Home is where the heart is. For me home is also where my job is. I am home the majority of the time and I really enjoy decorating and doing projects around the house. With that being said, staying at home also doesn’t provide an income. I have been wanting hard wood floors for a very long time but they just haven’t made it into the budget. We have a few vacations planned and we are working on a backyard living space so with all of that going on my hard wood floors have to wait.
We were hosting a blind wine tasting party the first weekend in December and I woke up one morning and had had enough of looking at my linoleum floors in my kitchen and the bathroom. I HATED them! Ugh no matter how much I washed them they never looked clean. It was clearly run of the mill speck house flooring and I wanted no part of that.
So I headed out to Home Depot and I picked out some laminate tile (sticky tile). I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into but the fact that you just pull the backs off and stick them down was very appealing. I wanted a tiled look so I made sure to buy the tiles that were compatible with grout. I bought spacers for the tiles and I purchased some grout.
I came home and got right to work. I washed my floors and started laying the tiles. The directions on the grout bag said to dump the entire bag of grout into a bucket and add water. HORRIBLE idea!!!!!!! The grout was so hard to mix and it was never wet enough. I should have mixed smaller batches and worked that way. Lesson learned! The tile cut easily. I scored them with a razor blade and snapped them.
It took me two days from start to finish and I am in LOVE with the final product.
The total cost was about $300.00
Here are links to the tile and the grout that I used:
For $300.00 I got rid of the flooring that I hated and until wood floors make it into my budget it’s a great solution without spending a lot of money. The best part was I could do it myself!
Sometimes when you are a housewife you have to compromise when it comes to spending money and this was a great compromise.
Huh – I wonder if it would work well over real tile … I have some ugly and cracked tiles in two of my bathrooms but no real budget for updates. I’m going to need to look into this some more 🙂 Thank you for the idea.
That is a really good question! I think it would work. I would be sure to wash the floor really well and be sure the grout is completely dry. The tiles are really sticky so I would think they would stick. Good luck. If you do decide to do it let me know how you make out!!