The Forms of Tile

Do you ever feel the closer you get to something, the further away it seems?  With the major construction complete on the house, one would think that we are close to being able to get that assessment and listing, but alas the list is still dauntingly filled with smaller tasks that can be tedious and require a lot of time just gathering the supplies and tools.  Still at this stage, the results are quite satisfying because when the little task is complete, there is nothing left to do, but enjoy the finished product.  Sadly, this is the most beautiful our house has ever been and we’re moving….

Here is the nearly final for the den that is attached to the kitchen.  The dogs are so exited to see the couch again.  Slipcovers on the furniture are a lifesaver! Across from the couch is the see through fireplace we had installed last month.  This past week James took some of our left over slate tiles and tiles the hearth and surround.  If you look closely you can see the coffee table in the living room through the fireplace! I show you that to see how pretty things can be around here, but also to point out they don’t last long.  The very next morning everything was changed to store large items from the kitchen.  Ah….. This was all done for those boxes in the foreground.  James is planning on installing the kitchen floor.  Here’s a before picture…. We’re putting in a resilient plank/tile flooring called allure by trafficmaster from Home Depot.  We chose it for the speed of installation and the price did not hurt either.  It’s a floating resilient floor where the planks have adhesive strips that glue one piece to another.  The biggest issue is making sure the substrate is flat – for unlike laminate floating floors, these planks will show every bump and crevass along the way.  Fortunately, like laminate, it goes down quickly.  In half a day, it was finished.  No curing, no waiting, voila! Now don’t think I was simply watching – while James was on his hands and knees, I was working on the living room side of the fireplace.  The old fireplace had a stone hearth and partial stone surround.  We did keep the hearth and were able to salvage much of the stone from the surround, but there was not enough for the new.  There was no more stone to be found that matched, so we settled on strips of small stones to fill in gaps.  Here’s the before…It took some hands on attention and a flexible sense of playfulness.  It was really rather fun – like playing in a mud puddle and working on some summer camp arts and crafts project.  The stones themselves turned out better than I expected, but the grout really finished the job.  And the after… Much closer and a number of items crossed off the list.  Now the big hurdle is to clean out the James’ shop!