Tiling break

There is at last enough floor area in the room finished so I can get the furniture back in, with a little help from my friends this morning. Life will be back to normal, fairly soon.




















There is a bit left to do around the steps, and in the tower, but this afternoon I decide I've had enough of tiling for the moment. There are Dahlia tubers to be brought indoors after the wife has potted them up. These seem to have survived the -15 degree temperatures, which is a nice surprise. When I dug up the tubers in the Autumn, I was very careful to label them properly so I would know what colour flowers they will make again this year. This tuber is labeled "Bristol Panache". Hmjmmm I can remember that that was the name of one of the varieties I planted, but I can't remember what colour it was.

Meanwhile, the Jasmine is starting to bloom in my conservatory. It makes a gorgeous perfume.

Alice in Wonderland

Spring is happening with some speed now. The Forsythia is out, the Hawthorne is in blossom, and Japonica is starting to open its flowers.

The first house I ever lived in as a child was a prefab in Sholing, a suburb of Southampton, and there was a big Hawthorne bush just outside. It was big enough you could get inside it, and it served as a den for many a secret meeting between friends. So now the smell of Hawthorne blossom takes me right back. I hesitate to use the Woody Allen term "Proustian rush", but you know what I mean.






































Alice in Wonderland is showing in 3D in Laval, so I went to see it. I guess we can expect more and more big films to be in 3D from now on. I wonder how this will translate to home entertainment. Will we have to get (new, expensive), special sets, players and 3D glasses to watch our 3D DVDs? Or will they find a technology that is compatible with existing sets. We shall see. I think I'm classed as a "late adopter"; I have only recently bought a Blu-Ray player. Meanwhile, the municipal fountain was running, and new plantings have been made by the roadside.

Medallions

When choosing tiles for the living room, the wife and I came across some round mosaic tiles. Hand-made from small shaped tiles, these can be used as a focal point for a room. They seem to be known as medallions. As it happens, the tiling project includes a round tower and so we thought it would be cool to have a round mosaic in the middle of it. But they turned out to be expensive, so we passed.

As the project continued, I was attracted more and more to the idea, so we decided to bite the bullet, and we went to the tile shop to buy one. Three problems: none of the examples they had in stock matched our tile colour, the colours in the catalogue were not true, and finally they are on 6 weeks delivery. I need to finish the project next week, so 6 weeks delivery time is a killer.

So we hit on the idea of making one. We went and bought some squares of mosaic tiles, split them up, and the wife spent some time experimenting with designs. Here's two; the second one might well be the one we choose to run with. It will be an interesting task to lay the thing, get it all at the right height on the tile cement, all the tiles evenly spaced. Watch this space :)

A door-gone problem

Since the new floor is now higher than the old one, all the doors that open inwards have to be rehung, and a bit planed off the bottom. So it's off the hinges with my conservatory doors, and onto trestles so I can trim them.

Tiling break

Tiles are heavy, tile cement is heavy, and laying tiles you have to keep getting up and back down. Time for a quick break and a walk round the garden.

Naturalised Hyacinths

Project - phase 4, tiling

So the walls are painted, the new electrical fittings are in place. Nothing left for it but to do the tiling. Tiling is a perfect lesson in error accumulation in 2-D geometry, and you have to be alert to possible traps, every step of the way.

First, decide which wall you want the tiles to be parallel to (rooms are never square) then draw a line in the middle of the room parallel to that wall, with a pencil. Decide how far from the parallel wall your line of tiles is going to be (at the edge to which they are parallel, you want to have to cut the tiles to a little under half their width), and mark out this line, parallel to your first. This is your tile line. Decide how you are going to position your tiles along this line, according to whatever aesthetic principle you like, and mark it.

Position a piece of taut string above your tile line, since when you put tile cement down, your line on the floor will be hidden. Now you can start to cement the tiles. Use a straight edge at all times to make sure your line of tiles is straight, and spirit levels to make sure they are level, and eyeball them to make sure they are the same height. When you are happy, let your line of tiles dry, and tomorrow they will be the reference point for the rest of your tiling.

Day 1: straight line. Day 2: two more rows of tiles each side of the straight line.




















Meanwhile, Spring is happening in my garden, completely without my help.