Laundry Room Makeover: Great Expectations

I teased you with a picture of some torn up linoleum on Monday, and now here I am to kick off the tale of mini-renovation. I decided to break it down into chapters of each day so you can follow along on the harrowing journey. For the record: We thought this would be a one-blog-entry kind of project. You can now look forward to three.

Maybe four. The joys of doing it yourself. Here we go...!

Operation Replace Linoleum With Tile, Engage!

 Our laundry room serves a couple purposes: One, exactly what it's name suggests, and two, as our main entrance into the house every day from the garage. It's also hanging out at a juncture where the living room, powder room, and my sewing room all meet, so it's a pretty high visibility little spot.

Which made the stained, ripped, and weirdly-skin-colored-pastel-and-white linoleum even more of an eyesore than that description presents.

Peering in from the sewing room doorway - Machines removed.

Two examples of the reasons for removal: Torn and stained.

Oh the ugliness.

 We wrastled (yep, it was beyond wrestling) our washer and dryer out into the garage, and mopped up all the water (from unhooking the washer) and accumulated lint carnage from the past year (YIKES). Then, onto tediously, carefully, back-breaking-ly tearing up the linoleum with hammers and chisels.

A couple hours (!!) later, we had it. And perhaps more remarkably in a 35 square foot space, we didn't chisel or hammer each other. I won't, however, say the temptation wasn't there a few times when we had to close both doors and bounce off each other while we slipped around in our own sweat or had our faces plastered into a corner. It was an adorable scene, I'm sure.

 Once up, it was time to choose the best tiles of the bunch and figure out a pattern.

 Nate came up with a great system where we created the grid the floor would have, laid out our tiles, and then numbered them based on how they would be laid to include an escape route for whichever of us put in the cornerstone. We put our cutting measurements on as well, so all we had to do was pick one up, see the number, and make the required adjustment.

 Sadly, we decided to go with a tile cutter instead of a wet saw...

 ...Which brought us lots (and lots) of this:

 

And this, children, is where our saga ends for today. Two dejected, sore, and hammer-induced-heachache-y folks with plans to procure a wet saw later that night and get back to it in the morning. But hey, at least that wretched linoleum was gone.

To be continued....


If you just can't wait, here's day two and day three, which includes the final product!