A few of you may have seen the photos posted here or on Facebook about our recent galley project, where we resurfaced our galley countertops with porcelain tile, replaced our faucet and installed a 2 burner cooktop where an old propane stove used to be. Since we had such a great outcome with the tiled countertops in the galley, I decided I wanted to tile the bathroom countertops and our “nightstand” as well. Call me crazy, but I love, LOVE my new galley countertops and what a difference it made in updating the look of our interior. Our bathroom countertops were ok, but they were a bit discolored and the forward head countertop was an ugly yellow color. So, this weekend I decided to begin round II of the tiling.

I used 6″ tiles in the galley since the space was much larger and the 6″ tiles just fit better. With our bathroom countertops being so small and having to cut around a smaller sink, I decided to go with 4″ tiles. They didn’t have the exact same tile in 4″ tiles that I used in the galley, but I found something very similar. I bought all my tile and supplies at Tile Outlets of America in Fort Myers. They had the best selection of 6″ and 4″ tile out of the 3 places I checked. Since I already had all the supplies, tools and grout left over from the galley, all I needed for this project was the tile. We also still had the small wet saw that we borrowed from our neighbor, Bill. Since I didn’t know how to use the wet saw, I once again recruited my dad to do the cutting. I measured, made templates and marked the tiles and he cut them, then I laid them. I had 3 areas to tile: forward bath, aft bath and our “night stand”. I call it a nightstand, and it’s really just a large surface next to our bed that is over several drawers. It had the same type of surface as the baths and I thought it would look nice to tile it as well. So, we spent all day Saturday cutting and laying the tile and part of the day Sunday grouting and cleaning up. Since we had to remove the sinks and faucets in the bathrooms to tile, we took this opportunity to replace the faucets in both baths. Once again, I am blown away by what a difference a little tile makes to modernize the interior of a trawler. It sure can be a lot of work, but with only 2 days time and a minimal cost (tiling small areas in a boat can be pretty inexpensive) it can make a huge difference.

And where was Sophie during all of this?