Exceedingly Mundane

Guess what – we’ve now finished laying all of the ceramic tile in our house that we set out to do last fall! We pulled up vinyl flooring in the guest bath, breakfast room, kitchen, laundry room and master bathroom and now, all of those rooms have the same ceramic tile laid in them.

Saturday, we finished up the master bathroom. Tim applied two coats of sealer, waiting 2 hours between each coat. Then, he put all the shoe moulding back on the baseboards (using his nifty air compressor with nailer attachment, he loves that thing!), applied caulk to the wood and also around the tub and shower, then re-installed the toilet. We moved all of our stuff back in about 8 PM on Saturday, and vacated the guest bathroom. Ahh, it’s nice to be home!

Click on the extended entry to see the rest of the pictures!

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – what a difference grout makes!!! I’m still amazed at how different, and how much better, the ceramic tile looks after you lay it, once you add that grout in between the actual tiles. It really makes all the difference in the world!

We’re in the downhill stretch now. Tim has done really well with our bathroom – and I must give him all the credit. He’s done every bit of this room by himself, from start to finish. I had helped with all of the other rooms, but this room is just so much smaller, that there really is not enough room for two people to move around at all. So, he’s taken the lead and done every bit of it himself, and he’s done a great job.

Click on the extended entry to see the pictures of what he’s done lately, and how it looks now…

Read the rest of this entry »

Tim and I started our ceramic tile project last fall, and got almost all of the rooms done that we set out to replace. We had one final room to do this year, our master bathroom (a small room), and we ripped out the vinyl a few weeks ago (I blogged about it here). We’ve sort of taken a hiatus since then. Mostly, because neither of us is very pumped up about resuming this kind of work. Tim has moved on to golf, and I don’t enjoy one iota of the process of laying tile.

However, Tim sucked it up last night and resumed the project, and got most of the tile cut and laid in our bathroom. I didn’t help him much, this room is so small, so there’s really not enough room for both of us to get in there and work. So, instead, I worked on our taxes. Like I told Tim, we were both working on getting those monkeys off our back, those annoying things we don’t want to do, but know we need to.

Click on the extended entry to see pictures from yesterday’s work…

Read the rest of this entry »

Tim got a lot done yesterday in our master bathroom. We had two layers of vinyl flooring in there to remove. The original white flooring that the builder put in the house (which I hated, it showed every speck of dirt and every dark hair that came out of my Shaggy DA head), and then the beige vinyl square adhesive tiles we put down a few years ago, when we ripped down the wallpaper and repainted the walls in there. It was a lot of work, but Tim got both layers up. Now, we just need to do some cleaning, and we’ll be ready to start laying tile!

Click -more- to see some pictures from yesterday’s stage 1 🙂

Read the rest of this entry »

Casa de Hammons is now officially closed for renovations and will not be accepting Bed & Breakfast customers for a couple of weeks. Sorry, no room at the inn 😀

Translation = we’re starting today on the last of the ceramic tile project. If you recall, we began late last fall, by ripping up the vinyl in the guest bathroom, breakfast room, kitchen and laundry room, and putting down ceramic tile. We finished just before Thanksgiving, and I insisted we take off through the holidays (which extend through the Super Bowl around here!). So, now it’s time to get back on the wagon and do our master bath. Which means… we have had to move into the guest bathroom. Therefore, we won’t be able to have any overnight company (unless it’s an emergency, obviously) until we finish our bathroom and move back in.

Hope you’re all ready for more tile project reports and pictures! Let the project commence

As happy as I am to have ceramic tile put in the laundry room, kitchen, breakfast room and guest bath (we still have the master bath to go), there is always a flip side. And you know me, the eternal pessimist, I’m always looking at the negative.

Well, not really, but I thought some certain people might get a kick out of the fact that my house is a mess and the OCD in me is struggling with it. Tim calls me Mrs. Monk and although I’m not nearly as bad as Monk on TV, I do have my moments. I actually think I’ve been coping quite well. Certainly in this case, the end justifies the means and getting the tile laid is just wonderful.

But, for those of you who know me, you’ll get a kick out of these pictures…

Read the rest of this entry »

Tim asked me the other day if I had been blogging about my “homework”. And I told him, no, but I should. So….

When we first started on the tile in the guest bathroom, at the end of the first night, Tim was like “OK, here’s your homework, like they do on Trading Spaces.” And I had this blank stare I gave him that said “how on earth do you know about homework on Trading Spaces?” Then, I realized, I had made him watch one episode with me several years ago, the infamous one where Hilde redid the master bathroom and stapled thousands of fake flowers on the wall. That house (and the one where Laurie did the beautiful bedroom for the other lucky people) is just a few miles from where we live, and it had been written up in the local newspaper. I only watched Trading Spaces during it’s heyday, maybe some that season and another. I had no idea Tim had picked up on their “homework assignments” at the end of each day. But he did! {that Tim, he’s something else, isn’t he?!! :D}

So, I had homework most every night. It’s my job to remove the spacers the next day from tile we had laid the previous day/ night.

My homework now is to mist the grout twice a day for 2-3 days. And yes, I have already done my homework this morning 😀

Yeah, the kitchen is looking really good now! Tim worked from home yesterday, and after lunch, we started on the grout in the laundry room, kitchen and breakfast room. It was long, tedious work, but we finally finished about 7:30 PM. Tim made one pass through to put on the grout (and it’s very messy, it gets on everything), and then we made about 4 other passes with sponges and water and dry clothes, to clean off the grout from the tiles and baseboards, and buff it clear. It dries in a whitish haze, and you have to sponge the excess off (2-3 passes) and then buff the hazy part of. Long day, but very worthwhile! We have tile WITH grout now!

Check out the pictures from yesterday…

Read the rest of this entry »

I posted a quick update last night, but didn’t take any pictures. I took a couple this morning once we moved the refrigerator back into its “hole”. Click to see 2 pictures in the extended section.

Meanwhile, today is going to be another busy day. Tim is working from home again, and after lunch, we’re going to start on the grout. Going to be a long job. Grout is easy to apply, but very messy. It takes both of us several passes to get it in, get it sponged up from the tiles but at the same time being careful not to take it out of the grout hole, and then getting it cleaned and buffed off the tiles before it hardens. Tedious work. Cross your fingers and wish us luck and lots of energy and patience! 🙂

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, we had a productive afternoon, till the thunder and rain started and the tornado sirens went off. 🙂 Tim got all of the tiles cut and laid in the rest of the kitchen, including behind the refrigerator, in front of the dishwasher (lots of small pieces) and the rest of the laundry room. So, the tile is all laid, now we’re on to bigger and better things – like grout and sealer!! 😆

For those of you following our ceramic tile project, read on….

Read the rest of this entry »

Are you getting tired of all the posts and updates on our ceramic tile project yet??!! Well, settle in, because it looks like they will keep coming for a while! It’s taking longer than we projected, and the scope has expanded. Since the pipe burst in the laundry room, we will now have to replace sheetrock and repaint that room, which was not part of the original plan.

For those of you who are interested…. read on (with pictures)!

Read the rest of this entry »

Suffice it to say that if you are going to begin some level of home renovation project, inevitably, Murphy’s Law will kick in. You know that law, the one that says “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” 😀

I can write more later, for those of you who want to know, but the short of it is that we’ve hit some speed bumps (miscalculated the square footage and so we under bought on tile, mortar, grout, etc) and had a minor mishap (the pipe in the laundry room to the washer burst, flooding the laundry room and requiring a nifty Sheetrock repair and now total room painting job).

Luckily, we have Super Terry to the rescue – Tim’s big brother came to help us today and he’s been great. He and Tim got some copper pipe and soldered it into the wall, and now are laying tile in the breakfast room. We’re being optimistic and hope that they get the kitchen done as well.

Oh, and one other Murphy-ism. Our refrigerator won’t fit through the doors with its own doors attached. Plan B now entails tiling in front of the refrigerator, letting it set, then coming back later to tile behind it. This project, I think, might turn into the one that wouldn’t go away!

Took a few pictures today and will try to load them tomorrow or Monday. For those who might be so inclined as to peek at them. 🙄

Tim got off work a few minutes early yesterday and came home to work on the breakfast room more. I planted one 6 pack of pansies in my deck planters, then went inside to help. We ended up working until about 10:45 PM. Tim had to stop and get on another conference call beginning at 11 PM (which lasted about an hour or so).

We got almost all of the vinyl pulled up in the 3 rooms. The breakfast room and kitchen are completely pulled up. He pulled up what he could in the laundry room, but didn’t move the washer and dryer yet. We have to borrow or go buy a dolly to move those soon, probably today. We did the first spraying of Krud Kutter and scraping on the breakfast room and kitchen, and I worked on the second coat (removing adhesive by hand, on my knees with a scraper and sponge) in the breakfast room. Needless to say, as I figured, I don’t have nearly the same strength and “elbow grease” that Tim does, and my hands and wrists are not used to that kind of work.

So here it is – whine whine, complain complain, groan groan. Today, I am hurting all over. My knees hurt, not from being down on the concrete on them for hours, but from the darn knee pads I borrowed from Tim. The rubber strap was too tight, and they gouged into my skin. My shoulders and back hurt from bending over and trying to scrub and push the scraper. Those are tolerable though. What really hurts are my hands and wrists. To the extent that they throb when I’m just sitting still. Typing right now is not fun. Helping Tim later today and tonight is going to be sheer torture.

OK, go ahead and bash me, I know I’m a wimp and a wuss and a chronic complainer. Poor Tim has to live with me, feel sorry for him. It is very hard work though, and thank goodness I have Tim here to do the lion’s share of it. If I was doing it by myself, I wouldn’t make it. Nice having a big strong guy around!

Without further ado, more pictures in the extended section. We’re making progress, and hope to start laying tile tomorrow!

Read the rest of this entry »

Even though we’re not completely finished with the tile in the guest bath, Tim is “raring to go” and ready to start on the kitchen. You gotta start somewhere, and with this room (or rooms, really, the breakfast room, kitchen and laundry room), it’s going to have to be slow and steady.

Yesterday, Tim worked from home (after his marathon 7 hour nighttime work session), and got started late afternoon in the breakfast room. He took up all the baseboards from the kitchen and breakfast room, and tore up most of the vinyl in the breakfast room. He was very sweet and left me a walking path to and from the kitchen area so I wouldn’t track up as much. He’s smart and thinking ahead!

OK, here’s what we have coming up in the next couple of days:
1. Seal the grout in the bathroom
2. Reinstall the baseboards, toilet and door in the bathroom
3. Apply Krud Kutter to the breakfast room and remove all adhesive and backing layer of the vinyl
4. Figure out how to tackle the kitchen and move out the appliances (I’m more worried about this than Tim, obviously!)

Pictures in the extended section, although they are very boring. But I’m documenting each step of the way, so there you have it 😀

Read the rest of this entry »