end, that's how much I needed. I used every last ounce of it, and it was touch and go at the end if I was going to have to go back to Home Depot for a second back of it, of which I would use like 3 ozs. Fortunately, it didn't come to that. After the tiles were down and properly spaced:

I went to my drum lesson, had dinner out and came home to watch a movie. Instead, the power went out for four and a half hours.

Does Jesus really love me? If so, why is the power still out?

I didn't finish the tile placement until around 2 PM, so I had to wait at least until then today before I could start in on the grouting. As a result, this morning I went for a run, enjoyed the (insanely hot) weather, and mowed the lawn. All was summery bliss this morning (at least through a repellent quantity of sweat)!

The lawn, as she be mowed

Last night I debated with Jon Ebel how long it would take me to grout a 3' x 3' room, using 12" x 12" tiles. I was imagining 30 minutes, but fearful it would take me like 6 hours. He said no more than 2 hours. It was, for the record, 1 hour and 50 minutes. Things went slightly slower because the World Cup was on (Rapinoe was out with an injury, but we still managed to beat England's "Lionesses" in a very tense game, 2-1), but mostly I just listened while grouting. And here's the final result (of the grouting, not the game):

None of these photos shows what this tile actually looks like (photos in the bathroom are all strangely ornately yellow because of the light and the color of the paint). I'll have to take a picture of my one remaining tile in the sunlight so you can see. Tomorrow afternoon, we can start thinking about the walls. But while I've got you here, we can start thinking now. There are two ways to arrange the wall tiles, which are 4" x 12" glossy white rectangles. They can be arranged in a staggered grid (are there technical terms for this? If so I don't know them.):

...which is how subway tiles are usually arranged, or they can be done in an in-line stack, which is actually how Ann Sacks shows this particular tile on their website. 

Here's more typical views with which to evaluate. 

Staggered (this is a cheap, matte 3 x 12 tile, just meant to illustrate how it looks on a wall):

Stacked (these are the actual Kanso 4 x 12s in winter gloss, exactly what we have):

My overall feeling is that staggered is traditional, and stacked is a more "modern" look somehow? I can definitely see stacked in a backsplash or a shower, but am somewhat less sure of it on a wall. Leave you thoughts in the comments below; it's possible I'll get started on this tomorrow -- Thursday at the latest. By the way, I don't think either will really change how difficult the work is -- there's still a fair bit of tile cutting in my future. By the way, I'd imagined these tiles as being rather thin, but they're actually as thick as those quite thick floor tiles (albeit much lighter).