Grout - It's not Just for Breakfast Anymore

The tile has been in for a week, and I haven't gotten around to grouting it in that time. Too many other little projects got in the way, including a Friday night baseball game - Brewers over the Marlins. The company my wife and I work for had a contest which my team took 2nd place in. The prize was tickets to the game and seats in one of the luxury suites. Plenty of catered food, booze and soda, and a Don Sutton bobble-head doll. This was actually the first game I've seen at Miller Park, since it replaced the old County Stadium. Got some time to hob-nob with the company CEO and a few dozen other people. Much better than busting my back grouting!

(Pardon the poor picture quality. This picture was taken on my camera phone)



By Saturday afternoon, I finally got around to taking care of the grouting of the tile at the front entrance. I haven't done the larger area in the kitchen yet, but hopefully that will be done tomorrow. The front entrance tile used almost a full 9 pound bucket of sanded grout. That same 9 pounds of grout should cover a larger area when I do the kitchen, as I'm grouting around 12" tiles so there is just plain less to grout per square foot. Over the next few days, I'll re-moisten the grout to help it cure a little more slowly. Next weekend, I'll seal it and consider it done.

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.

Tile is Down, Next Up: Grout!

It's taken a couple of hours over a few nights this week, but the tile in the kitchen dining area is finally down and waiting for grout. Previously, I posted that I had finished all the full-size tiles and only needed to do the tiles which needed trimming. Anybody who's done tile knows that these tiles take the longest. Tonight, I finished cutting them and mixed up some thinset to stick them down. Here is the small hallway leading to the basement, back door, and half-bath (the same half-bath which I tiled a few months back). As you can see, I'm using larger tiles laid straight instead of on a diagonal for the flooring. The edge by the stairs is a full-width edge trim, perfect for the top of the stairs.




While the tile cuts around the basement stairs were easy (almost all 90 degree cuts), the cuts between the kitchen and living room were all at an angle. Here is where I started today, with all the full-size pieces glued down. To make a straight line over 7 tiles, I set full-size pieces in place and used a laser line to guide me. Surprisingly enough, it actually worked very well, Some of the tile spacing needed to be tweaked a little to make sure everything lined up properly, but it's not enough to make it noticeable.




To make a finished edge between the tile and carpet (yes, that skid-mark brown carpet will be replaced in the near future) I used a tile edge which gets stuck down with the tile. Once I replace the carpet and have a new tack-strip to hold the carpet, the aluminum edge will show about 1/8" profile - fine with me. Click on the pics for larger images.

Floor Tile Continued

With all the cement board down, I could turn to today's project of laying the tile. I kicked around a couple of layouts to see what would work the best and result in the fewest cuts. I found that by using the back wall of the house and the wall on the right side of the picture below, I could end up with full tiles in the most visible locations and also the fewest cuts. A lot of tile pros tell you to snap a chalk line grid to help lay out the tiles. I didn't listen to them and used my Ryobi laser to check both grout lines as I did each row. Basically, I just worked to make sure the grout lines were straight. It was surprisingly easy to do - probably because I'm just so damn good at this tile stuff.




As said, I used this wall as a main line for the grout lines. As said on a previous post, I am doing all the full-size tiles now and will come back and do all the cut-tiles when I can walk on the tiles. Then comes grout. As I laid the tile, I tried to mix up the colors and patterns on the tiles to avoid an area made up from all one color. I mixed up 9 boxes of tiles in the process, and am happy with the result. I also worked to keep the "grain" on some of the tiles from running in the same direction. I wanted a random look.




Once I got away from the edges I was able to move at a pretty good speed. I put down enough thinset to lay 6-8 tiles at a time.




At this point, I've put down as much tile as I can without first putting down more cement board. Five hours later I pulled the spacers from the tiles I could reach. I could have (should have?) left them in place until the thinset dried, but I can't leave it alone. Even without grout I'm very happy with how it's turning out.

More Travertine Flooring

It's cold and crappy outside, so what better reason to get away from the landscaping and start on the new kitchen flooring? I'm going to do the kitchen in stages, since we sort of need to be able to use the kitchen while we live here (it's where the microwave is, afterall). Stage One includes about half of the kitchen area, and covers the dining area and pathways to the back door, basement, and 1/2 bath. I'm planning on a full weekend to get the bulk of the work done on this area. That work should include laying the cement board and getting all full-size tiles installed. After this is done, I'll worry about the cut-down tiles and grout - probably to be done over the next few days.

Step one was to take care of the cement board underlayment. I went with Permabase 4'x4'x1/4". I was concerned with removal of the existing layers of vinyl flooring, as I'd bet that at least the older layer was made with asbestos. Instead of removing the layers and risking the health issues, I removed the loose areas and leveled it with thinset before installing the Permabase. Once each sheet of Permabase was installed, I used screws (a LOT of screws) to hold everything down. Yes, I know that having four corners of cement board coming together at the same place isn't the best layout.



Step two was taping the joints. I liked step two, because it took only a few minutes. Step one was the better part of the day and left me with an aching back from being hunched over for hours.

Rust Update

The rust in the water finally got to me. After two months of living here, the white bathtub looked orange. Toilets were getting more staining in the bowls by the day. Even the new whole-house water filter I installed was turning orange. It was time to kick it up a notch! I did a little research on the Internet (there is stuff out there other than videos of Lebanese cat-juggling! I hadn't thought of it earlier, but the salt I was adding to my water softener is available in a version which helps get rid of rust (Morton's, in a green bag). There is also a liquid you add to the brine before the daily flushing of the system which helps remove rust from the media in the softener. I added the new salt and poured in a half-cup of the liquid and had the softener recharge. As it was purging the system, the water coming out had smelled heavily of sulfer and was very off-color. The stuff was working! Two hours later (how long it takes to cycle the softener) I ran it again to try and remove even more rust buildup from the softener. Today, I see a big difference in the color of the water in the toilet. Yes, I mean after I flushed.... It's much clearer. The water filter is still heavily coated with rust, so tonight that comes out and gets washed off, which will hopefully make the water condition that much better.

Baby's Got a New Pair of Shoes

Nice weather meant I was outside most of the day. Since I'm normally up before anybody in the house, I have to do "quiet" projects. This morning, I decided to finish putting the three remaining tires on the lawn tractor. The rear rims & tires came off easily enough, and I was also easily able to get the new tires on the rims. The problem came when it was time to seat the beads on the new tires, as I just couldn't get it to work. I gave it the old college try for about 90 minutes before figuring I was just wasting my time. I'll man-up to the truth and say I was whipped, so I loaded the rear tires and remaining front tire/rim into the car and headed over to a local tire shop. $10 to install three new valve stems and get everything finished up on all three tires. Hell, I'd have paid $10 per tire if they asked for it! It took them less than 10 minutes to do it, thanks to having the right tools and the know-how. I find comfort in knowing I at least got one of the four done completely on my own. That will probably be the one which leaks air. . .

Once everybody else was up, I headed out to the backyard for some sweet, sweet, chainsaw action. I was running low on wood for the firepit, so I took down a medium-sized pear tree and one of the scraggliest pine trees I've ever seen. This gave me a chance to put the old saw I just had worked on to the test. I need to tweak the idle speed on the carb, but it works pretty darn well. My neighbor gave me a sharpening set he has had for years and never used, so now I get a new toy to play with. While I was out cutting wood, my wife took a picture of me:



Don't worry, I put on the safety glasses before getting to work.