Stage 3: Tiling and Grouting

Wow... we are so behind in the kitchen blogging here... but who cares really? Mom, dad, Nana- I know you are enjoying these. Ha!

This was a fun day (see pic below)... NOT! We saved lots of money by purchasing materials through ebates on Lowes.com and then having it shipped for free to the store- or  if it is was already at the store, just picking it up the next day. It's nice because someone else gets all the tons of materials on a cart AND loads it in your car! Yes please. Sign me up. BUT once upon a time, a Lowes employee pulled the wrong size window and we realized Sunday evening at 6:50pm when the old window was already out and Lowes closed at 7:00. Oopsie. Luckily the Lowe's one town over closed at 8 so Aaron rushed over to buy the right size window. Oh my. Hello summer bugs- come on in please.

Note- when you go to Lowe's more times in a week than you take a shower- you should maybe be concerned. 

Moral of the story: Double check every single thing your buy online before you take it home from the store. Don't just count the windows... look at the size :)

Then we primed all the drywall and painted the walls brown. It is the same color we had before. It is Olympics "Stone Gray." I just love it.

Thanks Grace for your help on this step! It started looking clean at this point and like the beginnings to a kitchen. I did all the mudding of the dry wall and Aaron used the random orbital sander to get it all really smooth.

Then, we laid the tile!!!! What a glorious step.... but I have some thoughts looking back.

See I would never recommend a kitchen reno for anyone unless they had practiced most of these steps in other smaller places- like a bathroom. Three years ago we did our bathroom and tiled the floor and shower in there. It was fairly easy in our minds. So I thought this would be fairly easy. 

Here's an analogy. You know the people who have kids and dogs and look at people who just have dogs (like Aaron and I) and say "Taking care of dogs does NOT prepare for taking care of babies,"- well this is the exact same thing. Sort of. Tiling your bathroom with simple 12x12"squares with no fancy pattern does NOT fully prepare you for the work of tiling herringbone with 12x24" tiles in a space 8 times the size of your bathroom. Oh my.

But once you start you can't stop.

So we did a dry lay.

Then we mixed up the thin set and started. I spread all the thin set and lay every single tile you see in that kitchen. Aaron measured and made all those 45 degree angle cuts. Bless him. 

A good idea: We didn't rent a tile saw- we actually bought one because we knew we would also need one for the backsplash and it would be cheaper to actually buy on than rent one for the number of days we would need. 

Break time with the pups.

Woo hoo!!! Look at those beautiful floors. A labor of love.

The next day- all by myself self mind you while Aaron was at work- I mixed the grout and grouted the entire kitchen. Part way through I called Aaron having a mini melt down because I thought it would only take 2 hours, but it took 4 and my back was still so sore from leaning over all weekend and tiling. However- a break every 30 minutes with ice cream or candy helped get me through.

I thought the grout would be darker to make the herringbone pop and so less dirt would show, but it dried so light. I still like it, but I would have gone a little darker. We grouted in "Pewter" by Mapei at Lowes.

Overall all: This was the hardest step so far. It was the most physically taxing and the pattern played games with my mind and you had to be so careful as your laid and measured. 

Am I glad we did this? Yes indeed. It was something I always wanted.

Would I do it again? Probably not unless it was with smaller tiles and in a small bathroom.