We miss you. Advice is great. Need to know whether to seal porcelain tile I have in my bath and shower and what you recommend. It looks porous but tile guy says its not. Does not have a high gloss glaze. Don't want soap scum

I was wondering about you just the other day--noticed you hadn't been around much. Glad everything is ok!!

"Sorry I'm not around much". That is not true, Bill. Anyone with tiling questions, or ideas, or horror stories, or anxiety attacks, just needs to do a search on this forum to be in touch with your tutorials, expertise, suggestions, creativity and/or calming voice. In all of them your generous spirit comes through. All of which is a long way of saying you are indeed with us and thank you. I do hope the incredible hours you are working is good news.

I was wondering the same thing as well..glad to know all is ok, to be really busy right now is a good thing! --Lukki

Bill,

Hoping you'll be able to share some pics of your latests job(s).... and hope you'll be able to take a breather for the 4th!

No need to apologize Bill - you are very nice to volunteer your time and expertise here. Great to hear that you are busy.

Working incredible hours is good, I hope. We do miss you and hope all is well.

Glad you're keeping busy. :) Thanks for all your advice whenever you have the time.

Bill - thanks for the note and it's nice that you thought of us! I know everyone here will always welcome you back with open arms...we have too many tile dilemmas to solve. ;-)

i'm glad you're busy! but i hope you can get some rest soon.

Busy means work, and work is good...especially now. We miss you, but like someone else said, we can always do a search for your expertise. Try to get some rest over the weekend :)

Slacker!

Slacker's about right. :-) I'm only working a little better than half days (avg. 14 hours). I've literally got 4 showers going right now, and it looks like I'll have a break atleast for a few days. Two I have to wait for the homeowner to make up her mind for wood floor stain (they've stained it 3 times now, and all three times she decided she didn't like the stain, so now there's raw finished wood leading to the two showers). One, I'm waiting on the bullnose, and the fourth, although I'm waiting on bullnose for that one, too, atleast it's right around the corner from my house-- not an hour's drive and a ferry ride away! So tomorrow, I get to do a "quickie" and get it out of the way-- a tub enclosure that the customer's been waiting on me now for about 3 weeks. :-) I can actually FINISH something!! What a concept!

cassie, unless your tile is unglazed, that means no finish on it at all, your floor guy is right. You can seal the grout lines but if you put a sealer on the actual tile you'll ruin the finish. Even if it's not shiny and has a matte finish, it is protected from soap scum.

Sorry, I'm not Bill of course, but DH is a contrator. LOL

Bill, I am glad you are busy and that is good so no need to apologize. We all miss you and know when you have time, you will be back.

Need to know whether to seal porcelain tile I have in my bath and shower and what you recommend. It looks porous but tile guy says its not. Does not have a high gloss glaze.

Porcelain doesn't need to be sealed.

Bill,

We all miss your advice. You have been instrumental in the progress of my new bathroom (still in progress). If I am unsure of something I will wait until I ask for and hear your advice then proceed.

Thanks again for your help - glad to hear everything is o.k.

Good to hear from you, Bill . . . and glad that your absence is due to "busy" and not some problem. I'm sure everyone here would agree that we have all profited from your expertise (along with Mongo, of course!).

Hi Bill, I rarely post but read these forums regularly as I'm tackling two bathroom remodels this summer. Between you, Mongo, and the generous people here who post their before/after photos, I'm set with expert advice. Glad you are keeping busy and life is good - there are a lot of us lurkers out here who really appreciate the time and effort your pros put into this site.

Thank you very much-- all of you. I've got a "breather" for a couple of days, but then things should be ready for me to get back to all four and finish them up. Each one is missing something that's completely holding up the works. Well, with two of them, it's actually the hardwood outside the bathrooms I'm waiting on. The homeowner has decided she didn't like the stain she picked out, and had the GC sand it all off and restain... and then sand it off and restain again with a THIRD stain... and RESAND AGAIN. And then last thursday asked me when I thought I might be able to finish up!! If everything were ready for me, I could finish all four showers inside of a week. Hopefully, they'll be done by a week from friday. I'm told I should be able to get back to them on wednesday, and then it's back off to the reaces, and it looks like my whole summer's going to be like that.

Not a bad thing, these days!

Thanks brutuses and bill for the advice-I guess I'm just so used to the shiny stuff that this is a new look for me. Four bathrooms at once Bill-wow I wished you lived in my city. But then I probably wouldn't be able to afford you LOL.

3 between two houses on an island just off the coast of Portland (Great Diamond Island), and then one right up the road from me here in town.

Piece of cake. :-) In the mean time, while I'm waiting, I just did another bathroom floor and tub enclosure yesterday and the day before. :-) Never a dull moment!

Okay-- here are the four. The first one was the entire master bathroom. That's the one here in town. I also did several other areas in this house, including a moosehead silhouette at the front entry (He actually has the real thing trotting thru his property on a constant basis):

Also, all the tile work here was my design.

Of course, some in here will recognise the drain in this shower :-):

Then the ones on the Island. This first one, some chooch installed it and thank God, did a terrible looking job. As you can see in the pics, it's a walk-in shower (no door), and the jambs leading into the shower-- the tile was set on pine boards. The first time this poor woman would've used it, the tiles would've popped off like popcorn. Next, you can see we saved the river rock outside the shower. The stuff INSIDE the shower was so bad-- there was more grout showing than stone, and good thing, too. The contractor wanted to try and save the floor, but once they'd pulled the walls down, you could see there was only about an inch of shower pan showing above the shower floor, when it should actually go about 8-10" over the CURB. When we pulled the stone and mud bed out, you could see where they'd punctured the membrane, and then patched it with duct tape. This shower was a disaster waiting to happen. Oh yeah-- one other thing-- the whole thing was set using 1/4" Hardiboard on the walls. BIGTIME no-no. One last thing-- those of you who like this shower, both the wall tile and river rock were purchased at Home Depot. Here are the pics:

Now, the next two, I don't have completed pics being that I just completed them today, and forgot my camera. I'll have completed pics on monday, though:

Actually, this first one is still missing a glass block wall-- waiting for the block (hopefully on monday!)

Bill, you do beautiful work. We are all blessed to have you on this forum.

After my wood floor in installed in my three rooms downstairs, I want to wait a year and then do my kitchen floor (had ripped Linoleum there now that is almost 20 years old) and then wait a year and do my bathrooms that need new tile badly. I will be reading up the archived files on bathrooms when I am ready to change out the tiny tiles in which some have cracked so they much be ceramic and not porcelain. They are also slippery tiles so I want a tile that is not slippery for my bathrooms.

I love the tiles and grout color in pictures 2 to 5.

Nice work, Bill. I do admire great and honest craftsmanship.

I love the tiles and grout color in pictures 2 to 5.

That's Daltile's "Village Bend" series, which is a glazed porcelain. I forget the name of the glass tile used for the accent, but it's also Dal's.

And thank you. :-)

Bill,

You once mentioned that you did the mural in the food court in Barton Creek Square Mall in Austin. I live in Austin and have been in that food court a gazillion times, but I couldn't recall a mural. Then I figured out it was the floor, which has got to be the most beautiful food court floor ever. I remember going in there just after it was finished with the whole family WOWED by that floor. It still looks wonderful, by the way. It's too bad they actually let people walk on it!