Paying the price early

I have started tiling the kitchen floor! YES! The finish-work has begun on project 1837. Come see.

This day is long in coming and there has been much involved in just getting to this point: decisions made on saving this, trashing that, reworking these, building this area up new. The kitchen floor is a concrete slab saved from a 1970's addition and upon initial inspection, there was nothing wrong with it. But when you look at it with an eye for tiling, it has some dips, some humps as much as a half inch over a foot or so. That is completely unacceptable and as my choice for flooring are twenty inch tiles, the humps and dips translate into horrible misalignment.

At this point in construction you really only have one choice. I researched and found a floor leveler concrete-like product that feathers at the edges and finds it's own level: doesn't need to be spread to a final flatness. Once you crawl around with a straight edge and mark out the hollows for filling, you simply mix and pour. But then there is the tar-like adhesive left over from the 1970's linoleum tile to strip. Oh, and the concrete lip at the slab edges to grind down. Heck, everywhere you look there are things to address before you can tile. They pop up like dandelions in an otherwise clear lawn.

Though some of these detailed items could be ignored, the price to pay is huge when you reach the final step of finishing. In this case my floor would be littered with high ridges, toe/foot snagging edges, and look like crap. Try setting cabinets on an uneven floor too: pure hell. The final product always ends up poor. An eye for details can see this readily apparent in many remodel projects and 'flipped' houses.

And that is not me. So, come on by, scan across the kitchen floor, and give me a silent compliment by not noticing anything but maybe the choice of tile. I will know. Have a great weekend.