Removing the Linoleum Floor & Starting To Tile The Kitchen Floor

The first thing to do in our kitchen was to remove that green old linoleum floor. At first we had thought of just leaving the floor as is, and then put down cement backerboard before installing the tile on top of that. However, we realized it would be easy enough to remove the old floor instead which also would make the height difference between the wooden floors and the tile floors a little less, yet still pretty substantial.

Removing the old floor wasn't too bad. We used a long floor scraper to get underneath and it went pretty smoothly. We were left with a wooden subfloor with a type of white light, cement surface which we kept as it was. 

To cut granite and marble stone you can't use a regular tile cutter. First we had thought of renting a wet saw, but after realizing this process was probably going to take a while (as we have both the kitchen and the utility room to do and we can't do both at the same time as some things need to go into the kitchen as we do the utility room etc...) we figured it probably would be cheaper to actually just buy one.

Here we are putting it together.

Using the wet saw is a little annoying, especially cutting longer pieces and since it uses water to wet the saw, it's easier to just do the cutting outdoors.

At first we layed out the tile starting from the far end of the room. However after realizing this wall isn't completely straight, we figured it would be better to start in the center of the room to make sure we got a clean and straight pattern.

We choose 1/16 inch tile spacers as we want a pretty tight pattern. However, some tiles ended up probably more like 1/8 inch apart since it's tricky at times to keep the lines completely straight, and if one tile became a little off, then that continues down the whole line. Another thing that is pretty tricky is putting down just the right amount of adhesive. We used a premixed adhesive, especially formulated for stone, and since you can only put down some adhesive at a time so you can reach and walk around it, it's tricky to get exactly the same amount down every time. And when you don't get it just right, the tile become a bit uneven.

So, putting down floor tiles was pretty tricky, I think more annoying than tiling the walls. We still have the utility room to go, so we're not nearly finished with this process yet. However, the design is great. It looks so clean and contrasts nicely with the walls and the counter.