Days 1-3 of the Drama Involving the Kitchen Floor

This should NOT be viewed as a “How to Tile” post. If anything, it is a “How Not to Tile” post. We are not professionals. This was the first tile job for both of us. Hopefully, our story will provide amusement and the attitude of “Hey, if they can do it, anyone can!” However, unless you are a professional, experienced amateur or a masochist, I recommend that you hire someone to do the work for you.

Day One: Saturday, March 16, 2013

We got a late start. Since it was the first day of spring break, we stayed in bed a little longer than normal, but it felt really good not to have to get up and go to work. After we finally rolled out of bed and ate breakfast, I started moving the furniture out of the dining room so that we would have room for the kitchen appliances.

Douglas pulled the stove out for me, and I painted the wall back there. It was really disgusting! You can get a reminder of what it used to look like while reading “The Time It Rained in the Basement…. And Other Plumbing Stories.”

He then went for a long run and after that took Kahlua for a run of her own. I finished painting one coat on the wall and started peeling up the tiles. Some of them came up easily, but others took a lot of work. I began with the easy ones. They were ancient linoleum tiles.

Once Douglas and Kahlua got back from their run, we went to Home Depot, where we spent a lot of time and even more money. The trip cost us over $600, but we are hoping to be able to bring some of the items back. We bought more of everything than we thought we needed because we did not want to have to go back in the middle of the project. Of course, since then we have been back twice. sigh. Some of the expense included tools that we will be able to use on other projects. If we ever do another project. The way this one is going, I do not know that I will ever want to do another DIY project again.

One thing that you should do before you go to the store is to figure out the square footage of the room. We did not do that, and it had been so long since I had bought the tile that I could not remember. That would have made things easier, but we were able to estimate fairly accurately. I was glad that I did remember to bring along one of the tiles. That made it easier to pick out a grout color.

From there we went out to dinner. Douglas wanted corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick’s Day. When we got back to the house, he took the appliances out of the kitchen, while I worked on the floor some more. I think that I was more exhausted than I realized, because we started fighting over silly things. I decided that I needed to go to bed.

Day Two: Sunday, March 17

Douglas pulled emptied the last load of dishes and put the dishwasher in the dining room. All of the appliances were now out of the kitchen and in the living and dining rooms.

Meanwhile I worked on the tiles. It about seven hours for me to get all of the tiles out of the kitchen. My arms and back were killing me by the time I was done.

My wonderful husband decided that he was going to pull out the pipes that the previous owner used for the washing machine in the kitchen, so that we would not have to cut around them. As is so often the case with an old house, it was not as easy as it should have been. The shut-off valve was ancient, and would not fully shut off. Have you ever seen a shut-off valve this old in use?

That meant that he had to run to the hardware store for new valves and then spend time soldering. This resulted in a couple of nice sized blisters for him, because he refused to wear the proper protective equipment. For this very reason, I tell you not to do what we do. Absolutely NEVER solder without protective eye-wear. He put on goggles and gloves after I took this picture.

By the time he finished, we were on a roll. I painted behind the dishwasher, which was just as bad as behind the stove. Douglas finished installing the new shut off valves, capping the other pipes, and plugging the holes. Crème kept investigating all of the holes.

The plan was to pull off, the baseboard, paint primer on the floor and maybe put on the leveling compound if there was enough time. We were stopped short when we pulled off the baseboard, though. What we found was horrific. The bottoms of the walls were rotting, and the previous owners had not pulled off the baseboards before installing the last tile. Therefore, the plywood, which incidentally was installed over the previous tiles, did not go all the way to the wall. It also did not go under the stove or dishwasher. This is how I ended the night….completely dejected. I wanted to cry.

Day Three: Monday, March 18

I had an appointment in the morning that took much longer than I anticipated. Therefore, Douglas was on his own with the building inspector, aka Crème de Menthe. She followed his every move and made sure that he was not screwing anything up.

He laid Hardiboard (an improved version of cement backer board) on the floor under the stove and dishwasher. This made significant progress in my eyes. Things looked so much better by the time I got home. I had renewed confidence that the project would turn out all right in the end.

There was an epic failure of a utility knife. Have you ever seen this happen? Douglas had this knife for over thirty years, but it will cut no more.

My only task for the day was to drive to Home Depot to pick up more spackle. Douglas finished the last bit when I got home. The bucket is there because he picked up a neat trick on the internet. It is good to have a bucket of water nearby when spackling. If you keep the knife wet, the spackle will not stick to it. Handy little tidbit of the day.

Here is a before and after of one section of the wall. Much better, no?

Since we could not do any more work until the spackle dried, we decided to pay a visit to our friends the Forsyths. Junior, aka Douglas Forsyth, prepared us a good meal, and there was much laughter and music. What more could you ask for?

When we came out, the world looked like this.

We had to be extra careful driving home. We were wishing we had the truck. Luckily, my little Jetta has slip control and a manual transmission and does not do too badly in the snow.

Here is the Cape of Dreams in the dark and snow. I wonder how much more we get before morning.

So, we have a lot more work to do before we can even think about tiling. I hope that things are going better at your house. If you are doing any projects, may they go more smoothly than ours! At least I am feeling better about our project than I was Sunday night.

UPDATE: If you would like to see other posts about the end of the project visit DAYS 4-6 and DAYS 7-9. We are pretty happy with how it turned out, especially since we had so much difficulty.

Happy Homemaking!