Wrong! Do it again!
That’s the quote from Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 that has been on my mind.
This is Part 2 of the Bathroom Penny Floor. It’s the part where it went wrong. The next part will be how I saved it (I hope).
The photo on the left is before I added the topcoat to seal and protect the floor. On the right, you can see that the topcoat has changed the colour and all but eliminated the pattern.
Once again I discover how difficult it is to get a clear answer on the best way to do something that many people have done before me. (The first time I really noticed this was when my first child was born early and the nurses had conflicting ideas about how best to care for her. But I digress.)
A quick recap
By the end of my first post about the penny floor, I was still laying pennies. Like everyone says on all the youtube videos, it took a lot longer than I expected. In my case, it took a full week longer and hours at a time. I stopped putting a drop of silicone on each penny and laid a thin bead down in a row–much faster, but there was some silicon trimming from between the pennies later.
Here is the final 3-minute video of me (and the cats and a bunny rabbit) laying the pennies. You will also see the grouting process.
The Process
First I found the more-or-less centre of the irregular shape I had created with the tile. Then I used a magnetic compass to draw where North East South and West are. Leanne’s Dad pointed out that this gave me magnetic North and not True North, but I don’t think we’ll be navigating a ship using our bathroom floor, so it shouldn’t be a problem.
Next, as you can see in the video, I transferred Leanne’s design onto the floor.
The compass orientation meant that the edges did not line up with the tile borders, so I used different sized coins of various currencies to fill in the gaps as much as I could.
When I wasn’t creating a pattern, I chose pennies randomly, heads or tales, from our collection. Some were discoloured, but I felt that just makes the floor more interesting. Perhaps someone can tell our fortune by the patterns in the chaos–like reading tea leaves. We were happy with the result and I set about grouting. Continue reading Penny Floor Fail