the o'herbert fam: kitchen projects part 4 (tiling the floor)

we'll say this post was written on friday, march 23.

before we start, i want to remind you what the floor looked like before...

all right... everyone got those lovely green tiles in their mind? good, let's begin! :)

ashton had thursday and friday (march 15-16) off from work, so his plan was to lay the new tile floor on his days off. so wednesday evening, we went to lowe's and picked out our grout and all of our tiling supplies. on thursday, ashton removed the last few tiles that were left in the kitchen (under the fridge and stove where i couldn't reach) as well as the tiles in our laundry room (connected to the kitchen). he also had to prep the floor with this flexible floor sealant (which you'll see as the pink layer on the floor in this pic).

thursday night, ashton stayed up until 5am (i guess technically friday morning) working on the floor. anne did not, she had to work the next day. once he woke up friday, he kept working, and i joined once i got home from work. with the two of us working on this, we were still up until 2am saturday morning. who knew tiling a floor took soo long?

oh, you noticed the fridge in that last picture? yes, that's because the fridge was currently in our living room. it's amazing how much larger our living room seemed once that was back in the kitchen. :)

because we used 18" tiles, the smart people at home depot told us to make sure to give the floor plenty of time to dry since the tiles were so big... at least 24 hours, but recommended 48 hours. we finished laying the tiles at 2am saturday morning, and ashton had an 8am sunday (the 18th) flight to canada. soo... we waited to grout until after ashton got back.

while ashton was gone, his mom, pop and brother stopped by for a night since this was their spring break. (don't worry, they did stop by for another night when ashton was actually home, so they did get to spend time with him as well.) they got to enjoy the experience of having the fridge in the living room. and... the living room was probably worse than when our other guests were there because we had a lot more stuff crammed into the living room. once again, no complaints from any of them!

ashton flew back in late on wednesday (the 21st), and for some crazy reason, we decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and grout the floor. yet again, we were up until 2am. you would think we would have learned the first time!

thursday and friday were spent cleaning the floor (which was quite a chore! i recommend to anyone doing their own floor - clean the grout as you go!) and moving everything back in. these were also probably the first days that our house started to feel like an actual house that we could live in. :)

some pictures of the finished floor with our dining room table and chairs on it...