Wordless Wednesday: DIY Mosaic Patio Table

Comments

June 24, 2009 at 9:50 am

(1) Susan Adcox says:

Beautiful colors! You are very brave to tackle the pool. I’ll be watching for updates!

June 24, 2009 at 11:33 am

(2) phylameana says:

Love it. This project reminds me of the coffee table I watched m Dad make for my mom back in the sixties. It was made with white, beige, green and gray speckled tiles. I use to sit on the floor and color on that bumpy table for hours. Sometimes I would do rubbings of the tiles by rolling a Crayon over a sheet of butcher paper. We had lots of butcher paper for artwork (my dad WAS a butcher!).

June 24, 2009 at 1:05 pm

(3) poolandpatio says:

Thanks, Susan. There will be updates, and we can’t leave the pool unfilled for too long, so we’ll be tackling the project when the tiles arrive in the next few days.
Phylameana: my parents made a coffee table out of mosaics in the ’60s also! It was very popular in the 1950s and ’60s, and they had a few how-to books out (which I have copies of). My dad made several pieces of furniture and outdoor structures–he was, and still is, a talented artist and teacher. I wish he had kept the table!

June 24, 2009 at 7:43 pm

(4) Sukhmandir Kaur says:

I’ve been doing tile and marble work for nearly 30 years. I’d love to try my hand at mosaic. My daughter and I covered a small end table with left over marble which I cut to perfection to make a nice design. We used a contrasting sink V cap for the edges. Unfortunately it didn’t hold up because we used the wrong adhesive for wood. We used a concrete mortar we had left over from a floor tile job. We should either have first covered the wood with a cement “hardi backer” board or used an elastic type premixed adhesive made specifically for wood. I’m worried that you may have a similar problem if you do not have a water proof backing for your mosaics and you intend to use it around water.

June 24, 2009 at 10:45 pm

(5) poolandpatio says:

Hi Sukhi:

We’re going to apply the mosaic tile on the pool’s side walls on top of the old tile. First we’re going to use a disc sander to rough-up the surface so the new tile will adhere. We’ll also create some grooves to make it adhere better. The tile for the pool is 3/4-inch mosaic tiles on 12″x12″ mesh backing. We’ll use some kind of thinset with a waterproof polymer to lay the tile. I’ll be covering this as a project for this site. I’d love to see some examples of your work, Sukhi, esp. any outdoor areas. Could you post some pics in the forum? Thanks!