Q&A time! More Sticky Tile Advice

We are still on Hiatus, but I got a question today that I think is worthy of a small update. A lady named Marie posted a comment on this post asking for help with her self-adhesive tile installation:

i had tile put down this summer 12x12 good tile he pull up all the old tile & cleaned the floor put down some wood then the self stick tile now every time i walk on it ,it sounds sticky.What can i do about it. THANK U MARIE

Marie, I'd have emailed you but you didn't leave an email address :)

It sounds as though your installer did not level the floor properly. Applying a new substrate is only part of the job - the substrate must be levelled and smoothed with a filling compound and allowed to cure, then sometimes re-levelled, before tiles are applied. This is even more important with larger or self-adhesive tiles, as they require a perfectly level surface to adhere properly.

The right application tools are very important. Having some way to press the tiles down, such as a roller, is crucial to bonding the tiles in place. If this is not done immediatley after the tiles are applied (usually after the entire floor has been laid), the tiles can release from the floor due to temperature fluctuations, and make a sticky noise when the floor is walked on. It is equally important not to walk on the new floor for the time recommended on the tile package, as walking on it may cause the adhesive to slip while it is curing.

Also, the quality of the self-adhesive tiles can significantly affect their sticking power - I've used expensive tiles and cheap ones, and universally had cheap tiles slip, peel and creep, even when thoroughly pressed down with a weighted roller. I've had best luck with the Armstrong brand of self-adhesive tiles, though the quality of tiles they produce is also affected by the price range and intended use. Some cheaper tiles will peel right up on a hot day, for example.

A slightly uneven surface is one of the reasons we chose small, ceramic tiles for our bathroom. The cost would have been approximately the same for inexpensive tiles (our ceramic tile was about 1.80 a square foot) + grout + substrate + leveling and filling compound vs quality self-adhesive tiles (generally about 3.00 or more a square foot) + substrate + leveling and filling compound.

On the positive side, it tends to be fairly inexpensive to pull up and replace self-adhesive tiles in order to correct insufficient floor leveling. Good luck!

Grout and About

We've taken a hill, in our overall battle for the house. It took us nearly all night, but we stand atop this rise and can see the remaining ground ahead. We're that much closer to being able to move in, because, really, a functional bathroom is an admittedly necessary thing. Almost as much as heat.

After much trial and tribulation (every battery for the two drills was in need of charging, we had to mix the grout partially by hand, and really, where do you stand when sponging a floor you just grouted?), we finally finished grouting the bathroom at 1 am. We also finished the plumbing - almost. The toilet works, the sink works (after a last minute mad dash to Lowe's, an hour away, last night), even most of the plumbing involved with the bath itself is functional. However, there is, as anyone else who also chose the self-punishing road of home renovation will expect to hear, one part missing. That one part, typically, is something Utterly Crucial, i.e, the threaded connector that serves to attach the tub faucet to the otherwise hideous and unattractive pipe.

At this point, we now have all the necessary things done. Much of what's left to do can be worked on after we move in, if need be. We are, realistically, two workdays (paint, plaster, tape and spackle, and maybe stripping the rest of the bedroom walls), and a cleanup day away from moving in. Christmas is now a realistic goal.

We find out next week when Chris goes. I hope we do get moved in before then.

More tile!

I spent several hours in the bathroom yesterday, and we are now at 75% tiled. I had to go back to mom's to feed the wee one, or I'd have kept going.

The end is distantly in sight.

Progressions, Plans and a Thing In The Attic

So, it's Autumn, we've owned our home for 6 months (only 6? it feels like an eternity), and we've made some small progress. There's paint in the hallway now, a "Very Craftsman" green, according to Mom, and I'm working my way around the dining room. We've got all the floors clean of hideous carpet, though some are a little scarred from the experience. The living room is done, save for scouring the floor to remove the last of the carpet pad, and I've got a lovely play area set up for my older son to use while we work. The bath is half tiled, and the master bedroom still languishes, but at least there's a light in there. Things are moving along, if slowly.

I'm aiming for Hallowe'en as our move-in goal.

I have made some sketches of what I'm doing with parts of the house. My plan for the dining room bay is to take this:

The dining room bay as it appears now.

And turn it into this:


I made the sketch without looking at the bay so I misdrew the windows - they actually cover the full width of the bay. Other than that, it's spot on. The posts are structural, not just cosmetic. They will support the poorly-remodeled wall cutout on a 4x4 beam, and we've got plenty of mouldings to wrap them with, to make them look Really Original. Eventually, I'd like to add cosmetic ceiling beams to the dining room, too, but this comes first.

The bookshelf is actually a family heirloom, which belonged to my paternal grandmother. It's going to be mounted permanently to the wall, and there will be wainscot added around it, right up to the vertical posts at the corners. It'll be the same as the panelling in the "built-in" I made to fill the arch.

The window seats will be made of the salvageable parts of the old living room archway double doors, which apparently sat unloved for many years in some leaky place. The bottoms have completely rotted, leaving me with a nifty, but not reusable, item. I decided (since I can't replace them where they belong, and because I want to make them again a part of the house), to make window seats of them. Also, the bay is only 4 feet wide, the ends are not evenly deep, and that space is nearly wasted. Finally, it is because I have really fond memories of the enormous window seat in the dining room of my parents' craftsman bungalow when I was a kid. Nothing like curling up in a sunny window with a good book. I want my kids to have that.

Speaking of kids, I'm still working on FX's room. When last I posted about it, we were here:
There are a few more shelves in the bookshelf, but it pretty much still looks this way now.

And we (which really means "I") plan to finish it thusly:


That's going to be an open closet with coat hooks on the outside, and shelves for shoes. The closet will have an upper and lower level, the upper one being for things he wears every once in a while (Sunday or seasonal clothes) and the lower being for his school clothes. The desk in the plans is all cut out, but not assembled.

Now to the progress. Quite a bit has been done, some has even been reported, none has been photographed ... Until now!
The Very Craftsman Green hallway.

That's just bare old plaster above the border. The frieze paper (really only by virtue of position - its only pattern is a sort of golden parchment look) goes up after the whole dining room and hallway are painted, and really will look more like an intended plaster finish similar to what's there now, but without the obvious patches and old mucilage. I love how the border paper looks, even if it's only tacked up.

The dark green will make a lovely background for two paintings, done by my cousin, that I was given. You can see one if them in the photo of the living room:

It'll be nice when there's furniture in it. Not lawn furniture.

I love that vintage Greek key paper, but there wasn't quite enough. I have to make some more, which will involve printing it on archival quality paper and pasting it up. It's always something :)

Now, the floor. Here, you can see the line of demarcation between the dining room and living room where the two different carpets once laid edge-to-edge:

Seamy, Isn't it?

Yes, I figure they didn't strip off the old wax prior to laying down a pink rubber carpet pad however umpteen years ago, so when the pad degraded, it bonded to the old wax, leaving ... this. This is after scraping for two days. I'll keep you posted on the scrubbing and what works. Once it's scrubbed, I'm waxing it.

Call me old-fashioned, or call me masochistic - we do have 2 kids and a dog - I like waxed floors, even if I know what it takes to keep them up.

And now for the playroom:


It's not perfect, but it's a nice, bright, stimulating environment for a 3 year old boy. And he loves it, which is what counts.

On to the half-tiled bath. First, a before picture is in order:



It was very pink, and plastic, in there.

Now, we have this:
That's the "fixture wall" with the new/old medicine cabinet in it, sans door.

We were lucky enough to find the old girl under the dining room bay, and she's sound, so I painted her and in she went. The mirrored door is in the kitchen until we're all done flinging heavy stuff around in the bathroom. I wish I had time to finish in there right now, but I don't.

And the master bedroom currently houses all the salvaged lumber, mouldings, doors and panelling:
Sad, isn't it? Eventually, we will have to sleep in here.

Finally, we come to The Thing in the Attic:
The Titanic, or our cistern.

A few months back, when I wasn't allowed up on ladders, my friend K stuck her head up in the attic where her husband J had been working to look for a tool we needed (we were demoing something), and said: "Hey! There's some kind of wash tub up here!"

I, of course, pictured a round tin tub, with handles, like the sort that get sold for icing down beers, and thought "Cool! I could use that for something."

Many weeks later, I stick my own head up there and see this HUGE bathtub shaped thing, about 4 feet wide and maybe 8 or 9 feet long, and a good 4 feet high. It must be the old water-pressurizing cistern, and must have been in here since the place was built. The way these things worked was that you'd pump water up here from the well, by hand, and it would sit up here until you turned on the taps, which would give you water pressure, like a water tower. It certainly goes a long way toward explaining some of the odd plumbing in the basement.

Now, what are we going to do with it if we ever decide to finish the attic?

We finished something! Call the press!

The living room is DONE (well, except for refinishing the floor, but we'll wait on that until the kids are older). We also got the carpet out of the dining room, and it looks an order of magnitude better, even with the hole in the ceiling. A million staples later, we have floors we are already happy with.

The bath is half tiled, all fixtures are in, and the only things waiting to be done (besides part 2 of the tiling) are the faucets on the shower wall (we must finish tiling and grouting first) and connecting the sink to the plumbing. All the weird, fiddly, awkward tiling is now complete.

The Amazing Debris Collection is almost gone. The next dumpster load is waiting next to the dumpster, and we have a few pieces left in the house.

I updated our budget sheet last night and we have spent about 4 grand on tools and materials so far. It sounds awful, but if we had hired people to do this for us, we would have spent 10-20 grand, just to get this far. Even if it would have gone faster, it wouldn't have gone much faster (and may have gotten slower). Our friends A and R hired folks to do all their work last year, and it took them 9 months to get into their house. It's a Stick style house, and it looks great now, but it was a fustercluck for a long time, there.

By the way, spellcheck hates "fustercluck" - and suggests I use "festers" instead. Apt.

Some progress, some regression, and some blessings counted.

I'm counting my blessings, lest I sink into despair. There will be no moving in this week. FX will come home to an unfinished house, even if he will have a play area to use while we work.

Why? We have fixtures in the bath now, and even some tile (Thanks, MOM!), but that's not really done yet. That's the progess. However, in the process of getting there, we discovered that the toilet we wanted to keep was Done For.

After re-installing it. Sigh. Off to the Home Improvement Store (this time it was Menard's) for a new toilet, a cheap new toilet, and other necessities. Unforseen spending later, (under 200 bucks, really, so we got out cheap, but it was still not budgeted for) there is, once again, a toilet in our new bathroom.

Well, if we have to move for any reason, we can advertise it as having "all new fixtures" in the bath. I don't want to move, this house has ahold of my soul.

Now to the livingroom carpet. Remember the carpet dream? Well, it was partially prophetic - that horrible carpet was on a pad that was either glued down or that degraded in a manner most foul. We've been scraping for two days, and we only have 1/3 of the floor exposed. I see refinishing in my future - but, at least, not sanding. Scrubbing, on hands and knees, and revarnishing, but no sanding in this room, at least.