OK, I Lied. More Tile to do Before the Grouting Begins.

I was planning on grouting the kitchen area today so we could finally put the table back in place, but decided that if I'm going to get all the grout mixed up, I may as well make it well worth my time. I was going to put off tiling the front entrance, but decided it was better to do it now so I could do all the grout at once. In the following picture, you can see the size of the area I was starting with. It was almost exactly 4' x 4'. The area of the wall which is torn out was where there was a 1/4 height wall in place. I hated it with a passion, so I ripped it out before starting the work. I also removed the top ugly layer of linoleum which exposed the original ugly layer of linoleum.




The 4' x 4' area was barely large enough for one or two people to come in during winter months without tracking slush all over the carpet, so I decided to expand the entrance size by approx 70%. It was a task of making the area big enough without making it look out of place. I went for an angled corner, just to make my life more difficult. Here, I'm test fitting the pieces to see how it'll all fit. At this point, I had no idea how I was going to handle the corners where the 2" x 2" squares went together.




Fast-forward a few hours and the tile is done. As with the tile laid in the kitchen, the tile colors make the crappy skid-mark brown carpet look less crappy. It's still crappy though, and will be replaced. As in some previous tile layouts, I got stupid-lucky here again. The depth of the tile layout allowed me to lay five full-size tiles, with only minor squeezing of the grout lines. Behind the door is where I hid the small tile portions.




When it came to the angled corners, I decided to go with the "keystone" look. I'm not sure if I like it as much as some of the other options available, but it was easy to do and few people will ever even notice how it was done. It also allowed me to make sure the corner pieces were tight against the aluminum edgeing.




Once the thinset is fully dry, we can grout both areas at the same time and get the trim back in place.