Laying the Tile

With the sub-floor installed, the men started tiling!

All of the pictures above were of the tile un-grouted.  The picture below is the floor with gray grout.  

Tomorrow and the next day the stair guys will come to install the stairs.  THEN we'll need to get baseboard up to finish off the room.

I have a hard time remembering what this room used to be (here and here are a few old pictures).
I guess my worries of nothing having a foyer floor are now answered, thanks to Tom and Eric's hard work this past weekend.

Foyer Weekend...Whew

Here's a glimpse into our most recent Friday night...

Eric and I rushed home from work to begin taking up the tile in our foyer, in preparation of laying down a new floor the following day.  Sweet little Charlotte was a great sleeper with the help of ear plugs during our few hours of hammering away.  (And don't worry...I watched her on the monitor, to make sure she didn't eat the ear plugs, until she fell asleep.)

Then, Saturday morning Tom and Madison arrived to help on the foyer.   Here are a few pictures, along with a timeline, of our eventful day.

8:30 am - Tom sees how uneven the floor was with the old tile ripped up.  Shaking his head, like he does when he shares bad news, he tells us the entire sub-floor needs to come up.  This is a HUGE job that we wanted to avoid, so we settled on the fact that we would have a very messy house come time for Charlotte's 1st Birthday party 7 days later.

11:00 am - My husband is amazing, and got the entire sub-floor up within 90 minutes!  Tom helped clean up the mess (hundreds of pounds of tile and concrete), and we're now in business to put down a new sub-floor.  What a pleasant, unexpected surprise and blessing!

What a mess... right about now I was getting nervous.

The house was getting messy, so the ladies took a stroll to the park. Charlotte loves being with her cousin Madison and being outside.  Who would have thought January would have been this kind to us so far?!

11:30 - The men finish cleaning up the mess (sorry to our next door neighbors who can see it stashed away on the side of our house).  Note on the 4th picture we lose our bottom step (Can you feel me getting more anxious as the day goes on?).

2:00 - After a run to the store to rent a truck and purchase the materials to build the new sub-floor, the men begin the process.  First went a layer of 1/2" plywood, followed by 1/2" durock.  

4:00 - What!? Even though we expected to just get to this point this weekend, we're actually ready to begin tiling....I cannot believe it.

We got the majority of tile down today, but have a few cuts to make tomorrow morning, followed by grouting around the tile.  I'll post more pictures tomorrow once I take them, but I was so excited about how productive Tom and Eric were today that I had to share :)

It looks like we'll have a foyer floor for the party next week after all!  Now we're just hoping the staircase company doesn't cancel on us again, and are able to come and fix our step in the next week!

Although we've been at home renovation projects awhile, we love seeing the transformation of rooms after we put in a lot of hard work.  This room in particular has been one we've been patiently waiting to work on, so it's a joy to see the changes happening today!

Good night friends,
Courtney

Tile

This weekend has been one we've planned for for a while!  To kick off the weekend, a package was scheduled to come into the mail today, but they ended up rescheduling for tomorrow morning.  A little anticlimactic, but exciting nonetheless.

Tile for our foyer!

After going back and fourth about whether to tile or put wood down in the foyer, we opted for tile.  It's more durable and easier to install in our instance, since we don't have to re-do the sub floor if we're just replacing the tile from our current foyer floor.

We love carrara marble, so we picked out 16x16 inch honed carrara marble as the tile for our foyer.  It will hopefully make a statement when you walk in!

I think the sizing will be perfect for the room dimensions, although I'm not the most skilled in furniture placement and sizing.  I guess we'll wait and see what the outcome looks like.

The tile will also match the marble in the living room located to the right of the foyer.  It's called bringing it together (or trying...).

The foyer now is making a statement... (yikes)!

But we're going to change that statement from gaudy to simple elegant with a few updates.  We have already taken down the wallpaper, the closet (as you can see in the second picture above), and have had the entryway replaced.

Once the tile gets installed by the talented Tommy Bley (aka Poppy), we'll have our stair case installed!

Charlotte will be ONE in a few weeks, and with her climbing the stairs at any free opportunity, I think it's time for some railings.

I'm taking pictures every step of the way to remember where we have come in the time we've lived in our little house. I'll post them soon!

Wish us luck this weekend and next week that we can complete these projects before Charlotte's birthday party!

Courtney

Hallway

After getting over the flu last week and strep throat this week, I'm back!  Eric has been busy with prepping and painting the hallway and foyer the last few weeks.

A few days ago we got new doors for the entire house too! 

It's going to look so great when it's all said and done, but here is a sneak peak....

Lovely carpet in the hallway.  We used it as a drop cloth while painting it this week.

about to unveil what's under the carpet....

surprise!!! beautiful wood floors.... why did the previous owners not show these off?!

This upcoming weekend my family is coming in town to help with the foyer.  Remember the closet we took out a few weeks ago (blog post here)??  Tommy is going to patch the wall where the closet used to be and help re-do the staircase.

Looking forward to making big strides in 2011 at the Anderson household!