If you know anything about me, you know that: a. I love to demolish things and, b. once I make a reasonable plan for a home-improvement project, I want to start it right. this. minute.
(Case in point: when we replaced our countertop, I started chipping away at the old ceramic tiles the weekend before [3] we planned to start.)
So it only makes sense that when I got home from work yesterday, I cajoled Rob into helping me start removing trim and chipping off the press-on tiles on our bathroom floor.
[4]
Tomorrow, we plan to replace the subfloor, put down cement board and then add penny tiles. [5] To the left is a before photo. I confess, I haven't cleaned it in a while because I knew we'd be replacing it. I feel the need to apologize for how nasty it looks.
Rob took off all the quarter-round tile around the bathroom's perimeter, and after that, the press-on tiles didn't take much convincing. They sort of just flaked off the plywood they were on top of.
Rob made me leave some of the tiles, because we still need to use the bathroom until tomorrow. However, you can see in the photo below that some water leaked through the cracks in the vinyl tiles and stained the plywood. Lucky for us, I didn't see any mold.
[6](Also, that's a new heat register - we bought a plastic one last night when we shopped for supplies. The old one was rusty and nasty. I didn't want to put something like that on top of a new floor.)
To combat water in the future, we're using a treated plywood for the subfloor, a waterproofer over the cement board (the thinset and tiles go over it) and of course, grout sealer.
I can't wait to update you on our progress. Cross your fingers that nothing goes horribly wrong.
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