New Kitchen Floor - Part 1

On Friday night, Uncas and I started the long anticipated project of tearing up and replacing the kitchen floor. Since day 1 in the house, Uncas has wanted to redo the kitchen floor. I have too, but realized that it would be better to hold off until after we painted the walls and the cabinets. The old floor was pretty gross and dirty and didn't match the look of the kitchen that I had envisioned. Originally we thought about doing the peal and stick tiles, but as time went on, Uncas did some more research and decided that we could actually do ceramic tile in there and do it ourselves.

Once we painted the kitchen cabinets, we looked at the calendar and picked this weekend to do the floors. Then the search for the perfect tile was on. We found it last week and placed the order. I was getting really excited, but on Friday afternoon I was starting to feel a little apprehensive. Can we really do this project ourselves? Will the tile look ok? How is Sammy going to deal with this upheaval in our house?

On Friday night after work, the first thing to do was "before" pictures! Then we moved the fridge, stove, side table and bookshelf out of the kitchen. Our dining room has the stove and fridge and everything else is in the living room (including Sammy's food and water dish).


Up next - tearing out the baseboards! This started out relatively easy. I watched Uncas do a few and then I actually tried my hand at it. The we started the part under the cabinets and the sink. Not only was it a hard angle, but one piece was especially stuck. Uncas tried and tried. I started tearing up other baseboards and then I started tearing up the floor. I got about 3/4 of the flooring tore up when Uncas finally got that stupid piece out! Fortunately for us, the flooring was really, really easy to tear up!



Once we finished tearing up the floors - I swept and vacuumed the floor. We were ready for the next step! But since it was around 10 pm, we decided to call it a night.


Saturday morning we woke up and started working the floors by 8:30. First order of business - laying down and securing the cement board. Once again, Uncas started while I observed. Then I took over screwed it down, while Uncas measured, cut and placed it on the floor. We were lucky that the weather was incredibly nice outside. Uncas was able to cut the cement board outside and Sammy played and played in the yard all morning and most of the afternoon. Finished up with the cement board just after 1 pm, so we took a break for lunch.

Supervisor Sammy chewing on a rawhide.

After lunch it was on to the real thing! Time to tile! Friday night when Uncas picked up the tile, the guy at the store gave him a tile cutter. Unfortunately after trying to cut a couple of tiles and breaking them, we decided that we should rent the wet saw like we originally talked about. So - off Uncas went to get the saw. By 4 pm we were back in business. Uncas did all the measuring and cutting. I primarily laid the tile. Uncas would come in and tile a bit to give me a break every once in a while. Just before 10 pm, Uncas put the last tile in place (I let him do the last two because my knees had had enough). It seemed like days ago we had put down the cement board, but in reality it was just in the morning. After we cleaned up, we headed to Wendy's to grab some dinner. We came home, ate it and went to bed just after 11.

Uncas using the wet saw.

The floor looks amazing! Better than I could have hoped. We still have to grout the floor, which we will do later this afternoon. I am glad to give my knees a break, but I am so sore all over! I have a new found respect for anyone who does tiling for a living. It's hard work! Both physically and mentally. Fortunately everything has gone so smoothly this weekend. The rain held off until late last night, so we (Uncas) could do all the cutting outside. The tiles lined up so beautifully on our floor that the amount of cutting that had to be done was minimal and my husband, being the perfectionist that he is, had very little waste! We ended up with almost 2 full boxes of extra tile!

I am purposely not posting any pictures of us tiling (I did take some) because I want to post the finished floor first. That won't happen until after we grout today, so you'll have to wait a little bit longer. But I think it will be worth waiting for! Now it's time to wake up Uncas and get some breakfast!!!