So here are a few pictures of the most intricate tile work I have ever done. Typically what I have done in my fixer-uppers is put in 12x12 tile and tuck all of the edges under the baseboard. But for my own house that I decided I'd stay in for a while I got a little wild! This is a 16x16 border with a 12x12 diamond fill. The subfloor is 7/8" OSB, so I had to add a layer of hardibacker before the tile job... major back pain, but I love it every time I go in there now. The hardest part was the full diagonal cuts on the 12x12 fill edge tiles, but I actually did them on a cheapie harbor freight table top tile saw... took some patience but worked out pretty well.

These pictures were taken right after it was done about this time last year, so everything else has been finished off now.

Heath












Modified by Q451990 at 4:20 PM 12/18/2008

That looks nice!

I did the Master bathroom last year. It's not majorly complicated but is labor intensive. My next project is to demo the kitchen as we are completely gutting it and replacing everything. This will be followed by new hardwood floors in the den.

Sounds like fun! I find that home-rehab hours and working-on-the-Q hours are roughly the same. I take the worst case scenario in my mind before starting the job - then quadruple it to get a good guess of how much time I will actually take to finish the job!

You should start a fund now for all of the eating out you'll do while you're gutting the kitchen.

Heath

We rarely cook anyway so it's all good. Microwave, takeout or dining out is pretty much the norm.

Looks nice Heath, good luck keeping that light colored grout looking nice.. We redid our kitchen with almost the exact same kind of tile and the grout is starting to look crappy... definitely should ahve gone with a darker colored grout.

There are two theories on grout... yours, in that darker grout won't hold dirt. The flip side, is that every little mistake in tile placement will show due to the contrast. I have always gone with matching the grout color as closely as possible to the tile. So far it hasn't been an issue, but I haven't ever lived on tile work that I did for more than about a year - since I always flipped the houses shortly after renovating. In this case, the plan is to have it as our home for at least 5 years - so we'll see.

If nothing else this is a good reminder that I should actually seal it!

The other factor is that our cooking schedule is more like what audtatious describes. I bought a lot of nice stainless steel appliances in hopes that it would inspire Dana to cook more, but I still see a lot of Burger King wrappers in the trash can... Now that we're coming up on grilling season, maybe it will be better.

Heath

Very nice work! Ive never done tile, but that looks like it would take forever!

I remodel kitchens and baths for a living. It doesn't really take that long to tile but its tough on the knees and back after a while.

Your kitchen looks good man, good work.

Very nice! Looks good. Id like to tile the Kitchen sometime.

audtatious wrote:We rarely cook anyway so it's all good. Microwave, takeout or dining out is pretty much the norm.

LOL, then why do you care what's in your kitchen?

My kitchen is only like 300sf but I could seriously spend $100k in there and use every penny:

-Thermal bath for sous vide-Infared Broilers-Stainless counters-Double fridge and a couple lo-boys-8 burner sealed gas range w/grill station-Enormous hood/vent-Enlarge pantry-Deep fryer installed in counter-EVO Grill-Integrated bain marie

Gawd, I could go on for another hour. Cooking ftw.

I should look into hiring some high school kid to do all my mise-en-place, lol. Have someone in there chiffonading parsley and frenching racks of lamb all day.

The payoff from learning how to cook is spending the rest of your life eating twice as well for half the price along with an intrinsic joy of creating something with your hands that is a very similar experience to wrenching.