Wood Tile Floors and a New Bathroom – the Beginning

I’m so excited to say that we have finally started work on the new wood tile floors! As I’ve said before, we chose to go with tile that looks like wood throughout the house. We bought the tile months ago, but then saved our pennies for the installation costs. And it’s finally time! And we are going with a herringbone pattern, which I think I’m the most excited about 🙂

Since we are doing the whole house, except for the bedrooms, we had to basically pack up the everything and move it out.

Thank god we have a huge back porch and a guest room we could use to store everything. It is a mess! This is the current state of the guest room. It is scary to think that we have that much “stuff” around this house. I feel a clean out coming on once the floors are done!

And this is the back porch.

The animals are all out there – and man, they aren’t happy about that at all! They stare at us all day through the windows and at night the cats cry and whine at the windows. Our parrot, Hugo, is pissed off too – biting me like crazy. He’s been moved to our room, and I don’t think he likes missing out on all the fun going on. He’s so nosey!

We rented a chipper with a cart from Home Depot and it made the job of taking the tile out a lot easier on the guys. But, I am glad we don’t live 15 feet from our neighbors anymore, because they would hate us! It is crazy loud! That being said, I’m glad the noisy part is over. 

If you haven’t had clay tiles removed in your house before, let me be the first one to tell you that you can never prepare fully for that kind of mess. The dust gets EVERYWHERE. Even in closed cabinets. And in your ears and nose. Ick.

It took the guys two days to take all the old tile out. We rented a 20 ft dumpster, and they have done a great job of filling it up. The nice thing about having the dumpster is that we can finally clean up all the crap in the yard that we’ve been ignoring for a while. Tomorrow, we are ripping out a section of old fence and that will go in there too. Yay for multi-tasking!

The tile that was in the house went through the guest bathroom too, so we were going to replace it with the same tile. We had decided a long time ago to replace the builder grade vanity that was in there at the same time.

We found a vanity at a Habitat Restore almost a year ago, so that’s all ready to go. Then I was thinking about how much I hated the cream colored tile and bathtub, and toilet, and wouldn’t it be best to replace everything at once?? Of course it is. So out came the tub, tile, vanity, toilet and even the towel bar and toilet paper holder. Nothing like making a major decision at the last minute!

It’s pretty naked in there now. Tomorrow the plumber comes to change the shower plumbing and work will start in there.

Oh, before I forget – this is the tile combination for the new walk in shower. Marble mosaic on the floor, large subway tiles for the walls and an accent stripe of the dark gray/magic tiles.

So, that’s the progress so far. I’ll update at they finish.

I’m sorry for the crappy pictures. It’s the best I could do with all the mess going on around here.

UPDATE: check out how the floors turned out HERE!

Thanks for stopping by!

Eliesa