April 08, 2013

floored

The new floor is in! Aaron placed the last tile just a few hours ago.

Of course, with so many of our projects, we hit a few snags along the way. 

Something to know about our house . . . the gas furnace was removed and replaced with electric baseboard heaters. (According to our neighbour, the previous owner was afraid of a gas explosion.) When Aaron took out the electric heater in the bathroom, we realized that the wiring was right next to the bathtub. Our steel bathtub. Suddenly we had visions of being electrocuted while giving a splashing toddler a bath. 

Before we could start laying down the flooring, the wiring needed to be moved. This particular snag involved a trip to Home Depot, shutting off power to the upstairs, cutting a hole in the subfloor, and threading the wiring through the new hole. Voila! The wiring went from the giant hole next to the bathtub to its new spot further to the left. 

Electrocution hazard minimized. And flooring project behind by one day. (sigh)

On Sunday we were ready to start the floor. My job was to lay it all out to make sure adjacent tiles looked good together, to minimize the number of cuts required, and to make sure we used as few tiles as possible (we bought four boxes of tile so we wouldn't run out in the middle of the job, but were hoping to use three). It was like a giant puzzle (and not a particularly fun one).

For the most part I did a pretty good job. Although there were a few calculation errors. Aaron insisted on taking a photo of this one. (hint: the cut around the door jam should not have left a giant gap) Oops.

Aaron was responsible for cutting the tiles and putting them in place.

The whole job took longer then we anticipated. But it was so worth it.

PS - It was close, but we were able to do the whole job with only three boxes of tile; the fourth is unopened, so we can return it.

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