Christmas Eve 2013

Yes, that's the way to spend the afternoon of Christmas Eve. Sunny, 63 degrees, done with the hard work of the day, and my faithful dog beside me.

I walked to Walgreens this morning (took about an hour or so) for my last bit of Christmas shopping; inexplicably Walgreens always seems to have the best dog toys around. I picked out a couple squeakies for Howie and Sebastian, and then went to the next store in the parking lot, an automotive store, for a car wash mitt.

Howie has had a new wash mitt to mangle every year we've had him, I believe. I'm not sure why a wash mitt is so much fun to bite, but it would hardly be Christmas for him without one. The last few years I've sewn a squeaker into the mitt for added spice.

After my walk, I went out to the ranch to give Dink his Christmas gift -- a clean paddock. Opening his gate, I sent him out to the arena to roll in the dirt (which he did immediately) and then let his buddies Eddie and The Colt out to run, too. They galloped around rather crazily for a while, then settled down to graze on stray weeds and bits of Other Horses' Hay, which tastes much better than their own. I shoveled and dumped the wheelbarrow and shoveled some more. The horses all got a little treat when they went back into their paddocks like gentlemen.

Next, a casserole to assuage the hungers of all and sundry, a lasagna casserole. That is, a casserole with the sauce, the cheeses, the meat ... and mini-farfalle noodles. Then the sun, and the smile.

Such a smile -- the smile of a woman who knows that beneath the area rugs in the front room and the family room is tile, and it is DONE, and it looks lovely:

And with that, Merry Christmas to all, stay warm, and don't forget -- Christmas Shopping Season is the only thing that is over. The Christmas Season is only about to begin.

Done Before Christmas?

The tiling project has picked up again, after a nice summer off. Doing the kitchen was a major effort, lots of tile cutting and nerves going around the island to meet on the other side with all the lines perfect. Whew!

The next stage was the threshold between the kitchen and the front room. The outcroppings of wall aren't exactly square, so I opted to do a little visual song-and-dance designed to break up the lines. The small tiles in the center also don't line up with big sibling tiles -- I suppose they could have if we were willing to cut slivers off of a bunch of them -- so I thought the staggered double line of reddish tiles (cut to random lengths) would throw those straight-line-eyeballs off the track. I love the way it turned out, just what I wanted.

Next step is a lot easier: I intended for the pattern in the kitchen to appear to go under the threshold and come out the other side as though the pattern hadn't been interrupted. Serendipity and the help of the angels had that pattern emerging right at the edge of the lower red border. No cutting of weird lengths was necessary!

And now it's off to the races! You can't really see it, but there is a line drawn on the floor with a Sharpie that runs from the edge of the hearth in the kitchen to the front door. Forget chalklines, I'm in love with a laser to make the line straight. We'll follow that line to the front door, then fill in to the right, then come back and do the other half in front of the kitchen threshold.

Since we don't have to learn HOW to do it this time, I admit it is a lot easier.

Still one helluva workout, though.

O Editor, Where Art Thou?

Well, on the floor.

Yes, literally on the floor for most of the past month. You see, I had this flash of artistic vision as to what my kitchen ought to look like ... and then, what the floor ought to be. I wished for natural slate, but after running a thumbnail across a sample in the tile store, realized that two big dogs would leave toenail scrapes everywhere that would ruin the look. The solution: porcelain tile with a slate look ... and when nearly three years had elapsed, we had the cash to make it happen, more or less.

I have no idea what made me think that I could lay tile in any accurate or appropriate manner. Or what made me think that it would be easy. All I can imagine is that angels were whispering things to me in my subconscious, and then laughing themselves senseless afterwards.

Lowe's had a nice tile called "Castlestone Harvest" that I fixated on, and off we went at the beginning of March, me thinking we could tile the kitchen/family room in a week. I knew from talking to a slate tile salesman that we'd need to lay out the pattern before we ever mixed a bit of adhesive, and we did, at least the first bit.

We began with the white marble hearth. Multiple persons tried to convince me to tear it out and have a cohesive tile not only on the hearth but on the fireplace itself, but I held to my black/white-and earthtones design. From that hearth tile, we ran a laser line to the front of the house, finding that there was a line to the front door entry tiles, off by half an inch due to sloppy chalklines made by the original builders, who were paid cheaply by the hour, and did not care about their work.

We began from the back room's focal point, the hearth, and put in a border of itsy-bitsy tiles -- and built out from there, adhering to our laser line to keep things straight.

Now here's the thing: if you want your tiling done right, and in a timely manner, hire a professional crew. Yes, it's damned expensive, but unless you are an artistic-vision control freak, you really want to spare yourself the physical agony of tiling.

It hurts.

Even with knee-pads, your knees and ankles will kill you. Your back will scream with the effort of bending, and your elbows from the lifting of heavy tiles. Your hands and wrists will swell from the effort of placing and pressing and leaning and prying up -- tiles are heavy, as compared to plates and pots from dinner or shovels and rakes from cleaning horsey paddocks. Indeed, nothing I have ever done has ever compared to the effort involved in tiling.

Truly, it was a learning experience.

Things I learned:

• Yes, Virginia, you DO have to remove the baseboards. You'll be thankful you did, later.
• Buying tile from "big box" stores will get you unevenly-sized tiles. That can be okay if you know it in advance and have a tile saw to trim off that aberrant 1/8" on the one side.
• If you're going to do it yourself, buy a decent tile saw. Expect to spend $250 at least.
• And a laser line to make your chosen reference points perfect. No, seriously. Use the tools of the present age.
• Open up your boxes of tile two or three at a time. One of our boxes was apparently a "return" -- the returners had picked out of the box all the bright and interesting colors and replaced them with grays from other boxes.
• After grouting, and smoothing the grout with a sponge, let the thing dry, and then wipe off the haze with a dry old towel. It will save you a bazillion arm swipes with the wet sponge as you clean up the grout haze. You still need the wet sponge step, but it is greatly minimized.
• YouTube is priceless. Watch a hundred how-to's.

Now here's the thing: it's easier to hire someone to lay the tile, if a lot more expensive. But the fact is, every single one of those tiles is set by me for color contrast, direction of "grain," visual impact, and focal points. I knew where I wanted the eye to land and be led. Opening up several boxes of tiles and finding four or five outstanding colors and squeaking "Ooh! I know exactly where this tile should go!" is something an installer would never be able to replicate.

The result was simply stunning. The cabinets (a bit weathered after 20 years but I wanted to keep them like that) and the family room sofa and chair, the stained white marble hearth, and the tables absolutely glow on the slatey floor. We have an area rug to use, but can't bear to do so yet -- the tile is so lovely.

Sometime in the not-too-distant future, I'll have a day when there aren't baby toys scattered everywhere, and I'll post a pic or two of the rooms. One special one that picks up my Audubon bird prints that hang on the wall ... not planning it in advance, the colors of the tiles echo the predominate colors and tones of the prints.

Bliss.

Tile-licious!

After three years of bare cement, this year we should be able to address the lack of cement floor covering, and this is a hint of what is to come.

We've chosen a porcelain tile with a color profile that ranges from gray to red, in 12-inch tiles and 6-inch tiles, and this pattern will predominate throughout. We bought these sample tiles today.

Bernie and I intend to do the installation ourselves -- the cost of hiring someone to put the tile down for us is insanely prohibitive for us, and frankly, I'm so sick of bare concrete that I'm willing to endure yet another learning experience if I can have a floor that doesn't have slab cracks and dings in it, and isn't cement gray throughout.

This tile is about as close to the colors of natural slate that we could find, and won't have the need-to-seal issues and the ohmigod-the-dogs'-toenails-are-scratching-it issues that natural slate would have.

A scary project, though. The layout of the tiles alone is going to be epic.