Tile Floors

I propose that tiling be made the official sport of the Old Pueblo. Enough of marathons and Tour de Tucson. The competition ought to be gutting existing flooring, chiseling old thinset, stuffing garbage cans with construction debris, layout design, floor and tile buttering and, of course, grouting. As I often say, the family that grouts together stays together.

Carpet is frowned upon in the Old Pueblo. Stores and generates dust. Cheap carpeting and cheap foam padding disintegrate into crumble dust. You know it's there, but when you pull it up, you gag at what you have been living with.

Tile floors are the way to go. Preferably nice, hard, durable porcelain tiles.

We have been wanting to tile the bedrooms ever since we bought this house eight years ago. We inherited a sort of a white subway tile in the kitchen, bathrooms, and dining room, and everywhere else the same cheap, off-white carpeting. What's cheap? The abrasive feel of wall-to-wall carpet made from petroleum.

Most of the subway tile we replaced in the great kitchen cum guest bath remodel of 2007. That was our first stay in our new house. We had the old kitchen for a week before it was gutted. We got to use the new one for only a week before we migrated north for spring. In between, we camped among boxes, cooked on a plug-in burner, and ate out a lot as professionals gutted and installed with ruthless efficiency. Still, the schedule spread over two and a half months.

This time it's easier because we are working at our own pace. We can move the bed to one corner while we work on the rest of the floor.

We are seven days into this project. Eight hundred square feet of master bedroom, adjacent bedroom (currently stuffed with furniture, as is the hallway — dangerous to walk through in the dark), walk-in closet, and master bath. Maybe we will have most of it done in a couple of months.

Shari is nagging me to watch a YouTube video about installing tiles for a shower. My mind can't deal with it yet. I am still working on chiseling subway tile and scraping old thinset, wondering if I remember how to replace a toilet, and worrying about what we will find after stripping the shower walls to the studs.

Time is measured by the weekly garbage pickup. It will take many weeks to get rid of all the construction debris. Good thing our garbage cans have wheels. The old carpet doesn't weigh that much; it just takes up a lot of space. Old tile weighs a lot. We probably should have ordered a dumpster.

To give an idea of how long we have been planning this, eight years ago when we first drove from Whidbey to Tucson to take possession of our house, we pulled a trailer bearing three power-flush toilets. Two were installed in the great remodel of 2007. The third has been sitting in the garage, then storage unit, then shed — patiently waiting. The time has come.