Frustration

We managed to put a good night's work into the house last night. We cut the bottoms off the two doors, Peter put the wall up, and I started to clean the mortar off the tiles in front of the wood stove.

I got about halfway done the tiles when I noticed that one of them was cracked ... very strange. I figured I'd have to take that tile up, remove the mortar, and retile it on the weekend. Well ... once I got that tile up I noticed that the tile next to it was loose ... this spiraled into 6 loose tiles and more on their way. Has anyone ever had this problem or have any ideas on what's causing this? We laid it in the late fall, when the concrete was cold and before we turned the radiant heat on. I thought maybe we weren't mixing the thinset properly. I found some places online that said if the thinset is too wet or dry this can happen (they sound hollow when you knock on them). However, I don't think I've changed anything and all the tiles I've laid recently have been fine. Anyway, we got the 6 tiles up, we're just going to grout over a few others that we should probably lift (I figure it's not much more work to take them up after grout than it is now), and we're really hoping the rest of the tiles are good and solidly stuck. Our other thought on why this happened is that we didn't grout it right away...

So ... I didn't quite get all the tiles cleaned and ready for grout, but that's ok, because I'll spend Saturday replacing the tiles we took up as well as laying some more in the entryway. I'll probably lay some more tiles on Monday and then grout everything on Tuesday.

Enjoy your long weekend all you NBers!