The lovely Tonya Zeiger made an executive decision that the twenty year old grodee-O beige ceramic tile that covers the floor in our kitchen, dining room, and foyer had to go. Of course it had nothing to do with the fact the it was coming up or that half the grout was missing. I’m thinking we could get another fifteen years out of it; OK, maybe ten.
As with all projects that start off with a finite scope, the scope creep monster rears it’s ugly head. The hallway has fifteen year old Formica laminate flooring that is still in darn good shape. Transition from laminate to tile is acceptable. But I’m thinking that transition from one laminate to another between the foyer and hallway, not so acceptable. SCOPE CHANGE: Let’s do the hallway too!
So off to Floor And Decor we go. They have like a bazillion choices of flooring, it’s awesome! We narrowed it down to two different laminates and after much back and forth and pestering a couple sales guys we decide. I back my honkin RAM 3500 Turbo Diesel truck up the loading dock and they forklift a pallet of Timberwood goodness into the back of the truck and off we go.
I must digress here with a funny story. So the guy in the truck next to us is getting a dolly full of ceramic tile and several cement backer boards. They forklift the boards into the back of his Dodge Dakota and forklift kid decides to help out the other kids by scooping up the dolly and raising it up to the level of the truck so the loaders don’t have to bend. Brilliant, right? Well; it would have been accept they decided to unload the tile from one end of the dolly (they must have missed that part that all four wheels of said dolly was up in the air and not solidly planted on the concrete). Just like in slow motion, I’m watching the dolly start to take a header off of the forklift. Now, the kid driving the forklift must have seen it too, because he jumps out and tries to stop a hundred or so pounds of tile from smashing to the ground. Have to give him kudos though, only about a dozen tiles broke. That was one for the books.
OK, back to the post at hand. Here are the before pictures:
Kitchen:
Dining:
Foyer:
Hallway:
This evening we decided to get started tearing up the tile and laminate since tomorrow is trash day. We got some of the tile up (what a pain in the tushy this is). Those little shards of tile that fly at you at mach 3 as you chip away really hurt when they connect with your bare skin. And they leave marks!
So here is our progress so far from a couple hours this evening:
Check back in the evenings the rest of the weekend for progress reports!