Another Small Home Improvement - Our New Living Room Entry

Whooo hooooo!  The living room now has a tile entryway in front of the door.  A perfect place for wet shoes to land when coming indoors.  I am so excited I can hardly stand myself.  Once again a long awaited project has been completed and I'm so very happy about it.  What do you think?

This is the design we chose

The scrap pile with two extra pieces I decided I could part with after 20 years

It worked out really well that I happen to have a lot of tile leftover from when I tiled our kitchen, main entryway, laundry room, downstairs bath and our dining room.  It was a closeout tile and it was take the whole lot at a substantially discounted price or none of it, so I took it all.

All measured and ready to cut

At Home Depot I picked up a piece of Hardibacker (hate working with this by the way) as what I originally wanted to use they no longer sell and no one in town had it either.  Believe me, we checked.  I got it cut to size and of course it broke, but we carried on.

Preparing to put down the underlayment

Ready for tile

By the time I had it glued down to the floor and secured with roofing nails (screws didn't work as they stuck up too high and wouldn't countersink) we were ready get to tiling!

Sanding the cut edges

Looking good!

I had already laid it out on the floor complete with spacers so I knew exactly what it would look like and all of the measurements.  I also took a picture so I'd know how to put it all back together.  All the cut pieces fit right back in the box too for storage until we were ready to set them.  I used exactly one box of tiles for this project and we had minimal waste all things considered.  The more intricate your design the more waste you will usually have, plus you have to factor in breakage, which happens.  Surprisingly only one tile chipped, but we were able to still salvage half of it.

After spreading on the tile adhesive with a notched trowel it was time to get setting.  I used spacers saved from the previous tile jobs to make sure everything lined up perfectly and then once were done there was nothing else to do but clean up and wait for it to dry overnight.  We removed the spacers later that day which was pretty easy.

Ready to get grouting!

The following day after work I was excited to get home and mix up the grout to finish this project.  I happened to have some leftover grout in the garage as well so I didn't need to buy any new stuff.  Yay!

Mmmmmm.

I mixed it up to the right consistency, smeared it on with a cheapie grout float I picked up at Home Depot and then wiped it down with an old kitchen sponge.  It didn't take much time, but it sure looked good when I was done.  Now all we had left to do was let it dry for 24 hours and it would be good to walk on.

Yep!  This mama's still got it!  😎

It has been awhile since I'd set any tile, but it came right back to me once I got started.  Even the challenge of working with the Hardibacker didn't slow me down.  I just persevered and got it done.  My girls were a great help.  My youngest sanded all of the cut edges for me and my oldest handed me the pieces as I set them.  They both helped in the designing of the entry way too.  This was a super fun project for us!