Flooring: Porcelain Tiles & Refinishing Wood

This bright Christmas Palm lends some seasonal color outside our Florida renovation.

Our family has been tackling some mighty floor projects.  As the proverb says: many hands make light work.  My husband and I were thankful to have our three children assist with improving the floors of our beachside renovation.

We ordered our tiles from a local specialty store, where many varieties are sourced from Italy and shipped to the US. As I placed our order, I was informed that the tiles were to be shipped from Europe and would take several weeks to arrive. I called several times, and left messages, but my calls were not returned. 

When the phone call finally came in, I expected a delivery date to be set. Instead, we had word that someone moving our tiles from the warehouse dropped the entire pallet. The tile store announced to me that the variety we ordered was being discontinued. Oh no! They scrambled about, looking for another source for the tiles we paid for. Finally, we had news that a supplier had a pallet of tiles down in Miami and would be driving them up to us. Whew! That said, we received the new pallet of tiles, and had to ensure the underlayment was prepared for installation.

This is where we started:

A flooring specialist was lined up for a week of work. His proposed plan was to remove sub flooring in the kitchen, and then he was planning on pouring concrete to fill the kitchen about 3 inches deep. And then he would lay tiles on top. 

It didn’t work out that way; he never showed up. Instead, in an environment where we have had a number of contractors stand us up, and especially because we plan on living in this house while “forcing equity,” we chose to do the work ourselves.

We rented a hammer jack and removed the tiles and concrete underneath. A rented skip (or dumpster) sat outside, and while my husband broke up the concrete, the kids and I carried a very-little-but-still-heavy bucket of concrete chunks out to the skip. When all of the concrete was taken out of the kitchen, we built the sub-floor back up.

This involved screwing down plywood sheets directly to the wide spaced planks we have at the bottom of our kitchen. This old frame house does not have a poured concrete foundation, but is raised above the ground with pier and beam construction. We sprayed Termidor along the framework of the kitchen so that we started out with a termite barrier. Along the way, we used termite resistant materials, such as pressure treated wood.

My husband and I got the kids in for a teachable moment. We showed them how to use the power screwdriver to secure the plywood.  

We installed Hardie cement backer board over that, and taped the seams between joints, and then sealed them. The tiles we chose are in a variety of sizes, which are laid in a pattern called Versailles. This is a beachy location, and the color of the tiles reflects the sandy location.

I measured and cut the tiles with a tile saw and showed my kids how to back-butter the tiles, and set them with spacers.Tile floor done.  Wood floor refinish...Go!

Working with a large rented sander, and wearing a mask for safety, we took turns sanding the hardwood floors.This house was built in the sixties and the floors appeared to have well-seasoned polyurethane. Whatever the surface was, it gooed up the sandpaper and stuck to it in clumps. The sander has a vacuum that takes up much of the dust, but the particles were thick in the air.When the large areas were done, we used a smaller handheld sander. This allowed us to get near to the fireplace and baseboards without causing damage.  When we were done with this task, we vacuumed again, and mopped the floors with mineral spirits.  These steps removed the dust prior to finishing.  I utilized a wide paintbrush to cover the floors with Tung Oil.  We let this season before adding another coat.