Tiling Our Kitchen Floor

We have the most beautiful kitchen and dining room floor now.....well, we think so! It's finally done and we all love it!  We ran into a big booboo that I'll share with you so hopefully it doesn't happen to you too!

In case you forgot or this is your first visit to our blog, we used 12 x 18 Italian porcelain tiles that we started off in the laundry room with HERE.

Here's where we left off back then.  Its been almost a year and we've learned to navigate that tiny height difference between the tiles and the linoleum.  I'm still "watching" for it!  What were we waiting for?  It's hard work people! LOL!

We had a few places over in the dining room area where the linoleum was lifting up so we wanted to cut that down so it wouldn't interfere with the way the tiles would sit.  Turns out, it all wanted to come up, so up it came!

See this big stack of tiles? It's a lot right?  We thought so too!  It was NOT even enough to finish the kitchen/dining room much less the rest of the small tiling jobs we have in the house (entry hall and bathrooms).  Since we were purchasing this tile on clearance, we bought all they had knowing it was being discontinued.  We just knew it was going to be plenty.  Oh boy did we figure wrong.  We are rookies after all and evidently along with the Lowe's worker...not very good with math! LOL!

Anyways, we got to laying the tiles working with just one row at a time, putting down the tile mortar, then laying the tiles and being sure to add the little spacers to assure our 1/8th of an inch spacing for the grout.

Though you can't tell with his long shorts, my honey has knee pads on.  Knee pads are a must when tiling floors.  Even with wearing knee pads our knees are still very sore.  How do babies do it all those months of crawling on there little tiny knees? Ouch!

This is the point we got to when we ran out of tiles.  I was beside myself with disappointment.  I knew these tiles were discontinued back almost a year ago so I knew I was in for a big task of  "finding a needle in a hay stack"!  I wont go into all the details, but in the in end a very nice lady at the Lowe's customer help center came up with the idea of purchasing the 18 x 18 tiles and cutting them down to size, so that's exactly what we did!

My honey cut 15 tiles down to the correct size.  By the way, they are not really 12 x 18 tiles, they are slightly smaller which my honey already knew before he started the task of cutting them down.  It was very time consuming to cut all those tiles down, but so worth it in the end.  There were lots of tricky cuts in the last tiles that fit into the bay window.  My honey made every cut just right to make it all perfect.  GREAT job honey!

Next was the grouting job.  Sorry, no pictures of that step.  We were both grouting so no one to snap pictures.  We used a sanded grout from Lowe's, the color is called Ivory.  While its still wet it looks brown, but when it dries its a creamy white color.  After we got it all grouted, we turned on the fans to help drying, even our vintage fan helped out!

After clean up and letting the grout cure for 24 hours, we used a grout and tile sealer to make sure if anything was ever spilled in the floor it wouldn't stain the grout.  You just spray it on, wait 5 minutes and wipe off what didn't absorb in.

5 minutes is a long time when you have 3 nosey cats and a dog who want really badly to walk across the kitchen floor!

It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!

More about the kitchen remodel below:

Tiling Our Kitchen Floor
Kitchen Cabinet Makeover Part 1
Kitchen Cabinet Makeover Part 2
Kitchen Cabinet Makeover Part 3
Building a Corner Cabinet
Building a Drop in Kitchen Cabinet
Installing a Farmhouse Sink
Pantry Remodel
DIY Mosaic Tile Backsplash
Painting Our Cabinets

I'm Linking to:

Sunday
Under the Table and Dreaming by Stephanie Lynn, The Self Sufficient Home Acre , The Chicken Chick
 
Monday
Craft-O-Maniac, Between Naps on the Porch, DIY Home Sweet Home , Keeping it  Simple , The Dedicated House, Skip to my Lou
Married Filing Jointly,  Home Coming
 
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Not Just a Housewife, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia,  Sugar Bee Crafts,  New Nostalgia,  It's your Life

Wednesday
Lil’ Luna, Clean and Scentsible, Lady Behind the Curtain.  Family Home and Life,  Ducks n a Row

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 Bloom,  Two Yellow Birds Decor,  The Busy B's,  The Taylor House.  52 Mantels,  Domesblissity,  Redfly Creations
Friday 
Tatertots and Jello,  Five Simple Things,  Craftionary,  Diana Rambles

Saturday 
Angels Homestead,  Positively Splendid,  I Heart Nap Time,  Or So She Says ,  Your Homebased Mom ,  What's Cooking with Ruthie