Day 13 – Our Tiffin Allegro Bus 45LP Build

Day 13…

Lucky 13…

Well, not lucky if you are a tile. Today was the day for the tile team to take over the coach and go to work. Looking for grout that needed to be cleaned up. Looking for cracks. Anything tile related really.

However, before that could happen, they wanted to take the coach out for another test drive to see if the adjustments made corrected the the pulling to the right.

So out we went for test drive, I think, number 4.

And the verdict was…

It seemed to not pull to the right. So yeah for that.

When we got back from the test drive the driver was satisfied, and we were to, that the slight pulling to the right was no longer. So he parked the coach on “Yellow Brick Road”.

Yellow Brick Road is what they call the holding area. They have it painted yellow and the coaches that are done and waiting for transport to the dealership are all lined up on this yellow strip. They also use this as a holding place to be moved to it’s next needed location for work. We were parked there because we were waiting for the tile team to come and get us.

Once the tile team took over we were parked outside next to the plant all day long while they got to work.

It wasn’t long before the tile team had all the cardboard that was covering the tile flooring up and out. Then it was inspection time. There seemed to be quite a few cracked tiles in our opinion. Apparently, this didn’t seem anything out of the norm for them. If you look back to how this is all built, and you realize that the floor is built completely off site and put down on the coach as one piece, you can understudy why they have some cracked tiles. Right or wrong, this is the way it is done. We almost feel that it would be better to tile it after but it seem that this actually would slow things down. So, they replace what they need to and you will never know it happened. (That is, unless you have some photos.)

After they marked all the tiles that needed to come out, they grabbed their Rotozip tool and got to work. They zipped out all the grout around the tiles that needed to come out. This way, when they break the tiles to remove them, they are not harming the adjacent tiles with the vibration of the hammer. In theory at least. It seemed to work but boy was this process loud.

WARNING: Stop reading now if the thought of using a hammer on such a wonderful, expensive, home on wheels sends shivers up your neck. None of this process of replacing a tile is for the faint of heart.

First the Rotozip tool working the grout lines. Then they got the hammer out and started hammering away at the tile to break it all up so it could easily be removed. Then they grabbed another tool (also electric and noisy) that scraped the flooring under where the tile was to smooth down what they just removed. BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM (and then more) BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM (Get the point? No? BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM…How about now?) We had to step outside as this was too much to see. (And the noise was not something you could actually take.)

And yes, we asked them about the heated floor and how they don’t hurt that with all this cutting and hammering as we were concerned. They are only zipping and removing the tile part. The wood that the tile is placed on is not harmed or cut and the heating elements are underneath that wood floor. So as long as they don’t cut through the wood flooring, we should be good. (We will check however.)

So where was I…We ended up sitting in our car parked in front of the motor home the last part of the day as it was way to noisy for us inside and it was raining outside. I don’t know how these people do this day in and day out and not go home with a splitting headache. Earplugs or not, I don’t care, it’s loud!

So with all the cracked tiles removed it was already the end of the day. They were hoping to get to laying and grouting the tile today so the grout had time to set and dry overnight but alas, that did not happen. Time simply ran out.

We did notice that the back walk-in closet seemed to be the worst of it.

Looking around at the different tiles that they removed, I’m not too sure how they plan on replacing them. Some of them are under half way under the wall.

We shall see tomorrow.