Goodbye, Tile Floors (The Resolution)

The Tile is Gone. The guys came a day early and started ripping it out, and it turned out to be pretty much as bad as we thought (or worse); they basically had to chip out the tile with something that looked like a crowbar, then come back the next day with things that looked like giant car-window ice scrapers to scrape off tile cement that was underneath. They kept having to sharpen the things on a saw to make them useful. Anyway, scraping out the cement and tile meant that the kitchen, family room and screened porch were completely coated with a substantial layer of orangish tile dust for about 24 hours there--and tile dust, I might add, neither smells good nor does it make for particularly nice breathing. I'd be lying if I said we had any regrets about not doing this ourselves; I'm pretty sure we would have given up when the scraper got dull. Anyway, I took some pictures mid-scrapeage. But first, a visual reminder of what used to be:

Inside, with the tile gone but a lot of the cement intact:

The pile of tile accruing in the driveway:

After all that was done, the flooring went in pretty quickly. We were around, trying to complete some other projects, and it seemed like every time I went back there was another third of the floor done. So, (drum roll, please:) THE FINISHED FLOOR.

We absolutely love it. It's beautiful--it makes such a difference in those rooms; they're so warm and inviting now, even without anything in them. SO much better than "public restroom" tile. The Captain, however, is reserving judgment. But then, he's generally resistant to change:

It seems really, really solid and we really love the texture of it. We found that none of the samples we'd seen (even the 3' x 6' one in Home Depot) really did it justice--the variegation is really cool and the color is much warmer on-site than it seemed under the home-improvement-store halogens. Three cheers for new flooring! Where 'toughness' is concerned--we moved in this weekend, and it did withstand a washing machine falling off a dolly with no scratch at all. We tramped in and out many many times from the gravel driveway carrying boxes and pushing handtrucks, and I haven't seen any signs of wear--though right now, most of it's covered with boxes, so I suppose we won't really know until we can see it again. (MWAH, HA HA HA HA! Ha. Ha. Sob.) So, to summarize, we used Home Legend 3.5" Click-lock engineered hardwood in gunstock oak (as far as I know, only available at Home Depot), all-in-one pad/moisture barrier underlayment, and white composite quarter-round. We hired out the tile removal and the floor laying, but we took responsibility for buying/hauling all the flooring and materials and the Mr. did the quarter-round trim himself. He would like me to mention that hammering composite quarter-round (which, apparently, is harder than the regular stuff) into the space between the bottom of the kitchen cabinets and floor is somewhat less than fun ("If this crap was on Facebook, I'd reject its friendship," I believe he said) and the process may have resulted in our second home-improvement related injury. We're hoping he regains the feeling in that thumb. I think that's it! It was our big pre-moving-in project, and having it done is amazing. More pictures to come when the boxes are gone and the furniture is in.