Tiling is done!

Well, setting the tile that is. I still need to grout, but this is a major milestone. The last couple of weeks have been hectic and I haven't had much time to work on the tile. Plus, we were having trouble figuring out how to finish the top of the spa, specifically how to handle the transition between the tile on the spa wall and the top of the spa. A simple butt joint wouldn't work, because the tile is just short of the top of the wall, so there would have been a > 1/4" grout line around the top, which wouldn't look right. We first picked out a blue quarter round that matched some of the blue in the tile perfectly, but when we laid it out it just didn't work.

After trying a couple more colors of quarter round, I then had the idea to do the top of the spa in 3x3 blue tile that matched the blue quarter round. I bought a few sheets of tile and laid it out, and again it just didn't look right. Then I thought about buying some coping tile with a bullnose edge and using that on top of the spa. Although we liked the looks of it, it would have required a lot of cutting, i.e. a lot of work. Also, it just didn't work well with the flagstone coping that already covers 2/3 of the top of the spa. We agreed that if we were going to do the the coping, we should tear out the existing flagstone around the spa and do the entire top of the spa in the same coping. That was way too much work and way out of the budget, so we nixed that idea.

Finally, it came to me - the reason the quarter round looked out of place was because you had a solid blue line around the edge of the spa, which stood out from the varied mosaic pattern. I picked up some black quarter round, and alternated it with the blue and that did the trick. Just by adding the second color, the quarter round blends in with the rest of the tile so much better.

So having solved that problem, I took today off work with the goal of getting all the tile set. I started by setting all of the quarter round, which was a very messy process. That's why there is so much thinset showing in the gaps around the quarter round. I had to slap a bunch of thinset on the back, then stick the tile to the corner. Then I put some thinset on the top of the spa and pushed it up against the back of the quarter round - backfilling the tile with thinset, so to speak. Then I put a skim coat of thinset on the entire top of the spa to raise the level a little bit, since the quarter round stuck up a little higher than the tile. Finally, after a last minute trip to the tile store (I was 2 sheets of tile short!) I laid all the tile on the top of the spa and the job was done.

Next up will be grouting on Monday, weather permitting. Hope everyone has a great Easter weekend.