Mosaic Staircase

A month or so back we finally completed our mosaic staircase.  It was a BIG project.  I don't think we realised just how big until we dove headfirst in. Huge thanks to Ben's cousin Carmen (the mosaic queen!) who set us up in the beginning stage and gave us that much-needed momentum to get the project off the ground.

Our house was taken over by bowls and jars (and whatever else we could find) to house all our tiny bits of ceramic pieces.

We worked in panels (14 in total) which made the project less daunting and felt good as we started to tick panels off, one by one.

 We spent most evenings cutting, arranging and gluing.

The panels in progress! We laid down the design first and then filled in the background.  We weren't sure what colours to initially use for the background and wanted to see the rest of the design come to life first.

  

Here is the front of our place, pre-mosaic install!

With the panels completed, it was then a few days of adhering them to the stairs.   

This process involved, cleaning the stairs super well (we bought a 2nd-hand Gerni), cutting the panels to fit perfectly (the stairs, unfortunately, weren't perfect rectangles) mixing up the tile adhesive, and then pressing the panels firmly on.

It seems like it would be a quick job but with mosaic, every process takes longer than expected!

Learning as we go!

Looking pretty good!

Once we'd finished gluing the panels on it felt amazing, actually, it felt like we had finished but we still needed to grout the staircase (another big job!).

Grouting was done over 3 days and it was tricky to time it with sunny days (we had a lot of rainy days between adhering the panels and then to the grouting stage).  The colour of grout came down to not wanting to show dirt and grime as it aged, so we decided on black.  The grouting process involved, mixing the grout, layering it on thick, and then wiping back.  I layered and wiped back and Ben mixed and did the much-needed process of running back and forth with clean sponges and water for me.  You have less than 30 minutes before the grout sets so you have to move super quick and it's quite stressful because once you smear the grout all over your beautiful mosaics there's a scary moment when everything looks completely destroyed.

Soooooooo proud to have it finished and step back and admire our hard work.

Above is a signature of sorts.  When Ben and our first got together we had monthly art challenges.  One of them was to draw a blue willow plate reimagined, so I included the little people from a plate to represent Ben and myself.

 The long view

When Carmen was down, Ben was at work, so I was left to sketch up the design.  The time pressure ended up being a godsend because otherwise, we both may have procrastinated with the design and perhaps never started.

The initial idea to mosaic the staircase was Ben's and I'm so glad he had it, so glad Carmen kicked out butts into gear and so glad we kept going even when we wanted to stop. The motivation to have our house not overrun by mosaics was a strong one! The whole mosaic took around 3 months from start to finish.

We had an old couple walk by and tell us how lovely it was as we were doing the install.  Our town gets to see the mosaic more than we do since it faces outwards so I'm glad we could add some street art/colour to it :)