It's already been a couple of weeks since I updated my blog. One thing that has kept me busy is working on renovating my kitchen. We are doing a lot of the work ourselves. We had been to a demonstration at Home Depot on how to lay tile, and it looked pretty easy to do. What turned out to be not so easy was (1) ripping up the linoleum and subflooring, (2) pulling out the cabinets and countertops, and (3) the muscles required to mix the mortar and lay the tile. It's been a lot of hard work. Just putting down the new backerboard subflooring was really hard. My husband and son did most of that. I helped with one panel, and that one panel wiped me out. After the subfloor was down, I began laying the tile. I got a mere 6 tiles down, and it took at least a couple of hours. With help from a daughter, we got 13 tiles down the next attempt. Then we went on vacation for a week. After coming back, I started working harder on trying to get the floor done. Even so, I found it took me about 2 to 3 days to recover from each day of laying tile, and I could only manage about 14 tiles each time. Jon and Jeanne helped me lay tile, and Josiah was my go-fer. Jordan helped with mixing mortar and cleaning up. This has been a family project.
With about 156+ tiles total to get down, it has taken a lot longer than I expected. Now all we have left are the tiles that need to be cut. Above are two photos taken about a week ago, so we've gotten more done since then, but it shows somewhat how the floor will look. My kitchen has been totally ripped apart for more than a month now, and I think it will be the end of the week before we have the floor completed. Then I need to paint, and finally after that we'll be able to put the stove back in place and start putting cabinets together. I'll have to have a makeshift countertop for a few weeks. Hopefully it will be all done before we have company coming later in September.
