the summer of tiles, part 1.

This is the summer of tiles.  I say "is" because we aren't done yet.  But I thought I'd post the start of this crazy journey as a part one, with more to follow.

When we bought this house in Arizona, the linoleum had a couple gouges in it that I really disliked.  But we had just bought a house and it wasn't the right time to replace any flooring.  Years later, with more nicks & marks in the linoleum, we talked of tearing out the linoleum and the now-stained carpet in our main floor of the house and finishing the concrete.  It seemed this spring that the time to do it was probably this summer.

So here's how it all started...

One day (June 9) when Matt got home from work, he grabbed a corner of the linoleum and started to pull it up.  We hadn't for sure decided to do the job this summer, but at that point we were committed. :)  Everyone joined in and soon it was all pulled up.

The kids loved helping pull up the linoleum.

This was Matt & the kids pulling up the main part of the linoleum, right where the dining room table goes.

We noticed lots of mastic (the glue that held the linoleum down) and writing in marker (from the builders) on the floor.  We weren't sure if we could get the stuff up to be able to finish the concrete.  We tried some chemicals from Home Depot to get it up, but it really didn't work.  So we started talking about tiling instead.

Matt & I thought we could work on the flooring project while the kids were at camp, and the following week we were heading out for our trip to Michigan.  Little did we know how much we underestimated how long this project would take us.

Day one of the kids off to camp, I worked on getting the floor ready for the tiles.  Here, all the furniture is moved onto the area where the linoleum was, so I could pull up the carpet.

Carpet up, starting to pull up the padding and see the sandiness underneath.

Most of the carpet & padding rolled up.

Sweeping took quite a while after pulling up the carpet!

It was heavy to drag outside.  Once Matt was home, he cut it up so we could put it into the trash bin to have it taken away.  It was more than one load for sure.

No more carpet!

Pulled up the linoleum in the front entryway and half bath.

After that first day of getting ready, Matt & I went to a huge tile store in Glendale to pick out our tiles.  We ended up with a 20" x 20" white body tile, in a splotchy gold/tan pattern.  We bought a pallet at a significant discount, and the girl at the store tried to warn us that the tiles were probably from different dye lots and might not all match, and might have damage to them.  We decided to go for it anyway.  

Later, we both agreed that if we had it to do over again, we wouldn't buy the reduced pallet.  It had a lot of tiles with chips and imperfections, and there were quite a few discolored tiles.  I think overall we made out alright, but it was hard finding tiles that were good to put on the floor.  We also have bought several new, full price boxes, and it's much easier because all of them are good tiles.  Live and learn, right? 

At any rate, we came home with half the tiles that first night and a bunch of thinset and grout and everything we needed to get started.

The floor was ready to start dry fitting the tiles.  Rue was super bored with the kids gone at camp, so she stuck very close to me through the week as I worked on the floor.

Another view, with some of the tiles on the kitchen island in the foreground.

Yep another exciting pic of the emptiness.

Like where we moved the fridge?

These wonder knee pads are the best.  Well worth every penny of the $15.99 they cost us.  My knees don't hurt a bit when I'm kneeling on the floor while wearing them.

Part of why we decided finishing the concrete wouldn't work.

Some of the writing that also made us realize we needed to cover the concrete.

The kitchen, aka tiling central.

After using a chalk line to find the center, I started laying tiles from that point out.

More tiles on the floor.

We went back to get the second half of the tiles the next day.  It was too much weight for our minivan to take it all at once.

Starting to look pretty cool.  If only they were actually mortared in place!

I'd never cut tiles before but figured out how to use our little tile cutter that we'd bought for a small bathroom project five years ago.

Something about adding those edge pieces that makes it look so great.

This was the night before we left to pick up our church's kids from Bible camp.  Matt layed the first three layers of tiles.  And we realized with such a big tile and the tiny 1/16" grout lines we'd chosen to do, that this was a much tougher job than we'd realized. 

I went online the next day and discovered these things called tile lippage leveling systems.  Basically a cool way to help keep from having a "lip" between tiles.  So we placed an order, which would not arrive until after we'd left for Michigan.  And we figured we would have a tile project to greet us when we returned from our time up there and working on a tile project in our Marquette house.