Floor is finished

After 3 days of crawling around on the floor and the fumes oh my the fumes. Here it is all finished. This is 3 coats of Waterlox, which I think came out very well. It was pretty easy to work with albeit on a bit on the expensive side, nearly twice the price of poly . I think If we use it again the low VOC version might be worth the additional 30 bucks. All things considered I would use it again.

I am very happy with the finished product. It's rustic but I think it works for a kitchen.

Progress Report

Lots of progress to report. Chris's parents came up last weekend and did helped us with some gardening, no pictures yet. I'm trying to get Chris to post about the gardening since I hid inside sanding the floor while everyone else worked on the garden. I decided not to rent a sander so I've been doing the whole thing with a random orbital sander. I was concerned that if we rented a sander we would take off too much of the wood and that it would end up just a bit too perfect. In this whole project one of my overall goals has been to make the kitchen look like it belongs to the house.

With this goal in mind I've been going back and forth about floor finishes for quite some time. Most of our rooms still have the original shellacked floors with their nice orangey color. I toyed with the idea of doing the same in the kitchen but decided against it because of durability concerns, a kitchen is going to see a lot of water and it is very possible that alcohol may be spilled which could put the finish at risk. So then I was leaning towards doing an alcohol based stain to get a similar shade and then finishing with a water based poly I had a lot of concerns about that as well we have a lot of different boards pieced in to the floor that are a lot of different ages and I just didn't know how the different woods were going to take the stain and at this point I just don't have the heart to strip it down again and re-sand. So in the end I decided on Waterlox I think it's going to give me some of the color that I desire and it should be easily reparable but still have the durability that the poly would have given me.

I did some test areas with it this afternoon and I think it's going to work out wonderfully. Here is the sample from the stove area. The stove area is probably one of the areas in the kitchen with the most cobbled together flooring I figure if it can look good there it should look good anywhere.

Waterlox has a 12-24 hour cure time and unfortunately for us the kitchen serves not only as a kitchen but also as hallway so the plan is that I will begin starting tomorrow night at 6:00 and then do one coat each night until I'm finished. Fortunately we still have the stairs on the back of our house that used to lead up to the upstairs apartment so we should be able to avoid the room in the evenings while the finish is curing. I hope to finish up by Wednesday so the floor will have a day and a half to cure before the plumber comes Friday.

Grouted and caulked

Here is the updated pictures the tile is grouted, caulked and we got to take down all the plastic and admire it. The next and last hurdle is the floor. Wish us luck.

Grout Finished

I finished grouting the counter top and back splash last night. It was a lot more work than I had anticipated. Over all the Epoxy grout was not difficult to work with, but the float is heavier than a standard grout float so by the end of Monday my hands just hurt, but the counter top was done.

The back splash was more of a pain because there was not as much room to work the grout in with the float. I ended up just using my fingers to press the grout in then I finished up with the float to clean the excess of the tile. That worked pretty well and I was able to finish up the back splash last night.

Freezing the grout does lengthen it's cure time so I used a bucket of ice water while i worked to give myself more time to grout and wash. I even froze the leftovers from Mondays work and used them on Tuesday and while the grout was a little thicker it applied nearly the same. Visually there is no difference between the epoxy grout that i froze over night and the batch that I made fresh which is very handy as the pot life the the grout is only around an hour at 70 degrees F room temperature.

Pictures to come.

Continuing our slow limp to the finish

Today we did make some good forward progress with the tile we're at about 90% right now should only be another hour tomorrow to get the rest of it laid. We would have been finished today but Chris installed the new lights today and the thought of tripping over one another while we occupied the same space on totally different projects was not pleasing.

The new lights are the Quimby from Rejuvenation. When we pulled them from the box originally I was not pleased with them they were not quite what I expected. Because the wire on the fixture is exposed they use lamp wire to run through chain and up to the electrical box. When they arrived the lamp wire was pulled very tight so tight that it kinked the chain and made the fixture appear crooked. They also have a ground wire running from the box down to the light itself. It is inconspicuous now that they are hung but down at eye level it was a bit displeasing. We adjusted the cord and tinkered with them a bit and they are hanging much straighter now. After seeing them properly mounted I think that they really work and I cannot imagine having anything else in their place.


I also had some concerns that they would not be bright enough it seems that almost all kitchens will have a center light in addition to the pendants. However they seem to be fine we will also have lights on the stove hood and will most likely add a small undercabinet light to the corner closest to the sink.

Here is an updated shot of the tile. Tomorrow morning's tiling will consist of adding bull nose pieces to the edges and the addition of 2 rows of tile below counter top level in the stove area once those areas are finished up we will be ready for grout. We are scheduled to have visitors next weekend so it is unlikely grout will be applied so the tile project will probably carry on for at least 2 more weekends. In the meantime I will be starting to sand up the floor.

Tile Progress

Well the counter top is all stuck down and we are at about 40% on the back splash tile. We still need to do the other 60% of the back splash plus grout to complete the project. Chris and I are working as a team on this I do the layout, he does the cutting, and I apply the tile and then he will finish up with grout.

We pre-laid out all the tile but the first sink side got all discombobulated in the process of sticking the tiles down with the thin set so approximately 20 tiles had to be re-cut. The second side we only had to re-cut about 6 tiles so we did improve dramatically. Anyways on to the pics

Tile layout and lighting test

Friday night we went to Lowe's to pick up the tile, that was more painful than I anticipated however I still think that we are going to be happier with the end result than we would have if we have gone with formica. Of course they did not have enough of the bullnose tile for us so that is on order they gave us an estimate of a week to a week and a half. Of course that was really the component we needed to get things started. Oh well at least we had a pretty relaxing weekend.

I of course could not resist unboxing some of the countertop tiles and doing a test layout. I think it's going to be really nice.
I'm also hoping to order the light soon however before we get to that point we need to decide on a length. According to the resources I have found online for pendants over an island or peninsula you want them to be 72" of of the floor. Our ceiling is 7'5" which would give us 17" for overall fixture length. I didn't want the chain to be too short so I bumped that up to 18" and then as a test I hung a string from the ceiling 18" long. That looks about right to me. Chris is of average height so I had him stand on the inside of the counter top and look towards to door and it didn't seem to be in his face so I think that will work nicely. As someone who is on the short side I have absolutely no concept of these things.

You can also see in this picture that we have the pantry door remounted. I think it looks really good. If the tile gets in by next weekend we will be tiling. If not we'll be sanding the floor, either way fun for everyone.