Just add lemonade

We bought our house in November, and moved in in January... so the awesome screened porch on the back of the house held little charm the first few months we were here. Eventually we pulled up all the shades and wiped a few years of dirt off the woodwork. Sean even re-screened the whole thing, but we never got around to putting furniture out there so we didn't really use it except to let fresh air into the den.

And see it had REALLY gross indoor/outdoor carpet on it.. So this spring I decided I'd try my hand at tiling the floor. You know since I've never done it before or anything (i have tiled 2 backsplashes with mosaic tile) it seemed like a good idea.

Not so surprisingly, the carpet came up REALLY easily I mean there was no more glue holding that stuff down. And we ended up with this.

 It took a lot of scraping and sweeping and more sweeping to get all the little bits of glue and peeling paint off the floor so I could lay the tile. That little orange guy is an amazing heavy duty floor scraper, he really gets the bits and pieces up well.

Now, I can't tell you how long the whole process took, but I'd guess its at least a month from the day I started until we had a finished product (I started 2 or 3 weeks before easter). It doesn't HAVE to be this long, I just kind of have project ADD and a full time job and was contending with weather etc.

After about a week I got to this point. All the tiles that didn't need to be cut were stuck down. I was admittedly a little bit terrified of the tile saw.

 But eventually, after 2 weekends of work, I got all the cut pieces in and was ready to grout. I didn't take any pictures of the grouting process because its messy and kind of time sensitive. I was a little bit disappointed when the grout dried because it was SO light. I've adjusted now, and like the way it looks I think I was just used to looking at the dark lines when there was no grout.

Now it has a rug on it, awaiting its dining furniture (another post). 

I have to say, I REALLY like the result, but I am not in a hurry to tile anything else any time soon. I learned a few very valuable lessons. 

1.  Measure, measure, measure and maybe even lay a few things out before you stick the tile down. I have a little bit of a slope in my lines. Nothing you can see unless you are looking at the edges. there is almost 4 inches of difference in where the rows square up with the walls. OOPS. If I ever tile anything inside, I will know to double check those things and make sure its a little more square. 

2. When you stick tile down, especially if it takes you more than one day, don't be tempted to leave the extra globs of mastic around the tile. It will make it nearly impossible to lay the tiles flat the next day. I spent about an our on day 2 taking my trowel around and scraping up the extra dried gloop I left from day one. Its REALLY easy to just scrape it up while its still wet instead of waiting until its dry.

3. WEAR GLOVES while grouting. I don't think anything I read explicitly said that, I didn't have any on hand so I just went bare skinned. I wont show pictures of my bloody knuckles, the hole "burned" in my pinkie finger or my disgusting peeling skin, but just know its a good idea to wear gloves. Now it should be noted that I make a terrible mess with whatever I do, I use my hands a lot (mixing the grout, spreading it etc) and most people are probably not that messy, but ANYWHERE I got grout on me, I had some skin irritation... just trust me on this one and wear gloves :)

4. Take some breaks. I managed to pinch a nerve in my wrist leaving me with numbness tingling and weakness in my left hand. Its been a week since I finished grouting and things are definitely getting better (I could barely type on day 1), but its a real pain in my hand and was probably totally avoidable. To save my knees I sat on my bum and must have put all my weight on my left arm while I grouted with my right arm. I had ZERO back pain (which is good), and my arm didn't hurt at all while I was grouting, but when I finished and started cleaning up I realized that I could barely move it and my pinkie and ring finger were constantly tingling. No fun.

And now I leave you with a sneak peak at this weekends project... Refurbing a dining set to go out on the porch :)