Clearly, I’m one of those people who enjoys making more work for herself. But the flooring in the kitchen is one of those places where I’m letting my normal full-destruct tendencies subside, and embracing easy-street.

Easy street in this town might still a little more work than a lot of people would care to do on their day off, but really, replacing this kitchen floor should be a piece of cake.

For one thing, I’m installing vinyl tiles instead of porcelain, marble, or ceramic tile. Sure, with some economy mortar-and-grout tile styles, I probably could have had a new floor priced pretty low (think: between 50-80-cents/sq. ft.), but then consider the added costs to lay new cement board and mortar, and I’ve priced myself back up above the cost of my vinyl for what could still end up being a really inexpensive look. I think the resilient vinyl will hold up really well in the kitchen (good for the dog paws, good for the food spills, not freezing cold underfoot), and because I love the tile I bought (it’s the same kind that I used in the bathroom), I know it’ll look great beside the natural hardwoods and help to pull the house together in a cohesive way.

Additionally, I’ve decided to leave the original vinyl sheet flooring unharmed and tile the new “concrete” vinyl tiles straight on top of it. I do like ripping things clean down to the core, exposing studs and underlayment because there’s always something fresh and invigorating about starting from scratch, but here, now, I genuinely think I’ll be better off cost-wise and efficiency-wise to lay flat on top of the old layer without disturbing it.

I ramped this floor-replacement plan into gear yesterday by doing a few necessary (and unnecessary but fun) things to prepare for installation:

1. I mapped out my game plan:

Girl’s gotta know what’s up and down, what’s level, what’s on the straight and narrow, so we spent an evening planning out the best plan of action for the tiling throw-down. In no way is this sketch to proportion, but it shows you how we decided to have the tiles centered horizontally along the middle of the main part of the room. By starting 6″ from the wall with the dishwasher (at the top of the picture), I think the placement feels a little more natural and anally-orderly than if it started with a perfectly square whole tile in the corner and working outward. I believe that’s why any and all home improvement show would advise against starting in the corner (also, it’s easier to get going unevenly… I like to compare it to trying to handwrite a note on unlined paper). With that said, I would start tiling in the open area of the kitchen, matching the corners of my first tiles squarely with the lines that were on the floor,  leaving the edges which would require cuts for last.

Measuring it out in real-life, we first found the center point of the room, and then blasted it with a chalk line. (The room is 8.5′ floorspace across, so the line divides it at the 4.25′ point.)

I went back over that chalk line with a Sharpie so that our socks and dog paws wouldn’t erase it, and then measured out a line to overlap it perpendicularly towards one end of the room. Instead of relying on the cabinets being square, we opted for good ol’ math and Pythagorean’ed all over that floor to make sure our lines were square and extended evenly (that’s the good ol’ a² + b² = c² for folks who have forgotten 9th grade math). Guaranteed right angle. High-five.

2. I reinforced the floor (that I had inadvertently weakened):

True, I peeled up a few corners of that vinyl when I was exploring to see just how securely it was glued to the underlayment (verdict: very). Best case scenario, there would have been zero adhesion and I could have pulled it right up, but second-best case scenario, we just go straight over the top of it. To reinforce those corners I had pulled up manually and eliminate any chance of them popping loose and effecting my new vinyl tiles and the grout between each tile, I threw a few rounds of 1-1/4″ staples along all of the edges of the floor and in areas that felt like it had a little bounce with Pete’s nail/staple gun (always, I appreciate any opportunity to use the pancake compressor, insert Tim Taylor grunt… and hey, has anyone been watching Last Man Standing besides me and Pete?).

3. We got artsy-schmartsy with permanent markers and practiced out bubble letters:

Unrelated to the installation, but fun. Because, why not? I like to think surface is a canvas, especially canvases that are going to be soon covered up. Nothing like leaving a little treasure for future homeowners who want to make the room their own.

I do realize that 99% of our artwork is going to be removed the moment I swipe over it with a cloth soaked in denatured alcohol (to remove any residue and grease that may affect how the tiles adhere), but it was a fun creative release. Bubble letters, I excel at. Dogs, not. “What’s that, Emily?” “Um… maybe Cody.”

And there’s nothing quite like a DIY connect-the-dots game. What is that, a heart-y whale?

4. And lastly, I painted my little heart out:

Oh yeah, maybe you haven’t noticed how grimy the space beneath the cabinets is. It’s been nasty for as long as I’ve lived here. Thin and narrow plywood boards had been painted flat black and positioned to create a seamless cabinet front all around the room (except in front of appliances). As it was held in place by the laminate floor and quarter round, I didn’t actually realize how easily it could be removed until the room was cleared, but with it out, I was able to clean, prime and paint all of the existing pieces with a fresh coat of straight-from-the-can Behr white (the same can that I used when painting the bathroom ceiling and office trim). I did the quarter round too while I was at it, still thinking it’ll be worth my while (and $15.00) to replace as many pieces of it as I can after the floor is installed. Pizza box drying rack, that’s what you’re seeing here.

The freshly painted plywood panels were re-installed onto the base of each cabinets with a few pops of the nail gun (no big honkin’ long nails this time, just 1″ finishing brads). The quarter round will be held aside until the flooring itself if installed and grouted.

With all of those steps taken to prep the space for tiling, we’re off! The black strip beneath the cabinets on the right is an airvent, BTW. Still planning to minimize its appearance once the floor is in, it is what it is.

Looking forward to getting started on the floor this weekend or sooner if possible, and especially looking forward to having the kitchen looking all spiffy and clean-clean with a brand new floor!

Girl Scout’s honor, we found a diamond ring beneath the kitchen floor when I removed it this weekend. Before I even get into the demo-fun that ensued in the process, what in the world would you do if you were in our shoes? Track down old homeowners? Or sell it to offset the price of the new floor?

Ooh, sparkles.

I’ll admit it, I’ve been drop-dead nervous about replacing the kitchen floor. The existing laminate’s not old. It’s not in bad condition. And from my thrifty-minded brain to yours, I knew that removing a perfectly good floor to appease my aesthetic senses meant that I was reaching a touchy point on the crazy/stupid/spontaneous scale (not to be confused with the Vicky Mendoza Diagonal). Pete would like me to remind you that we’re also still in the midst of the bathroom renovation, and starting another project wasn’t exactly on the agenda yet.

Brushing off the bathroom trim for another day, I spent a few short hours on Friday morning taking the kitchen floor from looking from this, all light-colored, smooth, and universally desirable:

To this, covered in stacks of laminate and a handsome layer of Armstrong Vapor Lock moisture barrier:

To this, a ragged-out but temporarily functional, overly-mastic’ed to its subfloor, probably asbestos-filled vinyl sheet that has clearly seen better days (but not since 1950):

Clearly, I’ve taken a step backward to go forward, and you can call me whatever you want for making the decision to replace what most would consider pretty faux-wood laminate with vinyl concrete tiles (something I wrote about on Friday), but I still think it’s going to be fab.

If you’re thinking about doing something like this yourself, it should be super, super easy to remove Pergo-like laminate. I started by removing the quarter-round trim that finished off all edges of the room with a pry bar and some gentle lovin’, carefully preserving each piece as I went (and marking them with blue painters tape so that I knew what wall they came from in case I decided to paint and reinstall the same trim later instead of splurge on base shoe (it does run upwards of $1.50/linear foot, not quite as appealing as zero dollars).

Because pergo-style laminate floats on top of the moisture barrier and hooks together with a tongue and groove system, there was no glue to get through. No nails or staples to wrestle with. With the thresholds removed, I lifted the floor boards out one-by-one, exposing the black foamy moisture barrier that rested beneath the laminate and on top of the old, old linoleum.

Because the laminate ran below both the stove and the refrigerator, I wiggled and jiggled these appliances (and the center table island) out of my way as I went.

Each board came out cleanly, without damage, and within a sweet hour, the kitchen was free, and a stack of flooring sat against the wall in the dining room (although clearly, I waited until sunset to snap this picture). That little stack – that’s a-l-l of it, approximately 120 sq. ft., sorted into one 10″ pile. Amazing.

We’re not just taking it to the curb, I should note. What makes me feel better about removing it is that it will go back into society productively:

1. 30 sq. ft. of it will likely be installed in Pete’s parents’ bathroom.
2. 90 sq. ft. will be Craigslisted and sold to the highest bidder, or dropped off at our local Habitat’s ReStore.

With the flooring cleared out I also decided to salvage the moisture barrier. I rolled each piece up like a burrito, partially to keep it neat and orderly, and partly to capture all of the dirt that had accumulated on it throughout the day. It was easier to unfurl each dirty piece on the deck in the breeze than to try and sweep it off or vacuum it in the house. Efficiency, people. I like efficiency. And burritos.

Side note: We still hadn’t found the diamond ring yet at this point in the clean up. If you look straight back to the dishwasher in that above picture, it was sitting on the vinyl just beneath the cabinet overhang, but not out of sight. And true story, even though I swept that room about 3 times over the weekend (observing at the same time how well the grungy floor hid muddy dog footprints), we didn’t actually notice it’s presence until Sunday night. How’s that happen, yo?

With the original flooring exposed, we’ve been in awe. In awe, and also eager to get it covered back up. I have no real reason to believe that this isn’t the flooring that was installed with the house in the 1940′s, but I have a hard time believing that it was once desirable. While it’s in fairly good condition (meaning no holes, tears, shreds), it screams dingy, filthy, and unattractive. In person, the greenish-brownish-gray floor doesn’t compliment the natural hardwoods that extend through the rest of the house, so it’s really hard to imagine what the place used to be like as a new construction model.

Looking forward to next steps this week, I’ll be back soon with an update!

Guess what arrived yesterday?

Hints: Inspired by the bathroom remodel. For the kitchen. Special ordered from The Home Depot. Bundled in four approx. 400-lb boxes that made me feel like my Jeep was doing a wheelie the whole drive home. Sticky. Oh, and rhymes with Lyle.

I might have been exaggerating about the 400-lb. thing, but each package contains 30-sq. ft. of resilient vinyl tiles, and I did get quite a workout holding the box up and as steady as I could while I took these shots myself with the self-timer. Maybe it’s about time that I built another deck. My arms were damn muscular that summer. Don’t drop the whole box, girl.

Side note: Still have that blue tape up on the dining room wall. Clearly, I’ve made no progress in getting some kind of shelving installed since I did my trial last week. Hopefully soon, big decisions take time, especially when it involves gouging into my precious shiplap. Also, haven’t yet unpackaged the yoga mat gifted at Christmas, whatever.

Yesterday’s reveal of the bathroom floor (using these same groutable tiles) was the first that you guys have seen of the tiles in place. We were admittedly skeptical about how well vinyl tiles would work. Both Pete and I are folks that would prefer to use something a little more… hearty. Strong and substantial. Like ceramic. Or porcelain. Or marble. Or flagstone. We’re “real tile” people at heart, but life is-a-changin’. I’m the first to admit that I had preconceived opinions about vinyl based on it’s look and feel and most of those diner-esque 49-cent 12″x12″ black and white tiles that I always see stacked along the back wall of Ollie’s Bargain Outlet, and then again, most times I’ve seen vinyl installed, it’s in older homes or apartments that need some flooring TLC anyways. Not a fair way to judge tiles that a lot (a really lot) of people invest in.

What I’m getting at, vinyl lovers, is that I’m sort of converting to your side of the fence for this home, it’s value, it’s state. No sense in spending $600+ when I could spend $200 and have a better chance of recouping the costs if I ever sell. (Totally not planning on that right now, I’m just always forward-thinkin’.)

When we saw the grouted display at the store and read reviews on how it held up over time, we were willing to give it a shot. And after seeing and feeling how it was in the bathroom, I knew I wanted it for the kitchen too to help the house feel that much more cohesive. We’ve had them installed now for a couple of weeks, and it’s pretty amazing how much of a difference a new floor can can make in helping the room to look finished. Also, it’s more enjoyable than stepping out of the shower onto a splintery plywood subfloor.

For $1.69/sq. ft., I now have enough in house to do the kitchen, so that’s one of the next big things on the to-do list. The bathroom is almost finished, donchaknow, that means I need one more nice indoor improvement project before springtime hits and I’d prefer to be working in the garden.

More to come.