The Foyer 3.0

Welcome to my 1980's home. Full of dated tile and carpet.  This here is the pano of our foyer. It's atrocious. And the very first thing when you see when you walk in the door.  

When we bought the house at auction, we'd never been able to step foot inside prior to the sale. We peeked in the windows, and I could tell work needed to be done. Obviously it went to auction because it was ugly. You can fix ugly. I guess it could have been a lot worse. Immediately we cleaned and painted. 

Phase one after paint, was some good old board and batten. This is an incredibly cheap and easy way to give a space a facelift. 

Next came removing the old 16 inch tiles. That's the trick here. The people who laid the existing tiles made sure they were gonna stick. But they never bothered to remove the previous layer of mortar. So breaking tile up is one thing, but grinding two layers of mortar is an entirely different story. 

Now I know I previously said I hated laying tile. I now know there is exactly one thing worse than that.... Removing mortar. Undoubtedly the most exhausting dirty job in remodeling. And since we didn't have any money to rent a large jack hammer, it was all done by hand with a little jack and a concrete grinder. 

  Days and days of dirt and dust and sweat. 

And more dust

And finally it is all down to a smooth concrete. Had we had a basement, removing and replacing the subfloor would have been a much easier option. 

Seems ridiculous to spend so much time and effort to remove old tile, just to replace it with something new. But we did. And we were at least smart enough to leave loose tiles in the threshold of the living room and merely grout them down until we were ready for the foyer. So we easily were able to feather in the foyer with the existing previously laid tile. 

Using laser levels made us easily stay on track to keep the tiles nice and straight down the long foyer and into the office. 

On our last evening of laying tile, the power went out. But we had a full bucket of thin set. So even though the tile saw was out of commission. We made do by candlelight, and laid what we could without any cuts required. 

My awesome man is one incredible worker. Only out of powerfor a couple of hours and we were still able to cover some ground. 

I have noticed that the more tile we lay, the better the cuts and angles get in all those tricky areas. 

I love to show off his incredible working this particular cut. 

After we grouted and cleaned, we waited a couple days and finally put the kids to work sealing the grout. 

So glad this project is behind us. However we the old tile running through the kitchen. So, at least we have a couple years till we tackle that one. 

The after picture will be up once I finish the stairs.