before i get into the tile wars – i have some breaking news: the most interesting man in the world is not in fact the creepy dos equis guy. it’s my dad. that guy may have dolphins appear every time he goes for a swim but check this out. my dad drove a thousand miles with a car full of tools only to arrive at bungalow hutch, work his behind off for three days straight tiling the place, and upon finishing get back in his car to drive the thousand miles home!
who does that? i’m intrigued. he must love us a lot or something.
ok so the tile wars officially commenced upon our arrival back to denver. we arrived after our trip home late wednesday night to check out bungalowhutch with our master tiler in tow (that’s my dad btw. we’ll call him JT – he tiled over 2200sqft of his house. not saying, just saying.) and plan our work for the next couple of days.
JT “where’s the tile?”
mr. hutch & me – “oh um yea, we haven’t gotten that yet.”
JT sighs.
so we came up with a plan. i would head to the store first thing thursday morning while JT & mr. hutch got the floors ready (which is actually a lot of stinking work. if you care to know we they had to put a million and one screws into the old original floor boards and then try to even out those old rickety things with this other stuff that i forget what it’s called and this other stuff called liquid nails which i personally think should just be called glue. this is a bad DIY informative blog. fail. if anyone ever does care to know the actual process. email us. i can give real details with the help of mr. hutch.)
so back to me at the store. upon entering i tried to remember the instructions the master had given me. something about getting tile that would be less likely to crack (since our house is old, uneven floors make a great breeding ground for cracked tile – who knew!? not us…) he also told me to ask the sales people for recommendations. so i did. i asked this shaggy hair’d pimply kid about tile that wouldn’t crack with our situation. his prepubescent response: all tile cracks.
sweet. the “sales guy” just gave me free reign to get any tile i wanted despite the master tiler’s instructions!
so i walked around and picked out beautiful tile. then JT & mr. hutch showed up.
“no, no, no, no, no.”
that was the sound of the first shots being fired. a war had begun.
the tile for the kitchen was too big. the tile for bathroom was too expensive. my idea of putting tile that looked like wood in the shower was too ridiculous. ugh.
i fought for that tile aggressively at first by arguing my side (which had no merit ’cause i have no idea what i’m talking about when it comes to tile) so then i took the passive approach by walking around the store sulking and “mugging” them with my looks.
when that didn’t work, i got on my hands and knees and threw a huge temper-tantrum in the middle of the store.
in the end. my war tactics didn’t change the fact that 16×16 tiles in the kitchen would still crack on an uneven floor, tile that looked like wood in the shower still seemed ridiculous, and spending a couple of grand on the bathroom floor was still out of the budget.
i lost that war. which is secretly a good thing, because i’m super excited about what we ended up with.
we had a few other tile wars. including an epic battle involving my favorite brother in law. it was JT & i v. mr. hutch & adam (the broinlaw). JT and i had the kitchen, mr. hutch & adam assigned to the bathroom. the battle was to see who could get the tiling done first. we totally won by implementing my other favorite war tactic: cheating.
a little taunting of the other team while JT yells get to work
adam was unphased and hard at work
despite my best attempt to look threatening with the thin set
JT & i made up the rules as we went, took the better tools, butted in line for the tile saw, stole their thin set, and made them go on a beer run. ahhhh, the smell of sweet victory!
well on our way to victory
victory indeed! JT finishing up the last bit of grout in the kitchen on day 3
meanwhile mr. hutch's partner has left him for a clean pair of clothes and some starbucks
luckily the saster contributed with placing this one piece of tile in
at the end of three very long days of nothing but tiling. bungalowhutch is tiled! and looks beautiful if i may say so myself. JT called the whole process a knowledge transfer. (imparting the master tiler’s wisdom on to us wee little baby home renovaters). and i would say the transfer was a complete success. mr. hutch & i would definitely be confident taking on any tiling project in the future. (which is good ’cause down the road we’ll have to tile our kitchen backsplash. can’t wait!)
just in case you thought i never did any actual work, fear not. i'm quite good with a tile saw.
very happy with the finished product. we went with a white subway tile with a cool little accent border thingy.
closeup of the border. i had to cut each one of those circles out with the tile saw! that's my story and i'm sticking to it.
our sweet reto looking floor (pre-grout) that did not end up costing us thousands of dollars.
okily dokily. back to my dad job since enough of you don’t read my blog. boo hoo hoo.
the master and his apprentice upon completion of bungalowhutch's tiling.
