Our House

The floor! This part was the most frustrating, just because of how patient we had to be with every single piece in order to not drew up the final result.

Step one was to put down a solid floor for the tile to go on top of. We went with cement board, which we set down with mortar and hundreds of screws. The board is really, really easy to fit - cutting involves just scoring one side with a utility knife and then snapping it. Have a battery charger and a spare battery for your drill handy, though - we went through three batteries putting down all the screws. But the floor is solid!

Once the mortar had set, we started laying out the tile on the floor to make sure we evenly spaced it out. We started in the middle, and made a cross on the floor with it.

We used little tile spacers to keep the same distance between the tiles - highly recommended! We also went with a porcelain tile - it was a little more expensive than the ceramic we liked, however porcelain tile is supposedly more resilient in cold weather and less porous. And it gets cold and snowy in Minnesota!

We started in one corner, putting down mortar and setting down tiles on top of it:

We had to measure and cut tiles for some of the edges - a borrowed wet tile saw made that a breeze. Honestly, it could not have been easier to use:

Once the mortar had set, we started applying the grout:

This was a pretty labor-intensive step, if only because since we’re new to this, we left too much grout on the tiles and had to continuously wipe them off and wipe off haze. The lesson here is, never slack on grout cleanup!

Finally, once the grout had finished setting, we put down a few coats of sealer over the grout and tile:

And we’re done for now! It’s gotten too cold in Minnesota to really move forward on this project until spring. When the weather warms up, we’ll put up tile as a border around the wall base, and finish setting a few pieces of tile that we didn’t get to. But for now, with a few carpets on it, we’ve got a gorgeous entryway!