We Have the Tile
Now I’m really cheating. I’m writing this two days after the date on this post. But it’s not really cheating because the work happened 2 days ago and I’m just getting around to writing about it today. Eh, who cares. I’m writing.
We had tile put in on Friday! Tile guys came, started at the far side of the kitchen and worked their way out the front door.
Here is the view from inside the kitchen.
And the view from my office.
I’m gonna blame my iPhone camera but, in person, the colors I see don’t really look like those pics. But that’s OK because I think I’m getting used to the idea that colors in general change constantly over the course of the day. Dena & I have seen this time and again, we pick out some color that’s brown, or blue, or green or whatever. We get it on the wall and say, “Whoa! that’s not the color we thought it was.” And then later in the day when the sun has moved, “Yeah! That’s the color we wanted.” Even in the same room at the same time, one wall will look one color and another, perpendicular wall will look to be a completely different color. It’s strange.
Bringing it back to the tile. What we picked out was kind of a granity-green-ish. Now that it’s in, at different times and in different places, it looks more grey or more brown. Go figure. Regardless, we like it a lot. It’s all really starting to come together. Looks good with the walls in both the foyer and the kitchen and will go nicely with the cabinets once they’re in place. Which should happen Monday because the cabinets were delivered Friday as well!
Now for the adventure part of this blog post. As many people know, when tile is laid, you have to stay off it for about 24 hours to allow the thinset (mortar) to set properly. Othewise, the tiles will shift or may even break. Given that the foyer and kitchen are central to our house we planned to spend the night in a hotel.
So I’m sitting here in my office after the guys left waiting for Dena to come home, when I hear a noise like ductwork flexing. We all know that sound from TV with the good-guy crawling through the ducts to get the bad-guy. So I start hearing that sound and I think, “Oh shit”.
See that?
That little hole way off in the corner of the kitchen is a vent. Of course the vent cover was removed for the tiling and I don’t see Molly (our cat) around anywhere. I’m convinced she went down that vent hole.
See, it’s OK for cats to walk on newly laid tile. They aren’t generally heavy enough to affect it, it’s just us fat humans that can’t walk on it. So I think I have a cat stuck in the duct work and we’re supposed to be leaving for the night and all the next day. We can’t leave her to wander around the ducts for a day. She’ll starve!
So Jim rigs up a way to spider-man-it from my office door to the basement door without disturbing too many tiles. I get down there and start moving aside those drop-ceiling tiles we have down there to try to find the duct work to see if I can somehow poke a cat out of there. Then, of course, Dena calls down, “I have Molly!” She was never in there.
Stupid cat.
So we went to dinner and stayed in a hotel here in town. Stopped back Saturday morning to feed and check on the cats (no cats in the ducts), spent a nice day with Dena’s mom helping her get some shopping done, got back last night (still not cats in ducts) and could finally walk all over it.
That’s the end of our tile adventure. Cabinets were delivered late Friday and should be put in place come Monday. Gonna really start looking like a kitchen now.
Take care,
JIm