Kitchen Floor and Judy's Deck

Our existing kitchen floor when we moved in was covered with 2 and in places 3 layers of carpet, two layers of sheet vinyl, all over a badly damaged tile, wood, and concrete floor.....no I am not kidding. In fact, we had places where there was actually holes in the floor covered by multiple layers of carpet.

So we ripped it all out, we layed 3/4" plywood underlayment, levelled the whole thing as best we could and we are in the process of laying 12" square vinyl composit tile...just like you see in old fashioned houses, government buildings, and schools. The stuff just lasts and is very durable.

It is a huge job and one I have been dreading, the old tiles probably contain asbestos so we decided to encapsulate them and cover them with underlayment rather than deal with taking it all out.

All of this old tile was coverd by layers of carpet and sheet vinyl and in the middle of the kitchen floor where the bay window addition starts the floor was concrete so we had to use Tapcons to secure the underlayment...just more work.

Of course we had to remove everything from the kitchen and dining area and we have tools all over. Luckily we are used to living in a construction zone so it doesnt really bother us....its progress.

The entire house doesnt have a right angle or a level or straight surface and the kitchen floor was no different. Its way better than it was but it will never be new house perfect..but then, thats not what we are interested in.

We used a lot more levelling compound than shows in this picture just to take out some of the low spots or weird transitions. It came out good enough for us.

Getting ready to start laying tile.

Getting your lines correct and making sure your tile covers any joint or transition by at least 4 inches is critical, we are just getting started here. We layed out the grid in pencil and when the glue sets up for you to start laying tile you can see the lines through the glue. Works well.

I find laying the glue the most tedious part.

First tile laying day complete and it looks a lot better. Still some dips and bumps but we are happy with it.

It looks so clean.

And since we were bored we decided to lay a concrete patio at Judy's place since she didnt have a back deck. We went concrete due to cost and the fact that we like the concrete patio we installed for our back patio so much.

The forms are in, 10"x16" of patio goodness.

The fill was pulled from our dry pond since we havent layed the clay in it yet and wanted it a bit deeper anyway.

Ready for the concrete pour on Thursday.

Judy likes it and the next project will be a covered front porch for her...but first we finish our kitchen floor.