In the spring, we installed a
tile floor in the front hall at my parents' house. My mom liked the tile so much that we soon went with her to purchase enough matching tile to cover the kitchen as well. We took two cars to the tile store and drove home with our heavy load, driving slowly to save the suspension.
This past weekend, in honour of a tradition of doing projects in
Newmarket for Thanksgiving, Maria and I drove up to Newmarket for an intensive weekend of fun. We removed the linoleum from the kitchen as well as its underlaying plywood which had been generously peppered with flooring nails. We then screwed in some 5/8" plywood with regular screws and 3" screws into the mysteriously-located joists to avoid any creaking down the road. When the sub-floor was in place, we placed the tile and then the grout. Next weekend, Évelyne and her crew will install cabinets.
When we began on Friday morning, we thought that we would be quick to remove the linoleum and sub-floor.
My past experiences had taught me that 1/4" plywood is not too difficult to remove and the first sheet came up without too much difficulty.
One panel down, a few more to go; at this pace, we were well on schedule.
After removing the first two panels, the offending nails, and the sticky vinyl tiles, we could begin screwing in the 5/8" sub-floor while the destruction progressed. Everything was moving well.
Maria especially enjoyed removing the nails with a crowbar and then scooping them up with a big magnet on a stick.
All three of us took turns removing the vinyl tiles with heat guns, which was the only way to remove them.
Dinner consisted of tasty pizza in a crammed living room.
The rest of the floor, however, turned out to be impossibly difficult to remove: the plywood broke into little pieces instead of lifting up in whole pieces and took more time and much more energy to remove. But finally, on Friday night, we had removed all of the old floor and called it a night; I was too exhausted from my fight with the floor to do anything constructive at 10 PM.
The next morning, we finally finished screwing in the sub-floor. Unfortunately, it was no longer morning when this happened as the afternoon was already well advanced.
We moved the refrigerator to the living room on thick plywood to protect the
nice hardwood floor.
We began tiling at 16h00 in the afternoon and we had a good process going: I mixed the mortar and cut the tiles, my mom buttered them up with mortar, and Maria placed them on the floor. The reason for buttering up the tiles as opposed to buttering up the floor, which is much faster, was to follow the chalk lines that we had placed on the floor to ensure that we would respect the straight lines of the kitchen. Because of the existing tile in the kitchen, we had to start from the small wall and work our way towards the big wall, which is opposite to my normal course of action.
Near the end, when the error would not be noticeable, we resorted to spreading the mortar on the floor and laying the tiles on top.
At the very end, the working space was quite limited and it became difficult to manoeuvre. When I had to cut a slice out of the tile to place over the air vent, my tile saw broke and I had no patience left for this incident; I simply laid a whole tile over the air vent and cut it out with a Dremel on Monday when the tile had hardened.
We finished after 3h00 in the morning, after a
long day of work. Thankfully, there was not much to do while the mortar solidifed and we slept in quite late on Sunday.
On Monday morning, we started to add the grout. We had a good system where I mixed the grout, Maria squished it into the cracks, and my mom sponged it away.
The floor was finally finished on Monday afternoon and would be useable the next day.
After that, we drove home and were able to rest in the evening, except for Maria who went to play Ultimate, that crazy girl!
