2 Tile Time

 

 

 

 

We’re back at it in the kitchen. No rest for DIYers.

 

 

By this point in the overhaul, I was just about tired of looking at demo and was more than ready to start piecing my kitchen back together again. Yesterday, I left you with the door to the laundry room freshly framed.

With just a couple more steps, the floor would be ready to tile. First, removing demo-ing the opening for the doors left the threshold uneven, so we cut a piece of plywood to make the floor more level, and followed with a layer of self-leveling compound to make sure the tiles will lay nice and flat across the threshold.
 

Once dry (it took about an hour) we were ready to tile. To save the trouble of having to lay the necessary layer of concrete board over the subfloor needing for ceramic tile, we opted to give Traffic Master’s groutable vinyl tiles a whirl. Thicker than most vinyl tiles, this bad boys look remarkable like their ceramic counterparts, he adhesive backing requires no messy mortar and since they are groutable, it’s dang near impossible to tell them apart—not to mention, you can make tricky cuts with a jig saw in no time. More on that later.

Before we began peeling and sticking, we found the center of the room and laid out a few rows of tiles to make sure there wouldn’t be any awkward short pieces of tile bordering the edges of the room.



This project brought with them several learning lessons for me. The biggest being, if you walk away from the camera, the boyfriend may take advantage of a sneak attack.

Once the center tile was in position, we just started peeling and sticking like crazy, using 1/8 inch tile spaces in between each tile and a rolling pin to make sure the tile adhesive set properly.

Check back soon to see how we tackled the tricky corner and edge pieces and to see the finished floor.