Adventures of Tiling a Kitchen

This weekend we were able to prep and lay all the tile for our new kitchen floor. With cabinets on the way this week, we knew we would have to get this one done quickly and right so's not to hold anyone up.

We spent the previous weekend combing about seven different tile/flooring stores in SLC and settled on five or six finalists that made it back to the house for final judging. On Thursday night we laid them all out in the kitchen. Using our counter and cabinet samples, we systematically eliminated tiles based on color (too dark, too red, too wrong) and finish (too shiny, too many grooves, too wrong) until we landed on the undeniable winner.

We also spent Thursday sweeping, vacuuming, and swiffering every square inch of the floor, a week of drywallers will leave you with loads of dust.

Snap shot of floors, in all their tar and felt glory, prepped and ready for the next step.


Given the nature of the original surface and that fact that floors in old homes are rarely level and walls are almost never really straight, our next order of business was to lay backer board to help even the playing field.


Because we settled on a diamond pattern for the floor, we knew that we would need several half and quarter tiles for around the edges. Janice anticipated this and only had to cut two more tiles last minute.

Then the process became chalk the line, line one up, spread the mastic, place the tile, adjust the tile, add the spacers, grab a "second set of eyes," and continue. Cole, a tile-laying virgin, was a model student and within a few tiles was laying them like a champ. Randy was amazing too.


Lest you think Janice and I were slacking on the job, we were busy priming and painting the kitchen walls, moving the sprinklers every 30 minutes, handing spacers and prepping next week's work space...


But until then, there is a looksy at the kitchen tiles ready for grout on Monday.