Pro tip: a five gallon bucket of sand saved my whole bathroom tile job

I was mixing thinset on a really humid day and it kept getting soupy, ruining my lines. My grandpa, who did masonry for forty years, told me to keep a bucket of dry sand next to me to adjust the mix on the fly. Has anyone else used that trick for wet mortar?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_nancy6d ago

My first tile job looked like a toddler did it. I wish I'd known your grandpa.

betty_perry245d ago

It's the same with a lot of stuff people try to do themselves now. You can watch a video, but you don't get the little tricks that come from years of doing it. That's why older work often looks so solid. They learned from someone who already made all the mistakes, so you don't have to. We lost a lot of that hands-on teaching.

beth1476d ago

Honestly, I was the same. I used to think a tile saw and a YouTube video were all you needed. Then I watched a real pro lay a floor. The way they plan the layout, mix the thinset, and cut those tiny pieces for the edges. It's a whole different skill. It completely changed how I see it. Now I know why a bad job looks so wrong.