Thursday 10th June
The weather was fine again. We are so lucky to have good weather to complete this job. The number of times I have tried to install work in bad weather and some of the situations I have found myself in would be hard to believe. I have, for example, found myself ankle deep in running water because it was raining so hard in a Welsh valley in December attempting to install ceramic tiles. That installation job was truly the worst I have ever had the misfortune to try to do, and ended up with the builders having to smash off the concrete structures that they had chemically sealed to the top of the wall and transport them to a shed, where I succeeded in applying the tiles with a huge gas fired heater blasting. What a nightmare. I know better than to try to attempt the impossible now, but sometimes it causes a lot of delay and hassle. I have just installed a ceramic relief on a wall in Herefordshire last week and that was delayed by 5 months! I was all set to install it in November when the weather turned very cold, and I can vouch that the temperature in England did not rise above 5 degrees until March! What a long winter. By then, the protective cover they had put up for me had gone, and as it was then raining, I couldn’t do the job either. Then in between running up and down to Shetland and waiting for good weather, in the end it got installed 2 weeks ago, but boy was it worth waiting for! The weather was perfect – 20 degrees and sunny, so the cement behaved itself and set quickly, and the grouting was no problem at all.
In Shetland one would imagine it could quite easily have been cold and raining, but we hit the jackpot, at least for the first two days.
Today we tiled the sides of the toadstools. I used paper- backed mosaic sheets, which are applied tile side to the cement and pressed firmly in place. Then, when the cement has gone off (at least 24 hours later), the backing paper is peeled off and the tiles are revealed. The funny thing is, the Hungarian tilers had never come across this kind of paper-backed tiles before, and started off by applying the cement to the paper side! So I put them right. Admittedly these days most mosaic tiles are backed with fibre-glass mesh, which brings a whole new meaning to the technique of mosaic tiling. For years I have been using the reverse technique, whereby the tiles are stuck face down on to brown paper, and then the backing paper is peeled away as described above. Now it is possible to work face up, by sticking the tiles face up on to mesh, which is how I made these mosaics. I imagine the tilers have just never used the old-fashioned variety.
Again we worked really well together. There were a few moments when I thought I may not have enough tiles of the right colour – that would be difficult, because in Shetland, you can’t just go to the shop and pick up some more. In fact you can’t do that on the mainland either, but at least you can get next day delivery. When you’re stuck way up in the middle of the North Sea things do take longer. Peter told me that was the hardest thing about tiling here. Tiles can take weeks to arrive, even when the delivery date is due weeks before.
By the end of the day, all the tiling using adhesive had been completed.
Weather watch for tomorrow.
