Several weeks ago, we did not have a mudroom.
The room that is now our mudroom was a galley laundry room. It attracted mud, but it was not a mudroom. We moved the laundry room upstairs in an oversized closet and, by jove, it made space for "Le Room de Mud." (Doesn't that sound lovelier in french?)
Now color me crazy, but when the winter-esque months outnumber the summerish ones in your state, there should be a mudroom built into your house. There just should.
But that's history. Here is our "before" mudroom floor installation:
And here is baby girl getting all covetous about tools. *So proud.*
Before installing the floor, the hubs took out the quarter round at the base of the moulding. When he's done tiling, he'll reinstall it. He looks a tad too happy for the chore ahead of him-- he has to use some gentleness to keep the quarter round moulding from breaking. We have to reuse it, after all.
He then drilled some backerboard onto the vinyl. We didn't rip the vinyl up.
After that, the hubs made a plan for how the tiles would look on the floor. This helped him from having awkward cuts in tile around tough corners. (Isn't he smart?)
We decided on a rough slate for the flooring because it was budget friendly and good for getting dirty. Slate, being a natural stone, has variances in color. Dan made sure he mixed up the colors so it would have a cohesive look.
He worked in the garage. I have no idea how he endured the cold. But he's from Iowa.
(Mixing mortar and giving me that "Are you finished?" look.)
It took two days to lay the tile. The bulk of the work was prep work, he tells me. Those white things are cross-shaped spacers. They help keep an even distance between tiles.
Pinch me. The mudroom is actually coming to be...
On day three, Dan put took the spacers out from between the tiles and applied grout.
Next, we'll apply a sealer for the grout and reinstall the moulding.
Baby Eve did a little jig on the new floor. This kid loves to dance.
This job took us about 3 days. The actual prep work and laying of tile took roughly 10 hours. There is a necessity to leave time for mortar and grout to set for 24 hours each. Because of the large time commitment, we scheduled a weekend which included a holiday.
We used our own labor, so the cost was purely supplies. We spent roughly $200, the bulk of which was the cost of slate. We were thrilled that Home De*pot sells this bulk slate for about $1.60 a square foot. Bargain!
This project was definitely not "Child Friendly". In fact, a few days after we set the tile, our toddler ate some grout nuggets she found. A call to Poison Control informed us that WET grout can burn a youngster but DRY grout is relatively safe. Not healthy, mind you, but not terribly harmful.
The difficulty in this project lay in the time commitment, the messiness of the project and the relative "child unfriendliness" of it. All in all, however, my husband says he enjoys laying tile. He'll also say that his body is sore. (We appreciate your work, Dan!)
And then...
The next steps in the mudroom are the built-in bench and the built-in shelving unit.
