We wanted to add some colour to our garden and also make it personal to the school. Communally, we came up with an idea of a mosaic to place in the garden.
This thought alone was already making us ask questions on the design. We aimed to have our board one metre squared and planned out the cost.
We wanted to keep our idea simple but be a stand out feature in the garden. We agreed on having 'STEDHAM'S GARDEN' written in the centre in blue (school colour) and the outline green (represents the outside). We set a budget of around £30 for the tiles and we were hoping that the grout could be donated.
Roberto knew a few local tile shops, so proceeded to see what was on offer. Finding blue and white tiles was no problem at all, but grass green tiles was certainly a task. We also had a change of design to originally planned. We wanted to add two flowers in the design to make it more interesting.
After searching in ten tile shops, finally one had the perfect coloured green tile but an issue laid in the price. Through the kindness of a family business, we were able to get all the green tiles for 25% off and without paying the £15 delivery charge because it was a small order. We couldn't quite keep within the budget of £30 but we were extremely close.
We got started on smashing the blue tiles, (yes, we did enjoy this) and carefully added these to the letters on the board (which was kindly donated by a local builder merchant for free). Once the tiles for the boarder and flowers arrived, we got started with smashing the tiles, and started to cover the boarder in green.
After many hours of smashing and sticking, we were so close to completing the green area but took a rest and decided to complete the mosaic the next day.
The final day of tiling, involved finishing off the green tiles and then the flowers. We had smashed the tiles up in preparation so it was a matter of just sticking them down. After we had laid all the tiles and made sure we had no gaps we left the recently stuck tiles to dry before we grouted it all.
The grouting was a difficult task but we managed to complete this. However, it wasn't without the help of Topps Tiles, as they were able to donate a free bucket of grout to help us finish. Once the grouting was finished, we gave the mosaic a clean and double checked there were no loose pieces.
The final task to do was to add the brackets onto the back of the mosaic and hang it on the fence. We had measured where each bracket needed to go beforehand, so we had no problems in making sure it was going to be level. Once these were screwed on tightly, Harvey and Roberto lifted it up and placed it on the fence in the centre of the pergola. Job complete.
