We made big progress at the beach house this week, logging more than 40 hours of tiling over four days and finally finishing almost all of the tile work. It was intense but so satisfying to see the bathrooms and mudroom take shape.
Like last week’s long update on trim, doors, and tile, we put together a video to show the progress — including a couple of non-tile milestones. If your feed reader doesn’t show the player, you may need to click through to the post to watch.
We tiled the floors and shower pans on earlier short trips, but tackling eight shower walls at once was a heavier lift. For this visit we brought the kids and the dog and treated it like a mini vacation before school started. A friend graciously offered us a place to stay in town while she was away, which was perfect — no babysitting clock and no hotel bills, and we managed to make a lot of real progress.
I spent time wrangling the kids and dog around Cape Charles while John handled as much tiling as his hands could manage. It felt good to be nearby for kid duties and the occasional ice cream delivery while he worked. By the time we left Sunday morning, two of the three bathrooms were completely tiled and the third was about 90% done — ready for grout and close to having toilets and sinks installed.
Even better: we officially have running water hooked up to the house. That felt like a huge milestone after all the drama with bringing water from the street. Knowing toilets will actually flush once installed is a huge relief.
The downstairs bathroom is the most classic of the three and has the tallest ceilings, so we used oversized 4 x 16″ subway tiles on all three shower walls. Bigger wall tiles sped this shower up compared to standard 3 x 6″ subway tiles. Upstairs en-suite received the same wall tile on its two shower walls, which went even faster thanks to lower ceilings — and it should pair nicely with the small-scale hex floor when it’s grouted.
One time-consuming detail was tiling the shower curb where it wrapped around and required careful mitering to get clean corners. Instead of a stone slab, we continued the wall tile down the curb and used trimmed bullnose tiles as a thin pencil border. Getting those transitions neat took patience and planning.
One of our favorite rooms will eventually feature the original clawfoot tub, which will add so much character once the plumbing and fixtures are in. The hall bathroom is mostly tiled too — just a small stretch of one wall and the shower curb remain. John ran out of thinset (and energy), so we’ll go back in a few days to finish those last bits together.
When tiling a shower wall, don’t trust the floor to be perfectly level. We set the first row off the ground using a level line and a scrap piece of wood screwed to the wall so the first row sits perfectly level. Once the tiles above are set, you remove the temporary support and cut the final row to fit against the floor. Since we used a waterproof Schluter/Kerdi system behind these tiles, we sealed screw holes with Kerdi-Fix before thinsetting and tiling over them to keep everything watertight.
One shower uses 13 x 13″ patterned squares that look like many smaller tiles; they’re actually larger slabs with varied patterns, so we took care to place them in a randomized way to avoid repeating the same design next to itself. We also offset those large squares as we stacked rows so seam spacing matched the smaller patterns and kept the illusion intact. Grout color will further calm the busier wall — we’re using a low-contrast grout on every wall so the current dark lines will blend once grouted.
We know grouting won’t be instant or effortless, but we’re excited to see the rooms come together. Multiple trips to spread grout and remove haze are worth the final result — we can’t wait to cross tiling off the list and move on to the next phases of the renovation.
In addition to tile, the pocket doors in the back bedroom are hung. They’ll come down briefly to remove flaking paint and be sealed, but hanging them now allowed us to finish the rest of the trim work — which, in turn, keeps trim caulking, painting, and floor refinishing on schedule without blocking progress.
Other progress: more trim went up, the A/C is fully installed (though it can’t be turned on yet for reasons we explain in the video), and yes — we celebrated that glorious moment when water flowed from the hose bib.
Psst — if you want to catch up on earlier beach house updates, check out our previous posts about trim and tile, drywall, style inspiration, floor plans, and more listed below.
- Original trim, doors, and lots of new tile
- Drywall is up, and it’s glorious!
- Finding a vintage pink stove
- Stuff Sherry bought (way too early)
- The outside’s almost done & the inside’s getting good
- That time our beach house photobombed HGTV
- Walls up, walls down, and a new floor plan
- How we picked the exterior color
- Gathering beach house style inspiration
- Beach house “before” video & floor planning
- Holy seashells, we bought a beach house!
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