When we moved into our first place together almost a year ago, a lot of cosmetic work needed to be done but I was up to the task because the price was right. Paint is cheap and my free time is well, free. So, we painted and painted and fixed a few things here and there. Everything was looking pretty spectacular but the last hold out was our gross kitchen floors. The landlord is a bit of a tightwad. Why bother fixing stuff if some careless dirty college kids are going to move in regardless and not take care of it? Well, we are not careless, dirty or in college anymore and we want our home to feel bright and clean.

So, we measured the square footage of the kitchen and were shocked to see how much new flooring was going to cost. Our best bet was to search high and low for a remnant of sheet vinyl, cut it EXACTLY and mess with glue and all that fun stuff. I admit, I was a bit intimidated by that task but I still looked… and looked. Our kitchen is almost 200 sq. feet and I couldn’t find anything under $100, let alone $200, (plus all the glue, tools and cutting supplies) that was in a decent looking pattern, or large enough. I mean, we’re renting. The landlord wasn’t going to help us out so, I wasn’t going to spend much. So, we lived with it for almost a year and hated every second of it. This whole big room that we barely wanted to spend any time in. That one thing in our place we kept feeling the need to apologize to guests for. “Yeah, about the floor… we’re going to fix that… one day.”

When we decided that we were definitely going to renew the lease for at least another year, my heart was starting to ache about that damn floor. Then, this past Sunday a miracle happened. Our wonderful neighbor across the hall has been leaving his Sunday paper for us outside our door. So, after we ran a bunch of errands, we sat down on the sofa to relax. I always start with the ads. There is was. Some weird closeout store in Southside that I’d never even heard of before. Boxes of 30 heavy-duty vinyl floor tiles for $9! Holy hell! We could do our floors for $63!

First thing Monday morning, I ran to this crazy place and found the tiles. Why such a good deal? Because a few of the 7 boxes I bought had maybe 5 irregular tiles in them, where the black diamond was slightly askew. We picked them out of the boxes and they went under the fridge and stove. After 7 hours of working [great] together, prying the old yucky tiles off the hardwood floors with a putty knife, keeping everything clean, moving the fridge and stove, taking a lot of breaks, and measuring and cutting the new tile for the odd spaces and edges… it was all done. We were filthy, sweaty, sore and exhausted but damnit, we took our kitchen back and made it ours!

Look at that nastiness! It was some old funky tile that we could never get clean. We tried everything. EVERYTHING! You could scrub it for days and never get the grime out. It felt like some institution where mental patients get abused.

About 1/3 of the way through. They didn’t install the original tile on center so, we just worked our way up as well. It did just fine. The hardwood flooring underneath could’ve been beautiful if refinished but was completely out of our budget. The cabinets were simply slapped on top of the old tile so, we just had to cut them with a utility knife. The new tiles fit right under the toe moulding so we didn’t have to remove that. Some of the old tiles had been replaced and they used a glue that could’ve held elephants together. The bf was a champ with a blowdryer and pried those bastards off. That little bowl contained a washcloth soaked in rubbing alcohol because handling the new tiles was a sticky mess.

Finally done! Yesterday I painted the columns and trim around the vertical tile of the fireplace with black enamel like we have in the bedroom. I think it ties the black and white feel together.

For Christmas, my father made us a wood kitchen table. It was very sweet of him and I know he put  a lot of work into it but it just wasn’t our style. We were going to live with it anyways and not be ungrateful jerks. Well, thank god the top of it warped (don’t I sound awful!?) and we’re bringing it back to him when we get a new table THIS WEEKEND! One of the old tennants of the building left a huge peice of thick glass in some cubby in the main hallway. We’re getting it cut to size to place on top of the new table to protect it because it’s from IKEA and you know what that means.

 P.S. Please check out the comments below for a small tutorial on the process of laying peel and stick tiles.

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