"Quilting is a lot like tiling" or "Why I should've tiled the shower myself"

The contractor that we have finishing our shower is helping FIL build their new house. Since it's fair week and FIL isn't working on the house he "loaned" us his guy (we're still paying for him) to finish our shower: GREAT! It will actually get done.

He's done a great job thus far. Matt and FIL were planning on finishing the shower themselves in March, until they ran into the issue of unsquare walls and a floor joist running right where the drain needed to go in the floor. Suddenly they just stopped...and it's now been 5 months. Yesterday he showed up at 7am and by the end of the day he had the plumbing run, the pan in place, the plywood on the walls and the tile backerboard up: WOOHOO!

Today he started tiling. We debated having someone else do this as I'm really particular. I know Matt was going to fight me doing it, because I didn't want just tiles slapped on the wall all in the same direction with a border in the middle. This guy had talked about running them vertical on the bottom, the border, then on point at the top: Cool! Just what I was kind of thinking about. Actually what I was thinking about was something like this...or some other type of pattern as a focal on the back wall.

I'm a quilter, and by being such I'm ridiculously perfectionist when it comes to things being square, symmetrical, lined up, aesthetically pleasing, and otherwise creating an image with nothing that draws the eye to imperfections or away from the overall design, unless it is to highlight individual aspects of the design in an intentional manner.

Well I deliberated about having the guy do the tiling, but decided that I'm not comfortable with cutting tile and didn't want to waste money on breaking tiles or otherwise not being able to do (or finish) the job...so I decided just to let him do it. I do want this room done.

Well. Just from the little bit I've read/watched about tiling, have learned myself with construction, and know from quilting I think I should've done the bathroom and maybe just had the guy cutting the tile for me. I'm spastic about things being level...if things are not level I literally have to tear whatever it is apart and fix it (same for square)....well I did.

I came home tonight and went in the bathroom and looked over the tiling he'd done so far (halfway up the walls and the border). The border was not level...not at all. The backwall wasn't too bad, but the other wall was OH MY GOODNESS. Fortunately the glue hadn't set up...so I tore the tile off the wall and fixed it. And you know what? I really liked doing the tile!

I love creating a pattern from the different colors I have to work with...obviously whether it's fabric or stone doesn't make a difference to me. I tore one whole side down and retiled it myself...then I noticed that on the border on the other side the tile doesn't match up. To me, a border should be uninterrupted and it shouldn't matter if it's going around a corner or not. Well on the one corner he just started another section of border, without any thought as to whether to angles matched up....I tore that down too.

Now I feel like I have to explain to him that the tiles should be leveled and centered on the wall (another thing I noticed....everything thing I've read says to start in such a way that when you get to the outside edges if the tiles need to be cut that they should be the same measurement on both sides...again the symmetry).

My MIL asked me how it was looking and I told her to hire a professional to tile in her house: "Oh he's doing that good of a job?" No...he's doing the job, but not the way someone who does specifically tile for a living would do it. Of course, now I'm nervous about the diagonal tiles...I hate to be a nit picker, but if it looks like $hit it's going to bother the bejeezers out of me.

Alas, tomorrow morning I have to tell the contractor that I took down part of the tile, because I didn't like how it looked. We'll see what he has to say about that.