Questions & Answers

So we started tiling our shower today. I asked in a recent post about starting with the floor. We were originally going to start with the floor, but because we were having some cutting issues I decided to start with the wall and not do the bottom row, leaving room to do the floor and then the last row later. We were also trying to make the most of our time since I leave for vacation on Monday and I didn't want to wait 24 hours for the floor to dry. I've seen people not start at the middle/top before, so I figured it'd be okay, but it wasn't!

We are using 12x24 porcelain tile (which I guess isn't even 24 inches, it's 5 3/8!). We precut 2 rows of tiles. I was going to start one single tile level with the window sill, since the story pole said it would work out that way. I mixed Versabond LHT to a peanut butter consistency. I used a 1/2x1/2 notched trowel to lay the thinset. I noted there were some small dry spots, but when I came to those I used the trowel to mix it with the wet thinset to remove the dry spots. I back buttered the tile.

When we laid the first tile into the position, it would not stay put. It kept sliding downwards. We ended up taking off the tile and only a few of the ridges were collapsed, despite me moving the tile after we put it on and pushing the tile to help collapse the ridges. We tried again after redoing the thinset on the tile and the wall but the same issue.

Was I wrong in attempting to tile starting in the middle of the wall? Was my thinset too hard and that's why it didn't collapse? Now of course in my attempt to save time, I've lost time! I'd still like to start at the windowsill if possible, but please let me know if you have any tips of what I did wrong. I wasn't able to take a picture because I needed to scrape the thinset off the wall quickly so it wouldn't get too dry.