Laundry Room Makeover: Grout, Grout, Let It All Out

...A little Tears For Fears, anyone? Anyway. Last week you saw us demo, purchase an emergency tool, and get our tile set in stone... literally. Now what? Grouting and yes, the final product. Squeee!

Nate found this little gadget of a tool in the tile aisle - A triangular metal head fits between the tiles and, with a little elbow grease, you can rout out all the Thinset that squeezed through. It leaves a nice even surface for the grout to settle into.

 

 Once that was done, time to mix up the grout (it should be the texture of peanut butter - YouTube search for tons of videos). Nate was unavailable *coughGOLFINGcough*, so this part was all me. I set up my 35 square feet with my grout bucket, corner trowel, grout float, and a clean bucket of water with sponges. Ready, set, grout!

I wasn't expecting the mess management to be so intense. Once the grout is swiped on, you wait about 20 minutes or so for it to start to dry. Then it's dunk a sponge, wring it out, get about 3 wipes in... and repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And... You get the picture. It wasn't a great time.

It was good I was alone. But the result? Awesome:

Through the magic of television the blogosphere, we'll skip ahead 24 hours to the grout being dry and the trim being back on and the room ready to be caulked. The plan is that the baseboard and trim will eventually be painted white (along with all the rest of it in the house - BIG project), so white paintable and waterproof caulk up top, and grout-matching caulk along the tile-baseboard meeting line.

What's that I spy? The bottom of a washer and dryer IN THE ROOM?

 ......Ready??? Ta da!

Looking toward the garage.

Looking in from the garage.

 Seriously, we could not be  happier. I may have actually petted the floor a few times. It's an unbelievable improvement... Wouldn't you agree?

Here's what we used:

Tools:
Corner Trowel
Notched Trowel
Grout Float
Tile Cutter (which would have worked had our tiles been smaller... so we hear.)
Wet Saw
Mixer Drill Attachment
Triangle Head Thinset Reamer Thingy

Materials:
Tiles (2 boxes and a few singles)
Thinset (white)
Grout (#145 Light Smoke)
White Paintable Waterproof Caulk
#145 Light Smoke Caulk

Had we already owned the tools, the project would have been relatively cheap - Around $100. Since we didn't, well... It was significantly more. But we already have plans to use our leftovers on our family room hearth, and the future will bring tile work in the guest bath and hopefully the kitchen. We'll be getting our money's worth!

But for now, I think I'll go sit in the laundry room and pet the floor for a while.


For the whole story, see day one and day two of this makeover.

Laundry Room Makeover: I Saw The Light

We'll pick right up where our saga left off: Broken tiles and a bare subfloor. But never fear, our intrepid heroes will prevail.

First things first, a wet saw. We picked up this one from Lowe's for under $90, and I must say, it's a little champ. Through the online reviews we learned to make a small cut along our line on one end, then flip the tile around and make the long cut to meet the small one. This 100% prevented broken corners and left us with basically perfect cuts the first time, every time. Now if that's not success, I don't know what is. Here's Nate in action:

You can see the initial smaller cut in the photo below as the blade making the longer cut comes to meet it.

 We also picked up this mixing drill attachment for around $10. It seemed like a great idea, but really, we could have done without it. The drill wasn't quite strong enough to go up against the Thinset mortar, so we ended up detaching it from the drill and whipping it around with our hands.

Nate pours in the Thinset.

Mixed and ready for action!

 We took turns spreading Thinset (using corner and notched trowels) and placing tiles and 1/8" spacers:

Me trying not to Thinset myself into a corner.

Nate lays the last few from the garage.

 And after only about 45 minutes, we had a tile floor. Pretty miraculous after the prior day's events.

 The only bad part about making over your laundry room: Lots of laundry, no working washer and dryer. Don't wear clothes you care about on a tiling project - If you're anything like me, you'll plant your butt in the Thinset bucket more than once. I wish that was a joke.

Monday: Grouting, caulking, and the big reveal!

Recap day one here, and if cheat you must, here's day three.

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!