Foyer Fix Up - Part 2

First off, I have to apologize for the quality, or lack there of, in the photos for this post. Some were taken with my old camera which was in the process of breaking down and some were taken with my old Blackberry which didn't have the best camera.

In the end it doesn't matter since the tile in the foyer looks a-mazing, if I do say so myself.  I know D agrees since over a year later, we still stop to look at it as we walk down the hall.

As you may remember, we started this journey with a blandness.

No, this isn't our stuff.  This is one of the listing photos.

We have replaced the light, painted and added our furniture. (see Foyer Fix Up -Part 1 for the details)

Now it is onto the biggest job.

Flooring!

When we moved in, we knew the flooring was laminate. What we didn't know realize is the poor job one of the previous owners did on installation since there was a big rug covering much of the floor. It was baaaad. Though it was click and lock flooring, many of the pieces were neither clicked or locked. To make up for that there was liberal used of finish nails through the top of many of the pieces. In the sunlight it looked like someone spilled glitter on the floor there were that many nail heads glinting.

See what I mean.

Love the huge gap. Perfect for catching dirt and pebbles.

So one night in a fit of "I can't take this anymore" and "Something must be done," I ripped out the flooring.

I have to say that ripping out the flooring before we had a total plan on what to replace it with may not have been one of my smarter moments. I mean, we had a vague and general plan on what we thought we wanted to do. Slate. 12 x 12 tiles. Laid on the diagonal. Easy and peasy. However, we hadn't done any measuring, we hadn't purchased any supplies, we didn't have a tile saw, I think you are getting where I am going with all this. 

Once we went tile shopping, the plan quickly spiraled out of control into uncharted territory. In both a good way and bad way. The good? If we could pull it off, it would look a-freaking-mazing. The bad? It was waaaaay complicated and we hadn't done complicated tile yet. Yeah, I think for a moment we were possessed by the spirits of professional tile installers.

The new plan?  Still slate but in addition to the 12 x 12s there will be a pinwheel tile for the inner border and 6 x 6s in the middle. Like I said, waaaaay complicated. Plus, we had the added bonus of the room being narrower by 1.5" at door end and the wall with the closet is just over 1" shorter than the other wall. [sigh] Thank goodness D is a Math Wizard.

This is why a dry fit is key! If you do a dry fit you can make the allowances and deal with the wonkiness before you are elbow deep in thinset.

So we began the loooooooooooooong process of dry fitting the tiles. I have to tell you, this stage took f.o.r.e.v.e.r. Like several weekends and a number of evenings. Mainly because of all the measuring, and double checking the measuring, then cutting, then fitting, then needing to make tweaks (more measuring and cutting)and then starting all over again on another tile/section/etc. In some ways it was brutal. But as the design started to unfold, we could tell it would totally be worth it. 

Let the dry-fit fun begin!

See what I mean by complicated? What were we thinking?

The little triangles were a total pain since the slate kept splitting into layers.

Dry fit is all done!! Let the celebration begin!

Once we had all the tiles cut and marked, we moved them into to the living room, where they were laid out on some blankets in the exact layout for the install.  Then we were were onto the next step...

Installation!

First up, underlayment. We are lucky enough to have 1.5" thick subfloors so we didn't need to add any additional plywood. This meant we could move directly to installing the Ditra. We used this product for a couple of reasons. We like that it adds some waterproofing since this is the front door. Since we were using a natural stone, we liked the fact that it minimized the movement between the layers of flooring (subfloor and slate).

I could go into some detail how to install it but will instead refer you to the Installation Handbook and instead tell you some tricks we used and tools that we found came in handy.

1. Kneepads: Wear them. This stuff is HARD on the knees. Even now mine ached when I think about crawling around on that stuff.

2. A Level (the longer the better): to make sure you don't have any high spots in the Ditra

3. A board wrapped in carpet and a rubber mallet: This will help you make sure the Ditra is pressed into thinset. If you find a high spot, you can place the board on top and use the mallet to hammer it down until it is level.

4. Some sort of palm protection: See #1. This stuff is hard on the hands too. I actually ended up tracking down a pair of my old biking gloves since they had padded palms to save myself some major pain.

5.  You can see pieces of painters tape in the dry fit pics.  We used those to make sure the pieces were lined up right. We marked out a bunch of stuff, where the grout lines were along the hall floor, how adjoining tiles were to line up, etc.  We figured that since we only had one shot at this, we would try to make every effort to minimize where we could go totally wrong.

Once the Ditra was down and the thinset underneath was dry, it was tile laying time!!

Thanks to all our planning and the complete dry fit, this step went quite quickly and we were done in about 2 hours.

Another day of thinset drying and it was onto grouting. The knees pads were again a great help since slate is hard too. :-)

Grouting is a dirty business, so no pics at all, but as the clean up began, we knew we had a winner. The darker tiles on the outside, the lighter ones on the inside. It looked just as we had hoped.

A couple of days of the grout drying and we were left with this.  It is beginning to look pretty darn fab at this stage.

At this point we only had one more step to go.   

Sealing!

We were in the home stretch.  I couldn't have been happier.  We used the glossy stuff since we wanted the tiles to look wet and really bring out the color.

4 coats later, we were done!!

How gorgeous did it turn out! We just love it!! All the long weekends and late nights were totally worth it.

But we will probably never, ever, never, never, ever do another tile project as complicated as this one again!

We went from bland 

to GRAND!

Cost of Foyer Fix Up - Part 2 (approximate since I can't find all the receipts)

$   70.00 Tile Saw
     60.00 12 x 12 slate tiles
     40.00 pinwheel tiles
   120.00 6x6 tiles
     70.00 Ditra
      40.00 Grout & Thinset
      20.00 sealer
      10.00 tile spacers 
        0.00 sponges, floats, etc. (we already had this stuff from a previous tile job)
$  430.00 Total Part 2
      84.50 Total Part 1
$514.50 Running Total to Date

The last step is installation of baseboards and trim pieces.  However, that won't happen until we do all the baseboards and trim in the hallways and living room later this summer.

But even without the new baseboards and trim, I think it looks amazing!

A Room Completed and a Bright Place to Sleep

The first room that we have completed is our center bedroom.  We call it that because it is located between the bedroom in the front of the house and our master bedroom in the rear of the house.  This is my stepdaughter's room when she is with us and a guest room when she is not here. 

The previous owners used this room as a study/office with desks for their two girls and themselves.  With all the desks, bookcases, drapes over both the windows and closet doors and a single window with a northen exposure, it was quite dark and a little drab.  Here is a peek at what we started with. 

We decided to brighten it up with a bright leaf green and white trim.  The result, a bright and cheery bedroom. 

The only thing that didn't change in look was the floor.  Thankfully, the previous owners had installed beautiful engineered bamboo flooring.  However, that meant we needed to do everything else.  We painted the walls and doors (both the closets and door to the room), replaced the baseboards and the trim for the doors and closets.  I can also say that there was only one smashed finger (mine) when I was installing the baseboard trim.

New baseboards and door trim base

New trim and door topper

Additionally, we changed the location of the curtain rod closer to the ceiling to give a feeling of height to the room.

I found the bed and nightstand on Craigslist for $50 and $15 respectively.

I already had the dresser from our previous home in Illinois.

Hang a free ceiling tile sample on the wall for some visual interest

and add some free artwork made with scrapbook paper and a frame given to us as a wedding present to go over the bed and we are all set.

There are a few finishing touches left however.  We plan to install a ceiling fan at some point, new windows are will be installed in about four to six weeks, at that time the window trim will be replaced to match the door trim, we need more artwork in the for the one wall and we want to get another nightstand. 

Even without those last details, the room is a pleasant place to rest one's head.  Especially with a bottle and glass for water along with some toiletries in case something got left behind.

Cost Breakdown
$    17.00 Paint - Glidden Spring Leaf in Flat Enamel (colormatched to Behr)
        8.00 Paint - Behr White in Semi Gloss (cost for about 1/3 a can)
      90.00 Door and Closet Trim
      60.00 Baseboard Trim
      50.00 Craigslist bed frame
      20.00 Plywood for bed platform
    290.00 New full mattress purchased from Overstock.com
      95.00 New bedding set purchased from Overstock.com
      30.00 Mattress Pad
        2.00 Pillow inserts for shams
        0.00 Pillows for bedding set
      30.00 Curtains (Ikea Ritva in white)
      70.00 Area Rug (Egeby from IKEA)
      15.00 Nightstand purchased from Craigslist and repainted white
      20.00 Lamp for Nightstand (Smart from IKEA)
      10.00 Lamp for dresser (Orgel from IKEA)
        0.00 Dresser (moved from our old house)
        0.00 Artwork over the bed
        0.00 Artwork for the wall (free ceiling tile sample)
        0.00 Curtain rod and finials (spray painted old curtain hardware hammered silver)
  $807.00 TOTAL for Room Redo

Pantry Love!

Our house has a pantry!  And it is a walk in pantry to boot.  It was love at first sight.  You see, I am so excited to have an actual pantry.  In our old house, the pantry was a bookcase secured to the wall on the landing of the stairs to the unfinished basement.  Well, there was a lazy susan in the only under-the-counter cabinet but it was hard to access and didn't hold much.

However, there was a big problem with my new pantry which was threatening my budding love affair.  Someone, in what I can only imagine was a caffeine induced frenzy while being snowed in, had covered the walls from floor to ceiling and wrapped most of the shelves in the ugliest contact paper I had ever seen.  All I can ask is why on earth you would use a contact paper that has gray and dark green in a tiny closet with a small light?  It makes it dark and depressing and you would never know if things are clean.

Here is a close up of the contact paper.  Ugh and ly are the only things I can come up with.

My solution, strip all the contact paper off.  I don't have any actual before pics since I was in a frenzy to get that stuff peeled off.  This is the best I can do. 

I removed all the contact paper, filling a large garbage bag, and wiped down the walls and the shelves with an adhesive remover, Goo Gone. I love this stuff. It seems to disolve that sticky residue with ease. Once that was done, here is what I was left with. Pretty scary stuff. But I especially love the blue-ish paneling that was used for the walls instead of drywall.

I then used two coats of Kilz primer and two coats of stark white semigloss paint.  I resecured several pieces of loose hardware and reinstalled the shelves.  Once the interior was complete, I painted the inside of the door with chalkboard paint.  What better place for a shopping list than the pantry itself?  The only thing I still need is the chalk tray Hubs said he would make me.

Here is pantry filled with all the things that had to live in tubs while waiting for me to get done with the panty.

I am in love all over again.  And what a transformation.  I am hoping that this is a sign of what great changes we can make to our new home.

Tip of the Project:  Goo Gone is great for removing sticky residue from surfaces.