Tiling a Floor

Have you ever tried tiling a floor? well, neither had I until a few days ago. I did not tile it by myself, but I did a decent part of it. I worked with vinyl tile, which I understand to be easier than the classic stuff, but it's still the same general concept. We even grouted.

The first and hardest part of tiling a floor is the first tile. Always. Measure twice, cut once. Place once. Actually, measure as many times as you can sanely stand, and then mark and measure some more. I cannot stress enough the importance of this first tile. Tips: Don't start in the corner, since your walls, almost definitely, will NOT be square, which means a tile in the corner will make the whole room look funny. (unless, of course, you want it to look funny...)

Next, work on the whole inner portion first, then the outer edge. Look at pictures if you need some (I don't have any like that, because our pattern was done funny).

And now picture time. Sorry for the delay, but I didn't consider this for my blog until I was halfway in.

 This is where you come into the picture. This is for a half bath, so this is pretty much all there is to see at the moment. You see that toilet tile? yeah. I just put that in. I had pictures of my dremeling the hole, but pictures are being buggy, so those died.

 As you may or may not be able to see, the hole isn't perfect, but I've got at least one inch, really closer to two, on every side that the toilet will cover, so I'm good. And, actually, I think I did a pretty awesome job on this. However, you know why? because I (say it with me now) Measured TWICE, cut ONCE!

 This is the line I lined it up with.. once again with the measuring. As you can see up above, we did a funny pattern, not the classic squares. This will cover up any MINOR imperfections, but if you mess up anything major, it will be just as obvious and twice as hard to fix.

Now this is where perfection comes in, at leas for me. see those little white things at the edge of the tile? Those are 1/8" spacers. Like the professionals use on normal tile. Like I mentioned before, we are grouting this.

 By using spacers, we added a lot more time, but we also added infinitely more quality- people will walk in and go, 'Oh, look. It's tile', not 'Oh, look, they used the cheap ugly Home Depot vinyl'. Not that they would consciously think that, but it does leave an impression.

 Again with the care you must take in setting down the tile with spacers.

 When using them, make sure the spacers are in correctly (perpendicular to the tile, not sideways).

When cutting tile, measure a bunch of times, draw lines, and hold a straight-edge to the tile while you cut to avoid mistakes. This is critical. Also, do not cut unless you absolutely have to.

 This is the beginnings of measuring, before drawing a line. You should do this.

 Also, remember to cut on a board ABOVE or TO THE SIDE of you vinyl floor- your knife will slip and cut something, so you should ruin a board, not you floor that you spent so long putting down.

 This is what the end piece should look like. We have 3/4" trim that will go around the edges of the room, but make sure you know how big your margin of error is before you go cutting things up.

 I'm not sure you can see very well, but this tile has arrows on it. While tiling, make sure all of the tiles have the arrows pointing the same direction. Trust me on this one, they are there for a reason, and your floor will be much improved if you do so.

 Tadaa! the last corner piece in.

 We had to shave some of the edge off because someone... don't ask me who... measured incorrectly...

 You can see where the shaving off had to be done.

But it turned out really nicely! (I think)

 Next, you need to roll it. Follow the instructions here. It might look stuck down, but paying $10-$15 to rent a roller for the floor is definitely worth not having the floor peel up in a year or two.

 Pounding difficult areas like around a toilet hole with a non-marking (WHITE) mallet like this one is also a good idea. The place we rented the roller from threw this one into our rent for free just for that area.

 This would be that (100 lb) roller I mentioned before. Don't just roll it; lean on it to add extra weight. Also, make sure you go over the whole floor multiple times, especially where you wont be walking on it frequently. (Read: against the walls)

 This is the grout we used. Make sure you get stuff that says it's vinyl-friendly, because not all are (in fact, most are not)

 Remember to use sponges. I know that normally spnges might not be your tool of choice, especially not sponges this big, but use it anyway.

 You want to pile that grout in really thickly; if you've ever seen a professional, do it like they do. Otherwise, follow the instructions. Even better, do both simultaneously (that's what we did).

 It should look like this. Then, you scrape off the excess until it's really thin (no pics of this, as my hands got really dirty- yours should too, or you're doing it wrong). Then, you sponge it off. Remember to follow the instructions.

 It should look something like this.

If you have doors in your room, remember to grout behind them before doing the rest of the room to save yourself a lot of pain.

 Work in chunks- don't try to do the whole room at once.

 This is the final product!

Except for some minor cleaning being take care of my my beautiful sister here!

(In case you are wondering, I WILL be posting pictures of the bathroom once it is all put back together. Who knows, maybe I'll make a blog post of how to put trim up!)

Balance Board

 This, my friends, is a balance board. It's kind of addicting once you get the hang of it, and is really quite easy to make if you don't care about aesthetics.

 Essientially, you get a board, paint it, and put it on top of a tube. However, tubes are harder to come by than you might think- I actually had to buy one. One foot of 4" PVC pipe was about $4. the board was just sitting in my garage, so no cost there, same with paint.

The trick, then, is the final ingredient: Grip Tape. This stuff is generally used by skateboarders, and so can be found at any skate shop. However, I got mine at Dick's Sporting Goods. They sell the stuff in sheets (looks like it's meant to cover one whole skateboard, but I cut it in strips).
Normally, one sheet costs around $6, but I got it on sale for 93 cents. Great deal, right?
Update: It would appear that the reason I got it so cheap is because they discontinued the product (at least at my local Dick's)

Now, you might ask why you need it. The answer is, you don't. Need it, I mean. However, you definitely want it. Grip tape will help your shoes not slide around on the board, which can be a big safety hazard, and you also want it around the pipe/tube to make sure the board doesn't slide on that. Trust me, I tested this extensively, and you really want it.

And this is my little brother enjoying himself on the board. He kept trying tricks with it.. just make sure whoever you give this to knows that if you stand on it in the same direction as the pipe, not perpendicular, the board will shoot across the room and hurt something or someone. (he is in the proper position right now. If he were to turn 90 degrees, that's the wrong way).

Root Beer

Have you ever made your own root beer? Probably not. But you should. It's insanely fun. And relatively cheap. Not that it's cheaper than bottled root beer, but it's infinitely more fun!

So.. here goes. Start the pictures!

 This is what happens once you start to add dry ice... and mostly I have pictures of dry ice bubbling and looking awesome, so maybe I should explain a bit first what's going on, eh?

 Here is the best picture I have of the bottle of flavoring that we used. We have about 10  ottles of this stuff- it's McCormick's Root Beer Flavoring. I don't know if they sell it any more, since this stuff is at least 15 years old. It's still good, though, never fear!

 So, the instructions show how to make 5 gallons of root beer out of the whole bottle, and then carbonate it via yeast fermentation.. which did NOT appeal to us non-alcoholic people... so we came up with another idea. Root Beer Kool-Aid. basically, this meant we drank uncarbonated root beer. Yummy, but missing that fizz.

 It just so happened that my sister wanted to make an Ice Cream Cake for a church activity a while back, and she bought quite a bit of dry ice to transport it so it wouldn't melt. Of course, that created a whole host of problems (*cough* frozen hard as a brick *cough*), but regardless... And no, this isn't the ice cream cake. This is the second one she made.. and transported with a cooler full of ice, NOT dry ice.

 However, we did make good use of that dry ice. We long ago calculated that even with our big family, 5 gallons of root beer was more than we could drink in a night, so we figured out how to make only a gallon at a time. So, when we got home, we made ourselves a batch of koolaid and dumped that dry ice in!

 Not all of it, of course.. but enough to make quite a bit of fizz!

 This is what it looked like underneath all of that fizz.. so if anyone ever says boiling hot, now you can make some witty comment about having seen something boiling cold before!

 Basically, I just took a bunch of pictures of it steaming cold. But I'm serious, this stuff is awesome.

Imagine this in a cauldron at Halloween! (Maybe dyed green..)

Anyway, that's my two cents for the day. Enjoy!

DISCLAIMER/WARNING:
Do NOT try drinking this stuff until it's stopped steaming.. or.. well.. be careful if you do.. not that I tried it..