Blake and I have been talking about redoing the downstairs flooring pretty much since the day we bought the house. We’ve gone window shopping for tile about a dozen times, talked to several contractors, toyed with the idea of doing it ourselves and then about two weeks ago finally took the plunge. We headed down to the floor store, bought and paid for the tile only to come home two hours later to find that our A/C was on the brink of flooding the upstairs. Thank goodness for home warranty insurance and the A/C only needing minor repairs so that the tile we just purchased did not have to sit in our garage for a few months before getting installed. I really wanted to install the tile ourselves to save on the cost, but Blake finally talked me into letting someone else (who knows what they are doing) do it for us. I have to agree, it was probably money well spent. The two guys picked up the tile for us on Monday, got to work about 10 am, left around 5 pm to collect the rest of the tile, put in a full day of work on Tuesday, and it was all cleaned up and finished by Wednesday at noon. If we were installing it, I’m pretty sure we would still be scraping up the glue from the kitchen flooring as I type. Here are the before and after pictures of our new floor!
View from the front door with the new tile.
View from the front door with most of the furniture in place.
Another view of the living room from the dining room half wall.
We forgot to take true before pictures of the kitchen before we started tearing up the old floor, but you can see what a mess it was getting the old floor out. This is the view from the stove.
The kitchen during demolition viewed from the living room/dining room half wall.
The kitchen complete with new tile viewed from the stove.
New tile in the front entry way. We decided to have the tile installed at a 45 degree angle in the living room and then straight in the kitchen area to give some separation to the two areas. Blake came up with the idea of putting a straight border around the entire living room to inset the diagonal tiles. It turned out great and really adds something to the room. It also helped to make a smoother transition from the living room to the kitchen area. Now I’m not sure I want to put my front door rug back to cover up all the pretty details. We still have quite a bit of paint touch up work to do, but overall we are excited about the result.
1 comment:
The tile looks great. I also like the green and brown walls. That is so creative. I don't blame you for not doing the tile work yourselves. I have heard that is one of the DIY projects that many people regret trying themselves and always looks better when the pros do it. Money well spent! Hope the marathon training and fund-raising is going well. Love, Laura Lacy
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