We had a little surprise back in February. Instead of having the flu, it turns out I had a fetus. Now at 30-1/2 weeks (out of 40ish weeks total), we are feverishly trying to finish all the projects around the house that we kept saying, “Hey, we need to do ______.”
Since June we’ve repainted most of the house, refinished half the floors, and countless little things that we’d put off. This weekend, my dear mother-in-law came up from Tennessee to help us with some projects. We thought it would be a good weekend to wash and reglaze the windows, something we should have done when we moved into the house last year. But she had another thought.
For months we’ve had floor tile for our family room sitting in the corner, waiting to be installed. We were putting installation off because it was something that could be done after little JoJo Skywalker (the fetus’ womb name, used alternately with Little Jeter) makes his appearance sometime in October; that is not the case with some of the other, more messy or comprehensive tasks on our list.
But who argues with their mother or mother-in-law?! You want to help us lay tile, let’s get to it!!
The family room is an addition to the house. Once upon a time in the 50s, the room was a carport. Sometime in the 70s (a guess based on the color of the original tile), a previous owner enclosed and finished the carport to create a family room. The people from whom we purchased the house had carpeted over the tile, but the carpet was NASTY, and we are morally opposed to carpet. It was decided that the family room would be my dear husband’s domain, so it was painted accordingly…orange and white for the University of Tennessee Volunteers. Ergo, the tile is orange and white checkerboard, just like the endzone at Neyland Stadium.
So the day began with a trip to Krispy Kreme, followed by an emptying and cleaning of said room. Once the floor was prepped, we measured off the midpoint of each direction and snapped a chalkline, my new toy. I love chalkline. I used to play with my dad’s chalkline and now I have my very own with which to do home improvement projects. Ahhh. But I digress.
Once we figured out what we were doing with the adhesive and tile, DH and MIL got to work. Here our spirits are still pretty high because progress is being made, we’re still on a sugar high from the doughnuts, and it’s early in the day.
After the center point was laid in each direction, a brief break was taken to celebrate the project, so I took a little turn on the catwalk.
As the day waned, the excitement changed to tedium to exhaustion. One of our beagles kept watch to make sure stayed on task.
When we just about couldn’t take it anymore…actually, we past that point but kept plugging away…the final tile was finally laid and we all celebrated by passing out from exhaustion.
