Queequeg grows stuff, and fixes junk.

Chilima · Mar 13, 2016

Is the direction of the cut that important in this case?

queequeg152 · Mar 13, 2016

Chilima said:
Is the direction of the cut that important in this case?

it would seem so... its hard to explain, but you wan the scion flap facing down into the rootstock flap thats facing upwards.

i put the two wilting plants into a humidity dome and they came back... but i do not know how much patience ill have with these two. ill give them another few days to harden off or im tossing them. they are falling behind quickly.
the sucessfully grafted plants already caught up with the non grafted plants and are outside atm.
ill post up some pics soon. got some tile to sling this evening though.

Scovie · Mar 13, 2016

Where's your pan liner?

queequeg152 · Mar 13, 2016

im going with a bonding flange drain with bonded membrane on a bonded mortar bed.

alot of bonding i know.

im following the laticrete ES-B422 construction detail... but with mapei products + the laticrete reinforcing fabric.

could not get hydroban or much of any laticrete stuff around me? idk why.

Scovie · Mar 13, 2016

Ahh yes. The "pain in the ass" shower pan method. LOL! Just kidding, everyone has their way.

That's weird I order Laticrete from my supplier in Vermont and it ships here within a week.

Also, not to beat you up too bad, but the Cement board you put up is inside out, (the rough side with the printing is the tiling surface), that's why you have the "little hole" issue with your waterproofing. It will be fine. as long as you fill the little holes.

Looking good mang.

queequeg152 · Mar 14, 2016

yea some durock rep on johnbridge said both sides work fine.... so i thought the smooth side would be good, easy to paint and use less aquadefense... the holes sucked seriously hard though. took me several hours to go back and fill them in with this little 1" throw away brush.
id use the other side next time.

i have another guest bath to do... im thinking of trying that densshield shit? sounds alot easier as you apparently only have to waterproof the penetrations? no clue where to get it though.

queequeg152 · Mar 15, 2016

update time.

heres the slab after i ground down the high spot under the screed guides. the white stuff is thinset. the ground down area was very rough so i skimed it with modified thinset. also filled in a couple of gouges i mentioned earlier.

setting up the first run of tiles.

first few courses of tile.

bunch more tile.

some more tile.

shrinking tile pile.

some more tile.

some tile.

tile i think.

plant junk:

here are the two orphaned-badly grafted melon plants... note the one on the left is basically done for. the one on the right seems fine, but its so far behind im not likely to keep it.

ok so this is what a bad graft looks like.

note how the scion flap is opening upwards? and how the rootstock flap is opening downwards? yea thats the opposite of how its suppoed to be. i musta been half alseep when i did these grafts.

imagine the sap flowing up from the roots. it has to come up the rootstock stem, then down into the graft union... then up again. seems to be the cause of the failures. ONLY the two grafted upside down failed.

this is a good graft. notice the little root nub above the union? there is no soil up there. plants are stupid lol.

but look how the scion flap opens DOWN,,, not up. also not how the sap can flow up, into the graft union, then up the scion. not up down up. also note how fat its gotten... its pushing the clip off, but i want to keep on for now because its a convienient way to prop the plant up. i can put a stake right into the ring spring.

other plant stuff.

my university of flordia special maters finally showed up. here they are at like day 4?

some trichs i found at home depot. this is only the second time ive ever seen trichs at home depot... the first time being way back in like... 2013. only one there. was like 20 bucks for these two. not a super good deal, but the one on the left is a real fatty. probably 4" across at its base.

i almost dont want to seperate them. because its going to set them back, but what ever. ill think about it.

here is the label incase you want to look for your own. lovely cactus to have. very quick growing. very nice looking,

maters. 3 nodes about 8 inches tall.

big moth. im not real sure its a sphynx moth... its rather small, size of a silver dollar coin. ive seen about half a dozen spynx moths and they are literally hummingbird sized. they are quite terrifying to see flying around, or maby im a pussy.

this is much smaller. nevetheless ill be spraying permethrin soon as i see any pin holes. im assuming it shit out some eggs, though i failed to find any what so ever.

lol its hairy.

beetle season. this is what happens when you have a porch light on in the evenings.

graft verses ungrafted plants. the grafted plants are NOTICEABLY more vigorous... im honestly quite surprised. i thought they would have to grow out to maturity for me to see any differences.

on the left is the grafted extazy i showed above, on the right is the biggest non grafted extazy plant i have. keep in miind that the grafting process sets them back like 5-7 days, but its already caught up.

peppers.

queequeg152 · Mar 15, 2016

Scovie · Mar 15, 2016

Oh my.

You are learning why I charge more for subway tile. So many cuts, so many pieces.

Looking good my man.

queequeg152 · Mar 16, 2016

anyone in houston want a few tomato plants? hit me up with a PM ... or just post here i dont really care.

indeterminates, NOT bush varieties. you must not be shitty to them or ill know.

queequeg152 · Mar 29, 2016

f**king shower niches kicking my ass... full day to frame and durock them... spent a day getting marble, some glass mosaic, and cutting marble sills, then i forget to add the thickness of the tile the sill is supposed to over lap... so i go back get another marble piece, all goes well untill i start polishing... one of the marble sills

is chipping badly across a vein of brown stuff?
the marble piece is good over 90% of its area, just this little section at the corner has this brown shit that forms two layers like a sedimentary rock like slate. when i go to polish it, it lifts chunks out and pisses me off.

lol its like... so much hassle to learn how to do this properly, but then i only use this set of skills once maby twice? it hardly seems worth while in hindsight unless i do a shit load of showers in the future.

hahaha, so now i got to go back again and get another 12 dollar marble piece tomorrow. 3 days now on just 2 f**king niches and im still not even tiling it yet. god damn. im going premade niches next time without little gaylord marble sills. or maby ill go with a more reliable stone like granite...

marble is shitty btw. its just complete shit.
i knew about marble being a shitty material from this freshman physical geology class way back... but i though it had at least SOME good qualities other than beauty. but no, it tends to be HIGHY porous... its very heavy yet brittle, and extremely fragile across grain boundaries. when you are choosing marble, you NEED to exclude pieces that have veins running perpendicular to the piece because they are extremely weak.

turn the marble over and look at the other side too, veins running the entire depth are problematic.

marble is basically limestone with favorable inclusions of other material. it gets crushed by the earth and fused together by heat and pressure.
limestone is shitty and reactive. its basically a carbonate-like conglomeration of calcium rich minerals, so think of that next time you spec it for surfaces. if you even think about touching it with anything acidic, it will etch. piss... some soaps, hair products all react with marble.

even my grease pencil leaves indelible marks onto the marble that cannot be removed without polishing. marble is shitty and awful. if they made 3/8" quartz pieces id tottally go with that right now.

Scovie · Mar 30, 2016

I won't put Marble in a shower. Period. Epoxy Thin-Set is required for that crap. Honestly I don't know why home owners do tile themselves. It looks so easy when it's done. Those magazines that show all the pretty squares or rectangles set just so... How hard could it be? :lol:

And you my friend, are double dog cursed. You over-think things. "Re-inventing the wheel" so to speak. So just when you think you have Marble figured out, then use Slate, then cheap American ceramic, then expensive thick rectified porcelain. What? someone wants Basalt? No problem. ⅝" x ⅝" Recycled glass, bring it. It's never ending. We did a project using 24" X 24" X ½", it was the entire house with Japanese tile. One of the hardest tiles I have ever worked with. It actually said on the carton "Must be installed within 18 months of manufacture".

Point is, just get thru this and decide if you want to do tile full time or not. If you do, plan on a 10 year learning curve to get your hands on all the different materials, sizes, applications and limitations.

There is no way you would get me to NOT use pre-manufactured niches. It makes it very simple to get the layout EXACTLY where you want it. (*see pic #1) They need to be centered on grout joints so you don't end up with a ⅜" piece next to it. They are already waterproofed and come in a wide variety of sizes.

Perfection:

Here is a niche nightmare for you... Notice the miters, and the 4" X 6" niche in the center of the 18" tile, 16" up off the floor. It's a foot-hold for leg shaving. I could only work on this shower for about 6 hours a day, sometimes less. It would scramble my brain and I would go blind from all the sizes and colors.

grantmichaels · Mar 30, 2016

Nice work, though ... for them.

I hate marble ... and onyx, while beautiful, is a PITA too ...

As a matter of fact, I hate the quartz prodcts, the porcelain, the bioglass, the recycled products, and well - everything but granite, LOL ...

queequeg152 · Mar 30, 2016

Scoville DeVille said:
10987310_745101022267558_6828831445545884572_o.jpg

holy shit thats amazing looking.

i never thought i could like something with so many colors... but this looks fantastic.

regarding the niches... PLEASE tell me what nich you used in the first pic?

im running regular plain jane subways... and i could not find ANY niches that would line up on the horizontal joints like your there? thats the entire reason i made my own niches... to get them to hit the horizontal joints EXACTLY... i spent an hour doing the same thing with my bathroom window... shimming etc to get the grout joint to line up ontop. it didnt go exactly well... but it ok i think.

epoxy thinset? i was told to use mapei LFT thinet? its like the most expensive thinset ive ever seen lol... 35 bucks. already bought a bag of the stuff so dont tell me i f**ked up! lol. i was told this is what folks use to set those big granite shower bench seats... naturally i assumed it would work for marble?
dont tell me i f**ked this up too...

so scovie... what do you use for things like window sills? i origionally wanted to go with quartz... its basically 100% inert, almost like glass.

granite is too dark unless im unaware of some sort of white granite? im trying to hold to the white /gray tile floor scheme i have in mind.

heres the thing thought. quartz was like 80 bucks for 60" thresshold pieces...

marble was 11 bucks for 36" pieces and 27 bucks for a 48" piece. can you guess why i choose marble?

lol yea i regret it now... but i think i can still make this work... im not expecting the marble to last a long time, but if i can get 5 years out of it ill be happy. ive got the tools to bust out the marble in like an hour if i have to replace them.

i was told if i seal them twice a year i should have few problems... do you perhaps have any reccomendations for a sealer? im assuming you have set your share of marble floor tile?

thanks again!

queequeg152 · Mar 30, 2016

grantmichaels said:
Nice work, though ... for them.

I hate marble ... and onyx, while beautiful, is a PITA too ...

As a matter of fact, I hate the quartz prodcts, the porcelain, the bioglass, the recycled products, and well - everything but granite, LOL ...

are there any granite stones that are white or white ish?

grantmichaels · Mar 30, 2016

queequeg152 said:
are there any granite stones that are white or white ish?

there's *ALMOST* always something mixed into the (white, or more typically slightly-off white) ...

don't plan on using any blue granite ... it's a luxury ... red, too ...

you can get a lot of dark green granite, for relatively inexpensively ...

black is on the expensive side ...

stone that's various mixtures of brown and yellow and orange, with black veining make up the meat of the market, in terms of being low-cost, but also tending to match cabinetry stain colors fairly broadly ...

personally, there are a couple of lower-priced granite's that are pretty nice looking at the end of the day ...

peacock green >> verde butterfly or uba tuba ... peacock green can have a really nice depth-effect ... it looks 3D-ish ...

giallo napoleon >> giallo ornamental or santa cecelia or new caledonia or any of those zillion ... if you look around, you can usually find an example where the interstitial black is connected, like cells ... that shit is pretty inexpensive, and bats above it's grade once installed IMHO ...

Scovie · Mar 30, 2016

Fuck Mapaei. lol Only thing I hate worse than Maepai is TEC. For what you are doing, I don't think it's a huge deal, this is what I use for Marble when I HAVE TO install that gott damm shite. (LOL) Latapoxy® 300 by Laticrete probably closer to $80 a gallon depending on your area. http://www.laticrete.com/dealers/products/adhesives/epoxy_adhesives.aspx

I use different nitches but for the subway tile you have, I use 'Innovis Recess-It': http://www.contractorsdirect.com/Innovis-Recess-It

"Rec 1414 Square" I use masking or duct tape around the flange and mark center in both directions, on all four sides, then find your vertical center of tile and horizontal grout joint (simple explanation). I think it comes with an installation guide.

I typically just wrap the windows with tile (bullnose). Once in awhile, people request some weird shit in their niches which I don't care for (see picture) it looks clunky. There are lots of white/cream color solid material to be had but the similar tile is more durable and matches everything else. No matter what tho, the window substrate NEEDS to be water proof to the window itself. It does not have to be a solid piece btw. Google "Jerusalem Limestone" and see if you see anything you like.

Sorry if this is all mumbo jumbo-ee, I'm tired.

Once you have the hole cut, the Innovis Recess-It gets screwed to the surface (surface mounted). then I feather it with thin-set out about 10"-12".

Hard to see but window wrapped 360º with daltile subway bullnose.

Clunky

queequeg152 · Mar 31, 2016

Scoville DeVille said:
f**k Mapaei. lol Only thing I hate worse than Maepai is TEC. For what you are doing, I don't think it's a huge deal, this is what I use for Marble when I HAVE TO install that gott damm shite. (LOL) Latapoxy® 300 by Laticrete probably closer to $80 a gallon depending on your area. http://www.laticrete.com/dealers/products/adhesives/epoxy_adhesives.aspx

i also have ultraflex 2? which would you use? im hesitant to use epoxy thinset because... honestly i dont want the stone to be permenant. i have a good idea how quickly this marble could turn shitty and i really want the option to chip it out without ruining the durock underneath. lol but i dont want it to pop off... what would you do? is the epoxy too hard to seperate from stone?

I use different nitches but for the subway tile you have, I use 'Innovis Recess-It': http://www.contractorsdirect.com/Innovis-Recess-It
"Rec 1414 Square" I use masking or duct tape around the flange and mark center in both directions, on all four sides, then find your vertical center of tile and horizontal grout joint (simple explanation). I think it comes with an installation guide.

very nice. im doing the math and it looks like its still about half an inch too big for 1/16" joints on regular subway tile( i like the 16th joints ). could i make up that difference by building up the top and bottom with thinset? or even better glueing down some 1\4" durock strips top and bottom?

i know its stupid to go through so much bullshit to get the niches to land perfectly on grout lines... but i think its a real nice touch that id like to keep doing... especially when the guest bath niche will be right around eye level.

on an unrelated note.

have you ever tried those noble niches? they are like... foam sprayed with sand and mortar? this guy i watch on youtube uses them all the time.( Sal DiBlasi)

like these?
http://www.stonetooling.com/Compotite-Preformed-Niches-p/40-11522.htm

problem is though... 20.5 inch tall... leaves like an inch excess. i was thinking of modifying one of those with a special foam adhesive and then waterproofing it with aqua D. i would simply cut it in half on the table saw then glue it back together.

I typically just wrap the windows with tile (bullnose). Once in awhile, people request some weird shit in their niches which I don't care for (see picture) it looks clunky. There are lots of white/cream color solid material to be had but the similar tile is more durable and matches everything else. No matter what tho, the window substrate NEEDS to be water proof to the window itself. It does not have to be a solid piece btw. Google "Jerusalem Limestone" and see if you see anything you like.

Sorry if this is all mumbo jumbo-ee, I'm tired.

Once you have the hole cut, the Innovis Recess-It gets screwed to the surface (surface mounted). then I feather it with thin-set out about 10"-12".

Hard to see but window wrapped 360º with daltile subway bullnose.

1933562_843522575758735_6305474975385154810_o.jpg

Clunky

yea im not a fan of the radius pieces on the window returns/jambs. it does look crummy imo. and i dont like those tile details with the picture framed miter pieces around it... that looks worse imo, but what ever.

i might give a radiused return a try if i could find some of those real old school subway tile radius pieces? that are like the shape of a subway tile?

like this: http://www.periodbath.com/pdshop/shop/item.aspx?itemid=871

12 bucks a piece though... hahhahahaha. no.

im using these 6" bull nose pieces that i cut down to like 3.5" to butt down onto the vinyl window. im leaving a large 1/8" gap that im going to pump full of real good quality ureathane sealant. sikaflex. it will stink like hell for a week or so, but its a much better product than sillicones.

sillicones are amazing for shit like tile to tile where there is less movement, but vinyl to stone or vinyl to vinyl... or anything else really... imho a urethane or STPE sealant is warrented. it does stink though... probably not good in a super tightly sealed new home.

my window sills and niches should look very similiar to your window there( HOPEFULLY), just with a marble sill.

Scovie · Mar 31, 2016

queequeg152 said:
i also have ultraflex 2? which would you use? im hesitant to use epoxy thinset because... honestly i dont want the stone to be permenant. i have a good idea how quickly this marble could turn shitty and i really want the option to chip it out without ruining the durock underneath. lol but i dont want it to pop off... what would you do? is the epoxy too hard to seperate from stone?

Yeah, don't use epoxy. Just use whatever thin set you have with a few dabs to hold it. As long as the substrate is waterproofed, you could put wood on your windowsill. (as an example). Use just enough to hold it.

very nice. im doing the math and it looks like its still about half an inch too big for 1/16" joints on regular subway tile( i like the 16th joints ). could i make up that difference by building up the top and bottom with thinset? or even better glueing down some 1\4" durock strips top and bottom?

Yes, Or you could just use one piece of ½" just be sure to consider that when finding your center.

i know its stupid to go through so much bullshit to get the niches to land perfectly on grout lines WRONG!!! LOL ... but i think its a real nice touch that id like to keep doing... especially when the guest bath niche will be right around eye level.

on an unrelated note.

have you ever tried those noble niches? they are like... foam sprayed with sand and mortar? this guy i watch on youtube uses them all the time.( Sal DiBlasi)

No, but I also use l Laticrete niches, http://www.contractorsdirect.com/Hydro-Ban-Shower-Wall-Niche they are made out of Styrofoam and are flush mounted with "dutchman" backing. I'm not really into modifying shit but you could cut them in half and foam-glue them back together. They are square from front to back so in that respect a little easier to work with. The Innovis Recess-It niches are angled from front to back for slope, and have a rounded front edge. A little trickier to work with and NOT modifiable.

like these?
http://www.stonetooling.com/Compotite-Preformed-Niches-p/40-11522.htm

problem is though... 20.5 inch tall... leaves like an inch excess. i was thinking of modifying one of those with a special foam adhesive and then waterproofing it with aqua D. i would simply cut it in half on the table saw then glue it back together.

yea im not a fan of the radius pieces on the window returns/jambs. it does look crummy imo. and i dont like those tile details with the picture framed miter pieces around it... that looks worse imo, but what ever.

You're weird. hahaha

i might give a radiused return a try if i could find some of those real old school subway tile radius pieces? that are like the shape of a subway tile?

like this: http://www.periodbath.com/pdshop/shop/item.aspx?itemid=871

12 bucks a piece though... hahhahahaha. no.

im using these 6" bull nose pieces that i cut down to like 3.5" to butt down onto the vinyl window. im leaving a large 1/8" gap that im going to pump full of real good quality ureathane sealant. sikaflex. it will stink like hell for a week or so, but its a much better product than sillicones.

sillicones are amazing for shit like tile to tile where there is less movement, but vinyl to stone or vinyl to vinyl... or anything else really... imho a urethane or STPE sealant is warrented. it does stink though... probably not good in a super tightly sealed new home.

Again, you are over thinking this IMO. It is very important to allow movement between dissimilar materials, but you don't need anything that will smell for a week. I use Polyblend caulk exclusively, either sanded or non sanded. It's a siliconized acrylic latex caulk with anti-microbial properties. It meets industry standards so why re-invent the wheel?

my window sills and niches should look very similiar to your window there( HOPEFULLY), just with a marble sill.

$7 at The Home Depot, Sanded or Non Sanded, and will match any color of grout you have. (Polyblend)

Maligator · Mar 31, 2016

queequeg152 said:
you must not be shitty to them or ill know.

Lmao, now that made me chuckle

Queequeg grows stuff, and fixes junk.

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