dream a little bigger darling: PEEL AND STICK kitchen floor re-do PART 2: the installation + grouting + finishing touches

so after the headache and hiccups of peeling up the old floor i was ecstatic about getting these tiles laid! but we were VERY cautious because we wanted to do it right the first time.

step 1: lay center tiles

lay the tiles. as i mentioned previously we used a chalkline to divide the room into quadrants. we started at one quadrant and went for it.

[is the anticipation & excitement contagious?]

[i had the honors of laying the FIRST tile]

the first row was by far the easiest. there were no other tiles so were able to use 2 square core tile spacers to line up and go straight down. i would lay, ian would help to line the spacers up and he would kneel over the tile we most previously laid to keep it down

after the first row it got slightly more complicated because we choose to do a brick line up. we had to measure the center of two adjacent tiles to begin to lay the first tile. after that we moved the spacers around and kept the same system of me laying and ian helping to align.

here is our first section finished. it was very quick approximately 20-25 minutes. so we ran with it of course. i rallied and got ian on board to just lay the entire kitchen floor in one night.

ONE QUARTER OF THE WAY COMPLETE

THREE QUARTERS OF THE WAY COMPLETE

DONE!!

[yes i am climbing into our kitchen pantry to search for something]

step 2: cut edge and trim tiles

this was at time easy and at times hard. overall cutting the tiles is relatively easy. you can very easily SCORE the tile a few times, bend it and it will snap into two pieces connected by only the paper "tile" portion of the tile which is easily cut with the exacto knife. what i learned very late in the game when i was finishing the entryway was that you can also score the FRONT top portion of the tile and then use scissors to cut VERY EASILY!! this is incredibly useful when you are cutting out odd edges. a few words of advice. i actually used a ruler and piece of paper, creating a template tracing this and then scoring/cutting the tile. ian used his triangle tool to measure and score without a template. both methods worked - just depends on your personality. HOWEVER, we both make the mistake of not making our templates mirror images. even with me giving you this hint you will forget. and you will survive. i promise!

step 2.5: use saw to cut door trim lines (only with different surface heights)

with the entry ways we ran into a small problem. because we opted to lay the tiles over the pre-existing laminate flooring the flooring was too thick to fit around the doorway trim. so we rented a jam saw to cut the trim lines to accommodate the difference in floor height.

** i should also add that we continued the pattern from the kitchen into the back entryway because the two spaces were connected - this is the only scenario i can imagine where you should not begin from the center of the room.

step 3: secure tiles by using a roller/rolling pin/body weight

one major step is making sure your tiles are secure. you want to do this prior to grouting because you don't want to break any grout seals after you went through all the work to grout. we walked on our tiles for a day but there were still some trim pieces that didn't want to stay in place. ian's company owns a tile roller that we were able to borrow. if we hadn't had access to that we would have used a baker's rolling pin and rolled out over the tiles pushing downward with all our body weight.

[ian working hard over his lunch break]

step 4: grout

grouting and i had a bit of a disagreement. and the process made me pretty grouchy! we opted not to purchase a tile float to help grout-which i would recommend but it does slow the process down. we also used premixed grout and i would HIGHLY recommend it. it is in a nice easy to seal container if you aren't doing projects back to back and it is much less messy. i started in one corner and worked my way outward. i used a 4-5 in wide paint scraper loading the grout along the grout lines and wiping off at a 45 degree angle. with all the research i found that this is not a fast time efficient method. instead you should load on teh grout and work it between the cracks going over the entire tile and wiping the tile off immediately with a wet sponge. i didn't watch this video first. and i don't think i would have used that method anyways, it was outta my comfort zone. what i failed to do was WIPE the grout off before it hardened. making the grout removal incredibly difficult! it took me approximately 2 hours to grout and at least 2 hours to remove.

we grouted together for the back entryway and it was a much smoother process - cutting our time in 1/3. ian grouted and i followed with a semi wet sponge and paper towels. once we got to the edge of the room we were DONE. there was no haze over the tiles or anything extra to clean up. i highly recommend going slower and cleaning as you go.

step 5: replace appliances

no pictures moving the heavy appliances. check out the after shots.

step 6: replace trim

we recommend organizing/labeling your wood pieces. it was difficult to figure out where all the pieces originally belonged. because our wood was so old there were a few pieces that were damaged. we purchased another piece of trim and cut it to size. now we have a little bit extra if we need to change out any small pieces in the future. i'm glad that jon was able to take a break from working to help us finish up this project. it went much smoother and faster with the two boys working together and me slowly organizing behind them.