I'm so over it

Ever get yourself into a situation where you're thinking, "How on earth did I get here?". I was thinking that last night whilst I was tiling my kitchen floor. Wondering how long I'm going to remember all the little bumps that I _know_ are there. How long it will be before I forget how hard it was to tile that damn floor and how tired I feel now as a result. My guess is at least 10 years. So my hope is it will be another 10 years before I attempt tiling again. Lets hope thats the case. It seems like a good idea at the time, do your own tiling save lots of money. But for reasons beyond my comprehension I was unable to foresee things that last night were very obvious!

Thus I have compliled this handly list for would be tilers who think its a good idea to do their own tiling:

• You can never have enough spacers. Running out of spaces is a _bad_ thing. Forget having a floor you can be proud of, try having a floor you can bear to look at!
• Motar gets everywhere! Yes everywhere. During post tiling showering (next moring) I found unknown bits of concrete stuck to my skin like some medival disease!
• Emergency cutting is something to be prepared for. Tiles never fit the same as when you laid them. Be prepared to trim tiles to fit...even if it means eliminating spacers to do so!
• Tiles set real quick so make sure you get them in the right place at the right time. Finding that the row you did 10 minutes ago is slightly out of place is too bad as you cant change it now. If it means your carefully cut tiles no longer fit, tough, you never expected it to look professional did you?
• Those careful lines you drew on the floor during layout to keep your tiles nice and straight are no longer useful. Funny how you don't expect that to be a problem beforehand. Let me tell you, when you stick a tile down, it doesn't just sit there, it floats around meaning it goes wherever it wants (until it butts up against something else that is). So even though you think just by pushing tiles up against each other is enough to ensure a straight floor...it isnt!!
• When you cover 3 rows in 1 hr, don't expect another 3 rows to take another hour. I think tiling sufferes from an exponential decay in tiling rate. You start at some enthusiastic rate and slowly decay to a much much slower one which results in your early "we'll be done in two hours" claim to fall by the wayside. I'm attributing this to two factors:

1. You can't possibly estimate how tired you'll get tiling. I mean I love crawling around on the floor on my hands and knees...but not normally for 6 hrs!!!
2. You slowly realize what a shoddy job you did at the begining and start trying to be more careful...the result? Each tile now takes 5 minutes to line up...and then it doesn't stay put.

Ok. Nuff said on that topic...Next week...how to tile your walls without getting shite all over your nice new kitchen benches!!!

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Long live the duff.