BEHOLD! The first tile is laid.

Tiling has commenced. We began with the kitchen.

We haven't actually made it past the kitchen yet... but the kitchen has been started!!

We all watched in excitement as Dad plopped thin-set on the floor, scraped it into obedience, and dropped tile on it.

The first square!!!  These tiles are *huge*.... 18inches, so be exact. And they are beautiful.

And yes, Dad and his help did mark out the floor first to make sure that the tiles would be lined up in the places we want them to be. So starting in the middle of the floor is perfectly reasonable.

Dad is now going to explain how to tile.

Plop piles of poo... ah, mud (aka thin-set) on the spot you want to affix tile to.

Smooth it out.

Scrape it into lines (this makes sure it's not too thick)

Place tile against existing tiles, or thereabouts, and drop the back end. Then you get to squish it into the thin-set, and wiggle it into a straight line with either your marked guidelines, or the other tiles around it. Make sure you leave space for grout!

Repeat as necessary until area is covered with tile.

VOILA!!

Little bits, and baking.

We are seeing progress!! This wall in the kitchen is now all wired properly, sealed properly, and covered back up with drywall. Looks like a real wall again!

The stair banister has had the glass panels removed (yay!) and been stripped of stain and sanded down so we can start over with finishing.

The same has happened to the woodwork around the fireplace.

Mom and I agree that we like it better without the glossy old lacquer...

The lino on the basement floor is gone!!

There was only that one rectangle of it, thankfully, or our help may have told us to go find some one else to scrape it up. Thank you!!

A little sneak peek at what the upstairs floors are going to look like - the hardwood will be in the living room, the tile will be in the kitchen and dining areas.  It looks really good side by side. ^_^

And then there is this. Anyone have any guesses? 

It's the oven instructions. That the people who will be fitting the gasline and such needed to be able to read to make sure they get the right parts and put everything where it needs to go.

We couldn't find this for a long time.

Wanna know why??

It's in the oven. 

And it's upside down.

>_<

It is also so small that they had to take pictures of it so they could zoom in to read what was written!

Yeesh.

We are enjoying living in the condo in the meantime. It is not under construction, and that's a major bonus. ^_^

So tonight, we watched Wall-E, and Mom made bread. 

YUMMMMMMM!

And now, to put it back together again

We have begun to construct! Deconstruction phase has been completed. ^_^

Before we started to piece the house together, we did take the time to further dismantle the fireplace (harhar)

See?? Less mantle! More dis!!

Then, Dad got to work upstairs, putting in subflooring where the tile is to be laid, and framing in the back of the island so there's a wall for those cabinets to be attached to.

Yay!!

Little by Little

We keep finding little bits and pieces that got missed the first big thrust of tear-down.

The baseboard round the stairwell, or the front hall closet doors (how did we miss those?). A few rogue staples still sticking up out of the subflooring...

But one big thing that we finally got around to yesterday was peeling off the tile surround from the fireplace!  Gone, it is. In the trash, it has been thrown.  Injured are my hands.... >_<
Dang tile.
Dang smoothedge around the tile.

At any rate, this is what it looks like now. ^_^

We also are re-doing a bunch of the electrical for the kitchen (and by "we" I mean "Dad"), and in some places you can see into the kitchen from the basement...

This is where the cold air return used to go up into that wall. You know, the one that isn't there anymore... *heh*

Exciting stuff so far this week:  We got the ceilings painted! They are now a fresh lovely white, and don't look dirty. There is also no longer that adorably frustrating pink strip around the edges of the living room ceiling. *ahem*

(it's hard to tell, but the walls are light pink... just trust me on this one)

All of our flooring materials came!!  The wonderfully nice delivery guy even got it all into the garage for me. ^_^

Lots and lots of tile.

And a goodly amount of hardwood. ^_^

End of the first week of destruction!

Almost filled the 3rd dumpster, but all the carpets are out of the house!

 

 

This is smooth edge. They named it for what it *does*, not what it *is*.  Those little nails are nasty. >_<

 

Everywhere we want to put down tile or hardwood, we had to pull this up.

That includes the staircase.

 

And whoever put the stuff down on the floors has earned my everlasting dislike for putting it down so blasted securely.

So many extra nails.

O_o

 

 

I also got to pull up all the staples that had been used to keep the underlay attached to the floor. They get into some tricky corners on the stairs!

 

 

We turned our front lawn into a free-for-all. There were light fixtures and few more things added to this pile, and some very lovely people who happened to drive by came and took most of this away. We hope it's going to a good home. ^_^

 

Mom has chosen all the colours! She wrote them up on the walls so we know what is going where.

Dad has turned the stripped down living room into his work space - the old kitchen cabinets are marvelous as a table surround for his table saw.

 

And the kitchen is looking more and more like we mean business! Dad had to do a bunch of rewiring.

 

We had to really pull apart the main floor bathroom too. It looks much larger without any walls.... 

 

Next week: on to construction!! We should be done taking out pretty much everything that needs to be ripped apart. Now we can start putting new things in.

 

Yay!

 

 

Demolition Day 3.

The tub! Which survived the night on the lawn. Maybe someone will come and snag it?? It's free!

Today they took out walls in the basement. And those electrical wires hanging from the ceiling are not live... Dad checked. ^_~

Day 2 of Renovations!

We are on our 2nd dumpster, but it's only half full, so you can't see anything special. You don't get a picture....

The sledgehammer wasn't actually *supposed* to go through that spot... but we needed to fix that wall anyway...

Shower is GONE!!

Another shower is gone!!

And so is the big tub!

We also took down the tile surround here, and the blinds and trim from the windows.

This is dark.. because we took down all the light fixtures. In this light, I pulled all the little carpet staples out of the plywood subflooring.....

And yes, the wall that used to close in the kitchen is GONZO!!  heh.  As are the rest of the cabinets. And the sink.

I wanted to get a picture of the jet tub sitting out on the front lawn, but it really was too dark to see it properly. If it's still there tomorrow, maybe I sneak a click of it. ^_^