I had my floor tiling experience in the basement bathroom – and it didn’t go too well. Cathy had to swoop in to fix my first tiling attempt.

This time round, for the 1st floor bathroom, I thought it would be a good idea to have the pro (Cathy) do the work, rather than me trying once more in vain.

We found the perfect floor tiles a while back on Craigslist. Two inch hexagonal tiles that came in 12 by 12 inch sheets. Perfect because they work with our contoured bathroom floors, which slope towards the shower and floor drain.

What wasn’t quite perfect, is the joint spacing between each tile within each sheet. It takes some skill and adjustment to even out these irregularities. A skill that Cathy masters.

The other issue is that the tile spacing needs adjustment for the slopes. If all the floor slopes would be subtle and even, it probably wouldn’t matter. But around the shower drain, the slopes are not subtle and vary a lot.

We could have pushed the shower drain further away from the wall to even out the slopes. But then we could not convert the shower drain to a tub drain, should we ever decide to convert.

So we are stuck with a shower drain close to the wall, varying slopes and floor tiles that need a lot of joint adjustment.

I watched Cathy for a while working around the shower drain. There was close to a half inch discrepancy in the tile spacing and I was dead-on convinced that this would not work. She proved me wrong (once again) and with a lot of patience, spaced out each hexagonal two inch tile until they were all spaced out evenly around and across the shower drain.

Did I mention how impressed I was?