For the Love of Herringbone

Last Thursday marked the start of the flooring reno at our little Lottery House. Here’s a quick reminder of what we started with.

The team from About Flooring swept in on Thursday morning and demolished the existing tile floor in less than 4 hours – a task that, by my calculation, would have taken me 120 hours to accomplish. Phew.

With the perpetually-dirty-looking white tile in the dumpster, the next task was installing the beautiful, deep gray porcelain tiles from Marazzi. After two days of painstaking tile laying, here’s what the kitchen was looking like.

I can say with certainty that we could NEVER have accomplished this on our own – at least not without a few fights, some tears on my part, and weeks of living in a mess.

The next step was grouting the floor with a plain, white grout, for a high-contrast finish that highlights the gorgeous, graphic pattern. I was definitely expecting the floors to look better post-grouting, but I wasn’t prepared for how much of a difference it made. I am IN LOVE!

The final part of perfecting the floors will be applying a sealer to all those grout lines, which is sure to be a time-consuming task. But it’s the only way to give these lovely white grout lines a chance at keeping their lily-white color.

In the meantime, we’ve also been working on the fireplace.  After the installers from About Flooring laid the hearth with 12 x 12 carrera marble tiles, we were ready to add some beefed-up trim around the fireplace.

The old trim was a sad story – like a pair of chicken legs on Arnold’s upper body.

For now, the new trim is waiting for a little priming and installation of the tiles in the vertical space. Once everything’s installed and grouted, we’ll jazz up the fireplace with a little fancy trim and a crisp coat of white paint.

The other task Tony and I are busily working on is painting trim – 216 linear feet of trim, to be precise. In lieu of taping and painting once the trim is in place, we’re planning to have it all ready to roll post-wood installation. That will protect our new floors, and probably save a small fortune in painter’s tape. I hope.

We’re also on tap to remove all the existing trim from the living room, dining room, and front hallway next week – because we’re just over a week away from the next phase of flooring. That’s right, the grungy old carpet is getting the boot on the 22nd! And I, for one, cannot wait.

Are you a herringbone fan? What’s your favorite look for flooring?