Ah, the DIY tiling was underway and man, tiling with subway tile, no matter their size, is a big project.  Big project in that it's astonishingly slow setting each individual tile and constantly checking for level and square and alignment oh my gosh, this tiling was taking for damn freakin' ever. All told"  I think it took me a good month plus to get the flippin? tile up.  Whaaaatt, whyyy, you ask.  Well, work and life, such as it is. So I went with eighth inch joints but now I wish I had gone narrower.  Those little x shaped tile spacers* came in quite handy of course though I think I dropped more than I used.   Look!  I made it around the niche!  That was hell.  Hot tip:  do better math than I or wait to cut your niche. I tried to squeeze in as many rows as I could as often as I could which averaged heh, pathetically, about four rows per outing.  It was embarrassingly slow.  I think Mike had had it up to nnnffff, ya know, enough.  Git 'er done already, dammit!  Although he kept swearing he was going to stay in the hall bathroom.  I knew he wouldn't.Eeerrrrrgggg, sooooo close!  Just a little sliver on the left side of the door!

The tippy top row had to be trimmed horizontally as well as vertically so that was wow, a lot of running up and down two flights of stairs.  Sure, I could have brought the lil' tile saw upstairs but the idea of cleaning u...