In my next life I am sure to be a tile instillation expert considering that grout and I have officially become friends.
OK! You caught me... I'm really not that great at working with grout, but I do have to say my mosaic project is almost done and is turning out pretty well.
I starting by smashing up about four or five medium size plates. As I wrote in a previous post that we had ordered more china to be able to serve 12 instead of 8 but some plates arrived broken. I decided to do a mosaic mirror that will be put in our future formal dining room and conveniently match our china.
While breaking up the already chipped and broken plates I discovered a few things:
-Its not easy to smash them in to small and even pieces.
-Vacuum up the area you are working when you are done as the shards can fly anywhere!
-I needed to go buy a tile cutter in order to get them into certain shapes and sizes.
-The broken pieces consisting of the curved part of the plate was pretty much useless because they will not lie flat on a surface
-Those pieces were more likely to have our beautiful china pattern on them
-I should have painted the mirror first
-I should have taken out the mirror before that
After much deliberation, I decided to just start in one corner and put the "puzzle" together, rather than being picky about shapes and design. It wasn't terribly hard. I quickly decided that I'd just glue the pieces down right away instead of waiting till I had it all figured out. *note using adhesive is necessary, there is no way you'll be able to grout the pieces with out them staying in one spot!
Even so, here is the mirror after I adhered the pieces onto to it...
Then hubby suggested I take the mirror out so that it stops getting dirty. Although I wasn't too worried because the grout and paint are water soluble and wipe right off.
Then I added the grout, wiped it off the tile surfaces and smoothed the grout in between each tile to make it look uniform and not lumpy. I also added grout around the edges because I didn't want any jagged pieces. So the edges are yet to be smoothed out. The edged where the wood was showing I painted white, although it still needs another layer.
*Note here that just wiping the grout off the tile surface and smoothing down in between the tiles is not enough. I had to literally chip away (I used my fingernails and Popsicle sticks) the grout from the tile surfaces in many parts or else it would still be covering some of the tile surface.
So far I've probably put in 5-10 hours on this. Tomorrow, since I have the day off I might be able to take the time to finish it. More to come!
OK! You caught me... I'm really not that great at working with grout, but I do have to say my mosaic project is almost done and is turning out pretty well.
I starting by smashing up about four or five medium size plates. As I wrote in a previous post that we had ordered more china to be able to serve 12 instead of 8 but some plates arrived broken. I decided to do a mosaic mirror that will be put in our future formal dining room and conveniently match our china.
While breaking up the already chipped and broken plates I discovered a few things:
-Its not easy to smash them in to small and even pieces.
-Vacuum up the area you are working when you are done as the shards can fly anywhere!
-I needed to go buy a tile cutter in order to get them into certain shapes and sizes.
-The broken pieces consisting of the curved part of the plate was pretty much useless because they will not lie flat on a surface
-Those pieces were more likely to have our beautiful china pattern on them
-I should have painted the mirror first
-I should have taken out the mirror before that
After much deliberation, I decided to just start in one corner and put the "puzzle" together, rather than being picky about shapes and design. It wasn't terribly hard. I quickly decided that I'd just glue the pieces down right away instead of waiting till I had it all figured out. *note using adhesive is necessary, there is no way you'll be able to grout the pieces with out them staying in one spot!
Even so, here is the mirror after I adhered the pieces onto to it...
Then hubby suggested I take the mirror out so that it stops getting dirty. Although I wasn't too worried because the grout and paint are water soluble and wipe right off.
Then I added the grout, wiped it off the tile surfaces and smoothed the grout in between each tile to make it look uniform and not lumpy. I also added grout around the edges because I didn't want any jagged pieces. So the edges are yet to be smoothed out. The edged where the wood was showing I painted white, although it still needs another layer.
*Note here that just wiping the grout off the tile surface and smoothing down in between the tiles is not enough. I had to literally chip away (I used my fingernails and Popsicle sticks) the grout from the tile surfaces in many parts or else it would still be covering some of the tile surface.
So far I've probably put in 5-10 hours on this. Tomorrow, since I have the day off I might be able to take the time to finish it. More to come!
