Designers Live Through Construction Too

June 13th, 2012

I thought my clients might enjoy seeing that I have to live through construction mess and chaos too.

Here is the before view into our kitchen with the previous owners’ furniture.   The maroon carpet was hiding beautiful original wood floors, and unfortunately the slate tile in the kitchen was a DIY project by others that was already failing by the time we moved in (I believe the kitchen was updated within 2 years of our purchase of the house.)  Loose tiles, significant tile height variation (toe kickers), and grout chipping out were the key issues, plus the floor sloped in a multiple different directions.

Here is Flooring Day 2 before the tile setters arrived to demo the slate. Flooring Day 1 was having a plumber come over the day before to disconnect the plumbing and gas lines to the appliances so we could move them out of the kitchen.  You can see the raw wood floors that were hiding under the maroon carpet. We removed the carpet a few weeks back.  Refinishing of the wood will happen after the tile floors are done (proper order of construction projects is a key!)

Flooring Day 2 – Mid-morning. The guys made quick work of ripping out the slate and the underlayment.  Unfortunately I didn’t have shoes handy when I came upstairs from my basement office and I got to walk across the whole kitchen worth of rubble to get out. My bad.

Then when they got to the entry the discovered two additional layers of tile under the slate. Here the poor guys are debating how best to jackhammer out the top layer. Have fun!

By the next time I came upstairs to check on progress they’d cleared out all of the debris and the floor was ready for the self-leveling base to be poured.

Here you can see that the entry/ hallway area originally had both wood flooring and tile under it.

After the self-leveling base was poured and cured for a day we have this lovely starting point for Flooring Day 4. (Day 3 was drying time.)

At the end of Flooring Day 4: The majority of the tile has been installed and we just have to be patient as the thinset sets up. It’ll look even better once the tiles are cleaned off and grouted, but I’m soo happy with this new modern look that’s finally level!

Next week I’ll show you the finished product. Then we just have to refinish the hardwood floors and then we can put our whole house back together. (The large dining room and two bedrooms are being refinished, which necessitated moved the majority of our furniture, clothes, books, etc. to the basement where they’ve been for weeks.)  It’ll be great to get the nursery set up before the baby arrives; let’s hope she’s on time and not early!

 

 

 

Tags: flooring, interior design, Kitchen, remodel, tile

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2012 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Remodeling Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.