Exceedingly Mundane

Wow – we couldn’t believe the difference a little grout could make in how the tile looks! We are even happier than we were the other day when we finished laying the tile…

We put down the grout tonight, and then got it cleaned up and buffed. Now, we just have to let it set 48-72 hours, then seal it, and then we’ll be almost done. (The only other things will be to put back the baseboards and paint them, over the new nail holes, and then for Tim to install that important fixture we removed, the toilet. :D)

Click to see more pictures…

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Tada! We have ceramic tile in our guest bathroom now 😀 (see pictures in the extended section.) It was a long day, and even Tim admitted towards the end that “this is harder than I thought it would be” and also said it took longer than he thought it would.

Disclaimer – we know why it took longer. We followed the instructions in the tiling book and found the center of the room and worked out from there. With this room, that means we had to make cuts on tiles that touched each surface (cabinet, wall, around toilet base, and bathtub). If we had done what we thought, we would have laid them out to maximize the tiles, i.e., using the most full tiles and only making minimal cuts. The way we did it, following the book, we had to make twice as many cuts. I don’t think we’ll be doing that in the other rooms. It just took too long, way too long. We’re going to try to lay out the kitchen, laundry and breakfast rooms to use the most tiles. As it stands right now, we’re probably going to have to go back and buy more tile because of all the cuts we had to make in the first bathroom. We wasted a lot of tile and used some of what we bought for the other rooms. Bummer.

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Adhesive cleaned up in the guest bathroom. Check.

Measured and marked lines for tile. Check.

{Yes, this room is very oddly shaped and is going to require tons of cut tiles. Darn it.}

Getting ready to mix the mortar and start laying tile. Check.

Pictures in the extended section. Check.

Another update later today or tomorrow… keep your fingers crossed for us!

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Tim stopped at Home Depot yesterday on the way home from work and picked up a gallon of Krud Kutter. He had read online somewhere that someone had used this stuff and had good luck with getting the underlayer of the vinyl and all that adhesive up. He spent about an hour last night in the guest bathroom, and used some elbow grease and the Krud Kutter and got most of the stuff up. Picture included on the extended page. I think he’s going to spray it down one more time and scrape the rest of it up, and then he’ll be ready to start laying the tile! Yeah!

He’s working from home today, so whenever he finished this afternoon, I think he’ll start back on the project. Or else, we’ll go shopping or something (yeah, right!). 😀

Click for picture…
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I’ve lived in this house for 12 1/2 years. For over 12 of those years, I have wanted to get rid of the white floors that the builder put in here, and I have always disliked immensely. My patience is finally being rewarded, as we have purchased some ceramic tile from Home Depot and Tim started last night on “the great tile project of Fall 2005”

He is going to start in the guest bathroom and use that room as a test run (aka, guinea pig room). He started last night when he got in from work – he removed the toilet (it’s front and center in the garage though, in case anyone stops by and needs to use the guest bathroom!), the baseboard moldings, and starting removing the vinyl that was in there.

Click to see some before and after pictures, and to read more about the beginning of the project:

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Dear Diary,

I’m sorry I haven’t written much lately. Life, and the pursuit of it, has gotten in the way of my writing (blogging). The last few days have been very busy, and the next few weeks promise to be even busier. But I’ll do my best to write it all down, Dear Diary.

P.S. You know how I am, I am terrible at writing in my diary (not my blog). I have 4 or 5 diaries from growing up (mostly teenage years), where I wrote a couple of entries in either January or February, then abandoned my poor diary until the next time I received one as a birthday or Christmas gift. I’m still holding myself to my promise for my blog – to get at least one entry entered per day. Good or bad, boring or not, at least something.

Read on to find out the nitty gritty of what we’ve been doing the last couple of days!

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