Saturday Funday

Not nearly as fun as Sunday Funday...

Back before we closed escrow, the Big Orange Box's sophisticated older sister, EXPO Design Center, was going out of business and liquidating all of its stock. As many of you know, before we knew whether or not we'd get the house, we went to EXPO and spent a ridiculous amount of money on items that were reduced by 50-70%. We got some amazing deals on a whole bunch of stuff including a kitchen sink, kitchen faucet, bathroom faucet, bathroom hardware, ceramic tiles for bathroom, and enough travertine for our (hopefully) soon to be kitchen.

Our mortgage consultant and real estate agent nearly had our heads.

BUT it all worked out! And now we're preparing for the installation of all that beautiful travertine.

Now, what you've all been waiting for, our Saturday in pictures!

First, we had to rip up all of the old linoleum and other strange flooring. Jesse made a grid of cuts down to the sub-floor that you see in this first picture. Our house was built before plywood so our subfloor is made of diagonal 1x6 planks across the floor joists. You can see right down into the crawlspace. It was grueling work, prying up all of the linoleum (and attached plywood.) It was loud and quite dusty as well, so I am wearing ear and eye protection.

Here you can see the exposed subfloor with the patch Jesse made where the old water lines used to come out and into the kitchen.
Corinne working and Jesse cleaning? Are we in bizarro world?
The exposed subfloor view of the kitchen (refer to "eyes on the prize" picture from two posts ago for a reference.) Just to ensure non-squeakyness, we went through and screwed down each plank where it crossed a stud. I found from this experience that I'm not very good at repetititve driving of screws. Jesse even bought a new phillips head bit just for me...to destroy.
We then measured and cut the backer board and laid it down using 16-penny nails as spacers.
Time to mix up the thin-set mortar...and to finish a sundae cone.
Our thin-set mortar is actually quite thick. The guy at the Big Orange Box told Jesse we should just buy the pre-made stuff...but it cost $30 more for the same amount!! We're reasonably intelligent people, we can mix our own...right? Well, maybe Jesse could. When I mixed the second batch, I put twice the amount of required water...
After laying the mortar and backerboard, you have to screw it down with special fancy screws in an 8" grid. That's over 500 screws! After a thorough vacuuming, we taped and filled the seams and went to bed. Phew!



For your viewing pleasure.
In my defense, I thought he was just taking pictures. I just realized as I was selecting pictures for the blog that he took a video of me. I would have been much more on-point if I'd known it was a video...
Here I am tearing up the last bit of linoleum and removing gobs of caulking from between the floor and the wall. I swear whoever caulked it just had a ton of caulk that needed to get used up so they figured they'd just squeeze it all into any space they could find.