We'll start with backer board (and a puppy!)

Since the backer board day was so depressing, I'll start with a picture of a puppy on the porch...



He's 13, so not really a puppy...but he spent the afternoon checking out his new backyard digs and sniffing about the house. When the project got ever more tedious and tragic, I could glance out the back door and see him staring back watching us work. A happy little moment...

Ok, on to the backerboard fiasco. We spent all last weekend getting the plywood on and as level as possible. Weather kept us from getting to the house midweek, so Saturday morning was devoted to backerboard. We cut the boards-- no real problems there. Mixed up the thinset-- it looked a little thick, but we've never done this before; and anyway, the directions on the box were in Rebus puzzle, and I'm a words kind of gal. We slopped it on, laid the boards and went to lunch.



We got back, and the boards didn't really look like they were sticking very well. But we went ahead and screwed them in. Then we started laying out the tile to see where we wanted it all to go. Left of the sink looked good. Everything to the right of the sink acted like it was on a teeter-totter. Nothing was even, the backerboard wasn't sticking any better. It was all wrong. So we removed everything to the right of the sink, scraped off the mastic, bought some thinset with WORD directions, and started all over again with a better, runnier mixture.


This time we got the backerboard in place, threaded the screws part way and used them to raise and lower parts of the board until it was as even as we could get it, and then left the screws only partially in. That way, the thinset could dry right where we needed it without us squishing it around with the screws. When we did finally screw everything down Sunday morning and laid out the tile, everything rocked quite a bit less and we moved on to the scary part of our project.