the summer of tiles, part 2.

In part one, I said we put our Arizona tile project on hold while we waited for our tile leveling system to arrive.  The next week, we drove to Michigan.  We had two big projects waiting for us there.  One, we had to move a doorway over to accommodate the larger washing machine that now stuck into the doorway.  Two, we were going to tile the kitchen, upstairs laundry room and our foyer.

My brother and his wife and eight kids came up to visit us and to help with projects.  Dean was really indispensable with helping us get started on both of these huge projects.  So thankful they came. :)

Had to work on moving the doorway over before tiling, so we could tile around the new location.

We went on a tile-finding mission with most of the crew.  Lowes, etc.

All smiles at the start of the mission...

And a not-quite-so-excited bunch however long later this was, near the end of our Lowe's visit.

Dean, cutting the door trim to make space for the cement board and tiles.  Rue seemed to find this process quite fascinating.

Dean, with tile laying experience from their previous home, cut & dry fit all the cement board for our kitchen. 

Next morning, with appliances in the living room.  It was insane living like this for over a week, but what can you do?

A meeting in the kitchen as to what the next step was going to be.

Laying more cement board.

I think this was after I mortared it down and Matt and Dean used drills to drive screws into the cement board to hold them onto the floor.

The area between the kitchen and laundry area has terazzo underneath the linoleum.  The leveling material that was under the linoleum had crumbled, making a great big mess for us to deal with.

Ugh, the terazzo mess we had to deal with. :(

Somewhere early on, we realized we would have to wait for another time to tile the foyer.  Dean & family left on the 3rd of July, and my cousin & her family and some friends arrived about an hour later.  We laid the cement board in the laundry area on the 3rd & then enjoyed a break from the work for the 4th of July weekend. :)

Since we only get to our Marquette place once a year, we had to take advantage of being by Lake Superior and go on beach walks in the morning.  It was a good way to sort of regroup, just the two of us, before kicking back in with the jobs ahead of us.

Such a cute selfie, eh?  Matt just loves it when I aim that front camera at him. ;)

That Monday, we dug right in and started dry fitting our awesome tiles in a fun herringbone pattern.

It took us two and a half days to cut & lay all the tiles.

A bathroom selfie of tile-laying lady.  Matt was cutting tiles and I was laying them, and it worked really well.

This was right after I laid the last tile, on Matt's 50th birthday.

The next evening, we grouted.  I love how finished it looks with grout. :)

Laundry area after grouting. 

The kitchen after we moved the appliances and barstools back, just in time for our guests to arrive.

The laundry room, with the doorway moved over and the new tiles in place.  Yay! :)

Another view of the laundry room after we finished our work.

We loved how the tiles looked in the house after we finished, but it was sad that we had to leave then.  It looked so cozy and inviting. Let me just say that putting this all into a blog post makes it look so much quicker and easier than it felt at the time.  It was insane, living in the house with the kitchen out of commission for a week & a half, with lots of people in the house.  We got creative with mealtimes and had to go out of the back door onto the deck, walk around the west side of the house and come back in the family room door if we wanted to go from one room to the next.  Craziness.

Next post will be on getting started back up on our tile project back home in Arizona. Stay tuned. :)