I have wanted to put down new flooring in my house for several years now. I started planning on doing this right after Rita made a visit to our town in 2005. We had extra money from insurance and the government because of Rita and I was looking at doing it then, but.......Mindy wanted to get married. Do you hear a sucking sound?Shurllllllllp! There went the extra money.
About a month ago, we started getting bids on flooring and looking at tile, carpet and making some decisions. Of course, in planning out what would be best, we decided if we were going to remodel the bathroom with a walk-in shower, it would be prudent to do it first, then the floor.
In the meantime, we planned a trip to Corsicana and I went to get the van inspected and Shurlllllllllp! Do you hear sucking again? After new tires, brakes, rotors, we were down again with no extra money!
We had already bought tile for the laundry room back in the spring, thinking we could do it ourselves. In fact, on a trip to Missouri with my daughter and grand daughters, I thought I would be surprised to find a new floor down whilst I was gone! No..........a new office instead!
So, with Labor Day coming and all, what better time to do labor! I decided it was work time. I cleaned out the laundry room on Friday and went shopping to get some tools. They have some really neat tools at Lowe's, a dangerous place to go when you want something! Anyway, a paint brush, Rotozip spiral saw and scrapers in the bag, I was ready to start labor! I came home thinking I might have the old vinyl out by the time Tollie got home from work! Yeah right! I started, but that was as far as I got. It was going to be hard work. We thought of several things to try and low and behold, the new Rotozip tool had a part missing. So.....Saturday morning, we got up early (at least early for Saturday morning) and went to McD's to eat and back to Lowe's. We got home and started working! Scraping, scraping, scraping. These pictures are of our grand daughters helping us.
They were having a good time. I told Tollie we might be arrested for abusing child labor laws, but they wanted to do it. It took all day Saturday to get the old vinyl out and then we had to start scraping on the old adhesive. There were places it just would not come up. Tollie finally got his drill and "sanded" them down to the concrete. It burned up his cheap drill. (Christmas present idea!)
Sunday we planned to eat lunch after church and then back to Lowe's to get more supplies and exchange some things. But after lunch it was raining so hard, we came home and napped! We finished the cleanup of the concrete Sunday night and knew Monday morning we would begin laying tile. Got it all laid except for the ones needing to be cut around the perimeter of the room.
Jamie called about noon and wanted us to go shopping with the them for Ashton's birthday and we needed to get a wheel for the new tool to cut the tile. They came about 3:00 and we all went to eat, shop and get the new wheel. We came home and starting cutting. As you can see in these pictures, the dust was flying!
Then last night, I put down the grout and voila, we have a new floor!
I am sore and tired and have a numb little finger on the left hand and a blister on the right.
My biggest disappointment!?! What is missing in this picture?
The moral to the story is this: When you don't have a lot of extra money, you tend to learn how to do things you never thought you would do. And you keep planning because you realize it was not as hard as it looked and the end result is great!
