Updating a House Without Getting Floored

When our rental house became vacant last fall, my husband and I knew that it needed some renovation. Little did we know how that “some” would turn into “major.”

There was no question about the beat-up, nondescript linoleum in the 1940s-style kitchen. The only question was what to replace it with. Should we opt for the same one-roll type of linoleum, but with a modern pattern? What about the newer linoleum squares? Didn’t some of them look and feel like tile? And then we wondered about real ceramic tile.

“Experts” were called in from the local tradesmen in the paper. A man from Boston who shouted instead of talked, claimed that he knew the business inside and out. We had only one choice in his opinion: one-roll type linoleum. “Water can’t penetrate,” he said.

Should the old linoleum be removed, we asked. “Only an idiot would do such a thing!” he shouted.

Next came Jim, who did only linoleum squares. “Why, I’d have to charge you a lot more money for the one-roll kind,” he twanged in a Midwestern accent. Besides, didn’t we know that if a part of our linoleum became damaged, all we had to do was pop out a square and replace it? How about the old linoleum? Put the squares right on top was his response. “You couldn’t ask for a smoother, more even surface.”

A tile man showed us wonderful pictures from other projects. Only thing wrong was his price--hundreds more than the linoleum people. Still, tile’s cool beauty and durability tempted us mightily. But what about the old linoleum? “Nothing to it,” he said. “Just pour concrete over it.”

Discussions with relatives revealed that one brother had all the tile equipment from his work that we would ever need. Great, but what do we do with it? Is there such a thing as tile school? Not quite. The library helped a little but did not instill in us an overwhelming amount of confidence.

We went to our neighborhood home fix-it-yourself store to do some tile pricing. Talking with one of the workers, we discovered they had tile demonstrations on Saturday mornings. Wonderful!

Saturday morning found us sitting on bleacher-style seats in the front of the store. With the help of our teacher/salesperson we learned how to mix the mortar, set in the tile and apply spacers. Next we smeared in the grout in a diagonal fashion, cleaning up the excess with cheesecloth.

Enthusiastically we bought simple beige tile for the bathroom, a much smaller space conducive to our tile education.

We asked about the old linoleum and were warned: “You must remove it and then apply a sealer to the subfloor. If you don’t, you’ll experience major problems with your tile.”

That blush of confidence left us in a hurry as we wondered what we had gotten ourselves into. But another brother offered to show us the basics of tile laying.

Ripping out the linoleum was tedious. The old adhesive clung tenaciously, and we literally scraped and scraped it off, our knees banged up against the floor.

Because of our schedules, it took us two weekends to finish the bathroom. I didn’t lay any tile; however, I was the go-for slave for everything you could imagine.

“Go get a clean cloth,” or fetch a range of items including coffee, tea, beer, aspirin, pastrami sandwiches, Band-aids, cigarettes, toilet paper and gloves. And the requests that I absolutely hated: “Go to the home warehouse store and pick up this and that and these and those.”

Now you would think that the story ends here with the completion of the bathroom, and that the couple is enormously pleased with their first venture into the world of tiling. But for us it was just the beginning.

“That wasn’t so bad,” my husband said. “Maybe we should tile the kitchen and the sun room, too.” I replied that maybe professionals should complete the work.

The good bartender that he is, my husband had been talking with his customers about the ins and outs of tile. One fellow told him, “For the best deals, you gotta go to Mexico, to Tijuana.” An even better barterer than a bartender, he thought aloud, “Why not? I can go and visit my cousins in San Diego and take a look at what tiles they have in Tijuana.”

When the barterer returned, the poor pickup looked like a low-rider vehicle, laden down with 245 12-by-12 tiles, bought for just $70 in Tecate, which had an even better selection than Tijuana.

By now the brother had wisely departed, so we hired one of my adult school students--I teach English--to help. This was a big big mistake. My student, a sweetheart in the classroom, was just as sweet in the workplace but ever so slow. And we were we paying by the hour!

To aggravate matters, the tile, being handmade, possessed natural irregularities that made precision laying impossible. Also, they were slightly concave, so the back of each had to be specially buttered with mortar to fill in the gap. Finally, after a week--my husband works two jobs--the kitchen was laid.

I came home from school one day to see a black grout being applied to the tiles. What happened to the charcoal gray, I asked. Because we had unglazed tiles--major mistake--the grout would not come off. We had to wipe and wipe and wipe with water over and over again and still found remnants of grout. And who knows what might have happened if we had not applied a sealer to the tiles as the home warehouse person had advised us.

Next, armed with compatible nutmeg brown grout, we tried again. Applying it was a breeze but the cleanup of the tiles took hours, extending the grouting for days.

The sun room went a little smoother from sheer experience, but patience was tried when tiles had to be cut to accommodate the two stairs. Just cutting them correctly took a day. Again the grout took forever, and by now we were exhuasted mentally and physically. Still we plodded on and finally the grout was finished and ready to be sealed.

Meanwhile, the tile had become quite dingy from the grout so we (the student had since left for his vacation south of the border) applied three coats of terra-cotta stain. After that, a special shine hardener was rubbed on, all because of the unglazed tiles.

The renovation did not end with the tile. Next came new molding and paint to cover up the splotches where the grout had stained the walls. Painting just little areas turned into an entire wall, and that catapulted into a complete indoor paint job.

The painting led to discovery of window sashes that needed to be replaced and the knowledge that the house needed an exterior paint job.

We didn’t save a bundle of money, but we gained tremendous headaches, intense physical pains and the privilege of seeing each other act as crazy stressed-out fools. But most important, the tile came out pretty decent for novice layers. And would-be renters who came to inspect the house thought so too.