Floor finished, headache over

Took me 13 hours of total time spent tiling this floor. For anyone considering larger than normal kitchen tiles, be prepared for the extra time spent!

Kitchen Floor...

The kitchen floor tiling has proved to be the hardest part of the house renovation. I received help from my father on this, and we've spent about nine hours total on it, and still have a little ways to go. I anticipate to be finished with another few hours of work, but who knows.

The biggest time killer, and probably most frustrating part, is getting the adequate amount of thinset underneath the tiles. Even using the proper tools for the job, this is a really trying thing to do. This is important to level put each tile with the height of the tile next to it. Doing this prevents high spots that would drive me nuts down the road, especially since once the tiles in there is nothing that can be done about them.

I've gone with 18"x18" tile, a bit larger than the standard kitchen tile, and the extra size is probably largely to blame for the additional headache. I don't remember this level of frustration when doing my parents kitchen tiling.

I've layed the kitchen tile in a diagonal pattern as Ive heard it makes the room look larger. Truthfully, I'm just doing it to be a little different.

Bathroom Teardown

Unfortunately, the bathroom was in even worse condition than the kitchen was. So, while the sledgehammers were out for the kitchen, and while I have the advantage of not living in the house yet, I decided to take out the old bathroom as well.

The original blue floors were really nice. Too bad I couldn't save them...

I was fortunate that my friend Mat drove out to help me out this day. We worked like dogs for about 12 hours digging draining in the yard and ended the evening by smashing the tub. It was cast iron, and it took the two of us, taking turns with a sledgehammer, to break it up. We even managed to break a sledgehammer during the process.

From here, my father and I pulled up the blue floor to get down to the roots.

All that's left now is picking out a new floor, wall color, vanity, toilet, and shower....Shit.

Floor Refinishing

When I first bought the house, the living room had carpet, and the dining room had fake laminate hardwood flooring. I knew there was original hardwood underneath from peeling back some of the carpeting, so this made me pretty suspicious of the condition of the original flooring.

 

After ripping out the old carpet and pulling up the fake hardwood, I found some pretty vicious pet stains. Some of them can be seen in these pictures:

Unfortunately, I don't know how to repair this. I could replace the entire room with new hardwood but I don't have the money for that. The only other options were to refinish the floors as is, and put throw rugs over the stains, or to re-stain the room with a darker color. While I originally was hoping to keep the natural wood color, I chose the latter because I didn't want to use throw rugs unless I absolutely had to. Here are the results after sanding. You can really see the stains here (and this is how they would have remained looking after the polyurethane if I didn't re-stain the floor). Notice the green shade to them below the sanding machine.

 Laying down the stain. I went with MidWax "Dark Walnut":

 Three coats of polyurethane:

Here is the final result, after the poly had finished drying:

 I had them do the rest of the rooms as well while they were there. For comparison, here is how the natural wood would have looked in the other room:

Overall, I am very pleased with how the floors came out. I used A. Dion and Sons and would recommend them to anyone looking to have the same job done.

Kitchen Tear Down

The kitchen had to go. Had to. The smell was bad, the countertops were bad, the cabinets were in terrible condition, and the refrigerator I inherited smelled something fierce.

Now that everything is down to the original flooring, I can begin layind down plywood, backerboard, and tile the floors.

House purchased...now what??

Finally closed on my new home. The problem is...it's pretty dated. Here are the "before" picture, pre-demo (Note: Not my house, furniture, etc. These were the "for sale" pictures):

And some of my own, after purchase:

Lots to be done. Lots.