When I bought my home three years ago, the most defining features of the great room was cheap carpet and tacky tile. One year later, my brother and father came out to Arizona to help me remodel the first floor of my home, and the first items to go was that ugly carpet and tile…

Dad removes the tacky tile that will soon be replaced by travertine.

Once the floors were stripped down to the concrete foundation, I laid most of the the tile in a 16-hour marathon that began at 6pm and ended at 10am the following day.  The tile needed to get done ASAP so my brother could install the baseboards in the great room.

The good news is that my hard work paid off–my brother began the baseboards the next morning and the remodel continued on. The bad news is that the grout between the tiles “sunk” as it dried which made the tiles look uneven. I don’t know if the grout sunk because it was too thin and seeped beneath the tile, or maybe the dry Arizona air pulled the moisture out of the grout and caused it to lose volume. Regardless, the end result was a floor that looked good, but it didn’t look great. It wasn’t a priority at the time to apply more grout and make it perfect, so I left it as it was.

Now that the remodeling finished–18 months later–I’ve made my rounds and regrouted and sealed/polished the tile. Here are photos of what I did over the last couple of weekends…click on the small image and look for a detailed description on the bottom…

Now it’s time to clean the other side of the great room. It’s going to be a busy Saturday afternoon.

(I am beginning to see that the inside of my house and my website use the same color palette. That means I’m either consistent or boring.)