Remodeling Our Kitchen - Flooring

Remodeling Our Kitchen - Flooring - January 2009

Kitchen is back to 'normal' except for the flooring...

(26 December 2008)
In the span between getting the cabinets and the countertops installed, I've been chipping up the uneven spots and remnants of old mortar and tile, in preparation to lay the new tile. The Friday after Christmas, we venture out to Lowe's to get the mortar and see what we can find as far as grout. I've already drawn out the pattern on paper so I snap a chalk line down the middle of the kitchen and start laying out the tiles to see how well the pattern will work.

Best I can describe it, it starts out as a 'pinwheel' in the center of the room and 'radiates' outward in a sort of 'crosshatch' pattern. I tried other patterns but just couldn't get them to work in some repeatable fashion. I end up opening five of the twenty boxes of new tile, twelve tiles per box, to have enough to see the pattern's overall effect. I like it and Ann loves it. I'll take that as the green light to proceed. I start cutting the tile to fit around the cabinets, behind the stove and into the pantry.

After five days of chipping up all the 'leftovers' from the old tile I'm ready to get the new tile down and the floor done. The countertops have already been installed and the floor and baseboards are pretty much the last things to be done, along with a few remaining spots on the walls that need patched, painted or touched up. For some strange reason, I think laying the tile will go quickly and buy a couple fifty pound bags of rapid setting mortar, ready for grout in 3 hours vs. the standard 24 hour cure time.

I also pick up a new mixing bit for my heavy duty 1/2" drill to save my arms and some mixing time since the rapid set mortar can be used immediately after mixing and without any slak time. The pattern may look great but it turns out to be a pain in the butt to set. Where the pattern radiates the tile in perpendicular directions, the mortar cannot just be spread over the entire area or it 'skins' over too quickly, so I have to spend more time making sure I get it just where I need it.

Although this is a small amount of extra time, coupled with the reduced working time of the rapid set mortar, they combine in a not so favorable fashion. Only about an hour into the first 25 pound batch of mortar, it begins curing in the bucket, and it's really throwing off some heat! I have to quickly finish up so I can go clean the bucket BEFORE I end up with a big chunk of rock in the bottom. Nowhere on the packaging does it say what the working time is, so I guess I'm expected to know that from experience... Lesson learned.

I decide to divide the remaining twenty-five pounds in half again and mix only as much as I can use in an hour or less. I mix it a little more 'soupy' than the first batch, maybe a bit too wet, but I continue on because I know there isn't much time to waste. Eventually the tiles all run in the same direction, the farther from the center it gets, and the tile setting goes much quicker. I can spread out more mortar and just lay tile to where I can lay about half again as much tile as when the tile direction keeps changing.

(27 December 2008)
Try as I may I'm only able to get five batches laid the first day, Saturday, and that doesn't even cover a quarter of the floor! I'm astonished! The reason to buy the rapid set mortar is so I can set the tile Saturday, then grout by Sunday at the latest... Yeah, right. Not even close, and now it looks like I'll need twice as much mortar as I first thought too. I feel another trip to Lowe's coming on...

(28 December 2008)
Sunday goes a little quicker but I still end up mixing just a bit too much for the first batch and only get four batches in. I know by now I'm not grouting by Sunday, so we get to live with less than half the kitchen floor tiled, and a bunch of those little green spacers that mark where to step over the tile that has yet to be set. It gets old since everyone keep stepping on them and hurting their feet, including me, but I am just not able to bring myself to mix up a batch of mortar each weeknight. Instead I continue to layout and cut the tile to fit knowing Thursday is New Year's Day, which I have off, as well as Friday.

Happy New Year!

(1 January 2009)
I spend most of the day cutting and setting as many tiles as I can.

(3 January 2009)
Quinci is back out Saturday to help me grout but I'm still not done setting the tile. She concentrates on patching the walls, swapping out the old outlets with new, clean ones, etc., while I continue to cut and set tile. I have laid out the tiles up to the door to the garage, but I'm unable to cut them to fit because the door frame is just a bit too low and will need cut. Quinci says to just cut it too, but like all the door frames in this house, it's one of those split-jam types and was never installed correctly.

Anyone who has ever had these kinds of doors will know they just kind of 'float' between the casings on either side. Staples are all that holds the casings to the frame. As the kids were growing up and couldn't 'decide' which side of the door they wanted to be on or whether it should be locked or not, they generally pulled the staples, and therefore the door frame, the door knob, and just about everything else loose trying to 'decide'. Kids will be kids, but now every door in the house is loose and suffers from this misalignment, amongst other issues (like stickers and now even holes).

Long story short, I help Quinci totally remove the door to the garage, which allows me to get the tile cut and set while it's out, then have her re-hang it correctly - but on top of the newly set tile. That's much better... More work than just cutting the jam, but the door works far better now than it ever has. The door ends up being the last thing she does, and she almost forgets to do it. She has other commitments until the following weekend so that gives me time to finish the tile, which is pretty much done by Sunday evening anyway.

Ann isn't very happy that her office is covered in plastic and dropcloth and Quinci isn't coming back until next weekend. As she begins to uncover things we notice an area needing patched that was missed. Sunday she asks if I have a sanding block she can use to sand down the patch. I get out in the garage and manage to find it right off the bat, thankfully. Not much later she's asking me for the paint. Shortly after that she's vacuuming and has her office back to looking the way it should.

(4 January 2009)
All that remains is to find the roll of elastomeric membrane I used when I tiled the hallway to cover the crack between the slab and the steps to the patio. It appears to be patio pavers, applied vertically along the slab where it steps down to the patio, and Quinci was afraid she would mess up the patio coating with the chisel. I did put down a skim coat of mortar to give the sticky backed membrane something smooth to grab hold of. The garage is such a disaster (again) from all this remodeling and Nick's dirt bike in pieces parts and the jeep parts and my dead Super Magna waiting for an engine rebuild, etc., etc., etc.

(11 January 2009)
Come the following Sunday everything is ready for Quinci to grout. Originally I was going to get behind the stove and refridgerator, but decide to spend my Saturday catching up on bills and other things already put off far too long. When she gets there I show her the patch 'we' missed last time and she gets to sanding and patching what's left. Next is grout and I already have just about everything moved out onto the patio already. She actually finished up the grout, the touch up painting AND re-hung the kids' bathroom door. We square up and she is off...

Well, nothing much has changed since the floor was grouted over a month ago. I've been concentrating on getting my office and the garage back into some semblance of order. After three weekends, solid, I'm finally able to claim some progress. Nick helped me with the garage last weekend, between helping his mom and doing other chores, and we greatly appreciated it. He and Ann are able to organize more of Courtney's belongings that have been stored in her old room since she moved in with her fiancé, using the new plastic storage bins they sent Nick and me to pick up at Walmart the night before, with the idea we'll store some of the things she won't need any time soon in the attic.

So the remainder of this is looking back from nearly a decade ago... sorry. Sometimes things don't always go the way you want them to. Thanks to a greedy few on Wall St. willing to tank the global economy for their own gain, I found myself unemployed for the second time in twenty five years. I went from having money and not having time, to having time and not having money. All of my time was now devoted to seeking gainful employment. I did manage to finally finish all the little things left to do in the kitchen AND get pictures of the final product. We are both more than pleased with the results. The following is an around the kitchen tour from September of 2009...