Day 136

It's been an insane 2 weeks around here. My mom left this morning to go back to New Mexico after participating in a marathon tiling session. We completed the two original bedrooms and about 80% of the living room. I need to finish tiling, clean all the tile, grout all the tile, and seal all the grout. And then I'm done with tile. But for now I think I'm going to take a nap and sleep for about two days.

We started by sorting the tiles into four main color groups--dark solids, dark mottled, light mottled, and striped--to ensure an even distribution of colors.



We're using the brick pattern in the main area of the house (living room, entry way, and kitchen) mostly because I really like it but also because it will help camoflauge very significant problems that we've encountered in dealing with four different cement slabs from all the previous additions to the house.



We started at the front door, leaving room to step to the side of the tiles. Then we expanded out as far as we could while still leaving a walkway.

The tile can't be walked on for at least 12 hours after it is set. We only have one functional bathroom right now, so we had to leave out one tile and build a bridge so that we could still access the bathroom.



I performed a little balance beam routine on one trip across the bridge. It was so sad that the husband gave me a score of 1.5. I demand a recount.



Yesterday we made it to the back of the living room except for a thin walkway down the side so that my mom could still get to her bedroom. Today I'll clean the tile, and every night this week the husband and I will work on filling in the empty spaces so that we're ready to grout everything soon.



As usual, the supervisor spent most of her time sleeping on the job.



The other day I mentioned how happy I am to finally have real floors. It means I get to drag my Afghan carpets out of their plastic bins and mothballs. Here's a sneak peak at one of my favorite kilims.