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.

The Guest Bedroom: Before & After

Alright! So after a slight hiatus (more on that later), I've got a whole mess-o-updates to make. As promised, here are some before and after pictures of the Guest Bedroom: Before The Mr. and I taped and primed it, it was a light purple-y gray:

...and it had a cream-colored berber carpet:

Mom and I then painted it a very light green (Valspar, "Sweet Kasha"):

... and then The Mr. and I ripped out the carpet. The Mr.'s mom and dad helped us remove the old carpet padding staples, tack strips and some strips of double-sided tape goo. The final result (pre-move-in):

I think it's quite the improvement! I'm really happy with the color, and the hardwood floors are beautiful. We waffled about ripping up the carpet--even though our preference is hardwood, we really don't mind carpet in bedrooms and despite being slightly dingy the berber wasn't in terrible shape. It is, actually, still with us:

NB. Find out where the nearest dump or recycling center is prior to tossing large amounts of refuse on your porch. Anyway, we took the gamble and the hardwood is in pretty great shape. We'll have to figure out something to do with the threshold between the room and the closet; there's an area there that either didn't get stained with the rest of the floor or was stripped at some point. What do you think? Miss the purple?

Goodbye, Tile Floors! (Almost).

So there's no longer a question of whether we're getting rid of the tile or not; Saturday's the day. I'm a little bamfoozled that somebody comes to your house and where 5 hours before there was one floor there is suddenly another. Bamfoozled, but excited. We chose option number 3 (see the tile post from before):

It was a tough pick, but in the end what tipped the scales were three new product reviews on Homedepot.com. That sounds ridiculous, but somewhere three people have no idea they just helped us make a huge decision. It's somewhat a leap of faith, too, because, well, these people could have nothing in common with me taste-wise, but we really were having such trouble deciding that it really did come down to that. Ah, social web media. So anyway, mom helped me heft 15 whopping boxes of hardwood floor into the house, which looks like a lot, and isn't really; only about 300 square feet. Here it is, looking all full of potential and ready to go places:

Sidebar: my advice to ye-who-might-be-considering-the-costs-of-putting-in-hardwood: don't underestimate the cost of the trim. You can get away with white (or whatever color your baseboards are) quarter-round moulding, but the transition pieces (t-moulding and reducers) have to match. The floor itself may be super cheap per square foot, but they sure as heck never discount the trim. AND it adds up, because you pretty much need one length for every doorway. That's the update. More to come!

Goodbye, Tile Floors?

I started off on a wallpaper rant, but the actual first thing on our do-before-we-move-in list involves flooring. The rear addition of the house (added sometime late 70s, early 80s?) has a tile floor, that a previous owner extended into the kitchen. You can see it in the pictures in the wallpaper post. It's not bad tile, and it's been kept very clean--but it's showing its age, nonetheless (do people do half-inch-wide, black grout anymore?). We'd like to replace it with some hardwood flooring product. That was intentionally vague, because, as always, there are a slew of befuddling options. On Monday we had an in-home consultation by a guy we found through Lumber Liquidators. He pulled up the in-floor HVAC vents and looked at the cross-section of subflooring, and we think we might have lucked out: the tile isn't mortared to the actual subfloor, but to an additional layer of plywood on top of the subfloor; as far as I understand it this means we won't necessarily have to chip out all the tiles and cement--just the stuff where the plywood boards meet. SO, labor estimate in hand (we're still considering doing some or all of this ourselves, but we have to admit it's tempting, given that it was actually lower than we expected) we're ready to choose a floor. We don't have moisture or concrete subfloor issues to deal with, so we really have our choice. However, this area encompasses the kitchen and three exterior doors, if you count where Captain Muddypaws will be entering from the yard. An additional consideration is leveling; the floor, especially in the older kitchen area, is noticeably sloped. The flooring guy's recommendation was a floating floor--since the house is likely to settle more, and in different spots. It's sounding like an engineered, prefinished product is our best bet. Now the hard part is finding one we like, that doesn't clash with the rest of the house's beautiful old heart pine floors. We decided it didn't need to match, exactly; just flow from one to the other. We'll be trying to make the big decision this weekend. Here are the frontrunners: Bruce Turlington 3" Lock & Fold, "Wild Cherry/Brandywine" (Hickory):

Bruce Turlington 3" Lock & Fold, "Gunstock" (Oak): and Home Legend 3.5" Hand-scraped Click-Lock, "Gunstock" (Oak): Honestly, I think we'd be happy with a lot of things, as long as there's not half-inch black grout involved. More to come!