This post is from the past and a day late, but I still wanted to post it. September 14, 2003

After living in this house for several years, we noticed that the bathroom floor had developed a crack. The white linoleum itself cracked and the floor had a discolored tint around the toilet area. I kept it well hidden with the rug that wraps around the bottom of the toilet, but recently it seemed that the crack was getting longer. In fact, it was so long that the rug no longer covered it all. Here is what it looked like:

So, with our additional tax return we decided to finally do something about the floor. We had a man come over and pull up the linoleum and the toilet. The toilet had wobbled forever so it really didn’t surprise me that we had the discolored linoleum. He patched the crack and left the rest up to us.

We went to Lowe’s and fell in love with this beautiful multicolored slate tile. I knew that it would be perfect for our bathroom. Kevin read on the Internet how to install the tile because we had never done anything like this in our lives. We also watched an episode of Weekend Warriors on HGTV where they installed their own tile in the kitchen. The cutting process was a little different just because it was slate and not ceramic, so we bought a wet saw and everything went very smoothly.

Kevin laid the tiles one weekend and then the next weekend we grouted. I helped with this process. No one had mentioned how hard the grouting would be. It was a big job and it took forever to wipe the excess off. I thought we would never finish that part.

Finally, yesterday morning Kevin put the sealer on the floor. He painted two coats so the water will bead up when it gets wet. Today, we put the trim back around the baseboards and Kevin installed the new toilet. It is a beautiful sight to behold.

It normally wouldn’t have taken anyone three weeks to finish this project. It took us this long because this is our only full bathroom and we had to be able to take showers; otherwise, it would have been done within a week. It was well worth it though.