We started tiling the kitchen floor on Friday morning. Since Ryan had the day off, we felt certain we would be able to get it done by Saturday night. Ha. Ha.
Here are my new thoughts on home improvement projects.
1. Calculate the number of hours you think the project will take you. Be generous. Allow for mistakes, extra trips to the store, random, unexpected snags. Got a number in your head? Okay--multiply that number by 10. Then you have a pretty good estimate of how long it will really take you. You're thinking 10 hours? Try 100.
2. Do the same thing with the cost in dollars.
Anyway--we had a LONG, LONG, LONG weekend. We worked until about 12:30 in the morning on Friday (well technically Saturday morning.) Then we started working at about 6:30 in the morning on Saturday. I finally went to bed just after midnight. Ryan, on the other hand, worked until 12:45 on Sunday afternoon. (Yes, that would be over 30 hours of installing a tile floor without sleep.) Then he went to bed. At that point we had the tile laid, but nothing more. I have spent the last three days grouting. And finally we are getting close. Ryan has to put the baseboards back in, but at least our kitchen is functional again.
Before..
I got to do the wet saw! I really liked that. And no, I am not pregnant--it was cold and I was wearing Ryan's oversized sweatshirt. Wow, what an unattractive angle.
Right before we started laying the tile we had a dance/graffiti party and let the kids decorate the old floor. A lot of people have questioned why we replaced the floor. The old one was old, dirty, holey linoleum. It needed to be replaced. Even though we pretty much replaced it with tile in the same color.
After...
I never thought this project would end. I still have some touching up to do, but I'm happy with the result!
3 comments:
It looks great, Lindsay! Tiling is a BEAST!! It took us 3 days just to do the tiny bathrooms in our old house. Prep, tiling, and grouting took at least a day each. Plus all the unexpected snags :) I can't wait to see it in person!
Wow! The cute little messages on the old stuff did my heart some good. Amen to the 10x's longer than expected. I just can't wait to get my friends back. Oh, and thanks for the button shout out at the top of your blog, makes my day, everytime I see it. :)
It's gorgeous! I LOVE the border--that makes it really special. Since I've never tiled and we've tossed around the idea of doing our bathrooms, what do you think made it take so long? It seems like it would be easier & faster since you used the great big tiles, but it sounds like that was unfortunately not the case! Just trying to decide if it would be worth it to hire someone.
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