Time For Tile.

But first I want to give a quick tribute to Max.  Rob and Gina had to make the very difficult decision last week to let Max go.  He was their first child and they had him for 15 1/2 years.  Max always greeted everyone with love and enthusiasm.  We're going to miss that boy.

 

 

I took of work Friday to get everything ready for tiling on Saturday.  I had to get the refrigerator out of the kitchen.  Every little thing we do just makes this place seem bigger and bigger.

 

 

We needed a spot for a dishwasher, so I had to build a counter extension to make room for it.

 

I knew we had some rot on the other side of the wall from the old washer hook up.  Fortunately only the plywood had rotted on this side of the wall.  I ripped it out and put a new sheet down in it's place.

 

 

Gina has been pestering Deb for a month or so asking when she was supposed to come over and lay our tile.  Things couldn't have fallen into place at a better time.  Deb and I got started around 9:30 a.m. putting down the backer board.  I cut the board, fit it into place and screwed a few screws in to anchor it while Deb finished screwing in the rest of the screws.  Each 3' x 5' sheet required 54 screws.  It took a 5 pound box of decking screws to put it all down.

 

 

Deb was in beast mode with my impact driver.  She must've put around 900 screws in the floor.  I had trouble staying ahead of her.

 

 

The Lord decided Saturday morning that things had gotten too dry around here.  We got almost 2 inches of rain by the time Rob and Gina made it over.

 

 

Gina told Deb that she didn't get to touch the tile because she would mess it up.  So Deb cooked supper for us.  Best pork roast she's made.... ever...

 

We got all the backer down, so it was time for tile.  Dad and Rob measured over two tile widths and snapped a chalk line that ran the full length of the room to keep the tiles nice and straight.

 

 

Rob mixed the first batch of thin set.

 

 

Gina will kill me over this picture, but I just had to include it.  We always have fun with them.

 

Somehow Deb managed to snap a picture of three men watching a woman work.

 

Once things were laid out, the dining room went fairly quickly.

 

 

David and Janis made it over and of course David had to get down and help out.  It was an all hands on deck kind of day and all the help we had made it happen.

 

Jack at TNT Building Materials recommended we use a brick pattern with the 18 inch tiles and we are so glad he did.  They look awesome!

 

If you look closely, you can see a "river" running through these three tiles.

 

Gina almost tiled her self into a corner.

 

Dining room is finished, time for a little break before moving into the kitchen.

 

Our driveway looked like a used car lot.

 

 

I don't know for sure how we managed it, but around 11:15 p.m. we laid the last tile into place.

 

 

Rob and Gina came back over Sunday and we got down to the grouting.

 

Again, Deb was told she couldn't touch the tile so she was the official water girl.

 

Cinderella (Gina) worked every inch of grout in our kitchen.

 

 

Once the second wash was done (Deb was allowed by Gina to touch the tile at this point), the third step was cleaning the tile one last time with Glass Plus.  Lauren did a great job helping Deb get the last of the haze off the floor.

 

 

So here are some pictures of the final product.

 

Apparently, these two found time for a quick selfie.

 

 

Oh, and look who showed up to eat catfood in the middle of the night.

 

It's not right, but we will make it work.

When I cut the doorway out for the closet door and showed Dad what I had done, that was his remark.  It has become our motto renovating our house.  Neither one of us has any construction experience, so we have winged it with advice from people and google.  When we screw something up, or just don't quite get it perfect one of us always says jokingly, "It ain't right, but we'll make it work."

 

I didn't update the blog last week, and I know some of you check pretty regularly. (I have to give a big shout out to Christy Smith here)  I really didn't think we had accomplished much. But after looking through pictures, the light at the end of the tunnel has grown some more.

 

Friday before last, I took off work at lunch.  After gathering plumbing supplies, Cole and I got started working on the bathroom.  We were waiting to install the pocket door until we got the vanity set into place.  So that was our first project Friday afternoon.  Here is the vanity centered, shimmed and attached to the wall.

 

 

Once the vanity was in place and vanity top was installed we framed up the pocket door.

 

I spent most of Saturday afternoon plumbing the grey water pipes under the house.  I don't have any pictures of that, so I will move on to Sunday.

 

Tea came over to spend the day with Cole Sunday, so I turned the camera over to her while Cole and I worked on cabinet doors.  I'll post the rest of Tea's pictures in another post.

 

Here are the cabinet doors pickled, poly'd, and ready to hang.

 

 

The new hinges we bought made the doors overlap unless you closed them at the same time. Dad and I trimmed this pair so they would close properly.

 

Measuring for handle positioning.

 

And voila, drawers and a door done.

 

It got to be the heat of the day (about 103 or so if I recall correctly), so since Cole had invited Tea to come over and swim, we called it a day renovation wise and headed to the trailer to swim/float the day away.

 

Last week, we got a little bit done in the evenings.  Deb ended up with her annual sinus infection from starting back to school and that slowed her way down.  But we did get the rest of the cabinet doors trimmed and hung up.  Having them off the floor and closing up the cabinets made the place start to look more like a home and less like a construction zone.

 

The white door under the oven will eventually get finished to match the rest of the cabinets.  We plan to install a double oven in place of the single one, so the brick will have to be cut out lower for it to fit and therefore the cabinet door and frame will have to be cut down as well.

 

 

I worked on the master bathroom water lines with plans to hook up the bathroom Saturday afternoon.  I had everything ready to hook up and realized the new washer hook up was plumbed with Quest instead of Pex so I will be replumbing it with Pex before teeing into the original copper.

 

After I climbed out from under the house, Deb was feeling a little better from her nap and said she was feeling good enough to have me hang some of her decorations.

 

 

We finally sucked it up and finished installing the pocket door Sunday morning.  I still have the hardware to put on the door.  It isn't exactly right, but it'll work.

 

 

 

Because of the thickness of the shower walls, we ripped a 2X4 into 1/4" strips and glued them to the frame work around the shower so our sheetrock will hang flat instead of bowing out where it meets the shower.  The horizontal pieces between the door frame and shower are shims to help transition.  Rob White gave me this suggestion a while back.

 

 

I will have to rip one more 1/4" piece tonight to run from the floor to the ceiling at the corner here and then we will finish the rock in the bathroom and get it prepped for paint.

 

Well, that's where we are.  Almost ready for tile, carpet, counter tops, and backsplash.  It seems to be coming together all at once.  I don't know if we will be moved in before Razorback football starts, but hopefully we will be really close.