Right now, my favorite place in the house is a little corner that hosts a pretty photo of us at our wedding.  Keeps me warm & fuzzy :)

Do you have a favorite spot in your house?

-Sarah

Yay!  I put draw pulls on (almost) all the kitchen cabinets.  This is great news because now Rogér has no excuse not to put the counter tops on ;)

Well, okay, he has some good excuses....like riding lessons, or putting up Christmas lights, or organizing the garage.

I guess he's needed a little break after the plumbing got done.  Well deserved, of course!!

We weren't sad to see our old cabinets go, but I felt bad scrapping all that wood, so I was trying to think of ways use them. In reality, the cabinets were so hard to get out that most of them got broken apart (and used as firewood), but we did manage to salvage this one section.


After staring at it sitting on our back patio for a few days, I came up with and idea!  A baby changing station!  I liked the idea that there were drawers, and it has a handy pull out cutting...ur...diaper-holding board!  Of course, it needed a little make over.

I said I'd share more about our groutable vinyl tile floor, so here it is.

There are sooooo many floor options to choose from.  We were really excited when we this tile at Home Depot because we liked the look without the tile hassle. I looked it up online to see what advice I could find and there were a couple good suggestions. For the rest, we just took our chances.

The whole install was relatively painless.  My mom and I marked the centerlines of the kitchen and then laid out tile (with the backing on) in a square around the kitchen island, we did this to make sure everything was square. That looked good so we got to it, starting with our initial square and then building out.  We tried to avoid doing one long straight line of tiles all at once, in case things got a little crooked, which only happened once.  Once you lay the tiles down you can't really make adjustments like with real tile.  We did have to pull up one or two and re-lay them.  I'm not sure if this will affect the life of the tile.


We used 3/16" tile spacers because we liked the way it looked.

Grouting and floating was a little tricky.  We got pre-mixed, quick dry grout.  Never used it before.  This was much more convenient than mixing yourself. Warning:  It dries quick!!  At first, Rogér and I both grouted and when I went to go float over the tile, the grout was already drying, leaving patches of grout on the tiles and a rough finish in between the tiles.  After that, Rogér grouted and I floated over the grouted tile almost immediately.  This worked really well.  We didn't have problems with the grout not sticking in between the tiles. 
Pros and Cons so far:

Pros:
-Easy install and no need to account for extra thickness of floor like with ceramic and stone tiles
-Quick adhesion and drying
-Easier to cut than stone or ceramic (although, they are thicker than other vinyl tile, so cutting is still a bit of a challenge.  We used garden shears and a box cutter)
-Low cost - Ours was about $1.16/sft
-Looks great, almost like real stone (our baby shower guests had to touch it to tell the difference)
-Seems like it would be easy to replace
-Cleans up easy
-Less sealing (You should still seal the grout, but the tiles don't need it)

Cons:
-Can't adjust tiles once they're laid down
-May have trouble sticking (one of our tiles is lifting at a corner. maybe it got too wet underneath during float?)
-Must prime the floor if you don't have a super smooth subfloor.  Wood will need primer.
-Grout film - everywhere.  Cleans up after a mop or two though (after the grout has set of course).

Helpful tips:
1.  Use two buckets of water (dirty and clean) for the float, and clean the water often.
2.  Float quickly after grouting if using quick-dry grout.
3.  Use a large piece of wood as a cutting surface for the tile, score with the box cutter and fold to snap a clean line.  Use garden shears or heavy duty scissors for cutting more intricate shapes.

That's all I can think of.  We're pretty happy with our new floor :)

I know, it's been a while since we've posted anything.  As I mentioned last time, we're super busy.  Not to mention that I'm exhausted and totally uninspired to write or go through pics to post.  But here's my attempt to get up to date, so that we can start on a fresh note when I get that blogging spark again.

First of all, we've been preparing for our baby shower, which, like I've mentioned before, we decided to have at our own house (yeah, a little ambitious, ya think?).  Anyway, my big requirements for that were the completion of the kitchen floor and base cabinets/countertops, and cleanup of the "trophy room" and patio.  My mom came down on the Wednesday before the shower so she could help us get the place up to snuff.

We worked our butts off from 7am until 1am each day, but I have to say, the results were pretty incredible!!  We almost got all of our cabinets in (no countertops though).  We also laid our kitchen floor.  We chose to use groutable vinyl tile.  This was really....interesting.  Not too difficult.  Actually, laying the tiles down was easier than I thought.  Grouting was a little tricky.  I'll try to provide some more info in a separate post.

Our appliances came in as well!  They look great!  I don't know how they work cuz we haven't installed them yet.

The baby shower was wonderful, but what else did I expect?  When you're surrounded by great, loving friends and family, who cares what your house looks like anyway?  Baby Balyon is set for life! He's probably got enough stylish clothes to wear 10-15 different outfits per day for the first 3 mos!  More on the baby shower later...

Here's some pics to tell the rest of the story:

Hard to believe this all got done in a matter of a a couple weeks.

Stay tuned for the results!!