Kitchen update #3: Flooring

As the temps drop outside and our heated kitchen floor kicks out of "Warm Weather Shut Down" mode into legit warmth under our feet, I figured I should get around to posting about the rest of the updates we made to our kitchen. The heated floor, by the way, is absolutely glorious.

After updating the lighting and building an island, I dared asking K the question: "How do you feel about this floor?"

I was referring of course to the bamboo flooring that covered our entire downstairs. Also, I knew the answer. She despised it, and at that moment suddenly so did I. Keen on the fact that while the island was built but the waterfall granite countertop hadn't yet been installed, we had a window of about three weeks to redo the flooring. Once the waterfall was installed, changing out the flooring would become a very different equation. The clock was ticking. It was time. 

So I rented a toe kick saw for a couple hours from Home Depot and went to ripping out the bamboo. The process went quickly.

It was a simple matter of first taping off the new threshold and around all the cabinet legs. We also took out the stainless steel shelving under the countertop extension and I replaced it with some scrap 2x2 legs.

Then just keeping the saw under control as I guided it all around the cabinet feet. It kicked back some, but worked quite well. Certainly it did it's one job. This is why we needed to do the flooring before the waterfall countertop, so we could get underneath the island cabinets.

After finishing up with the toe kick saw, I took a circular saw across the floor to make it easier ripping up the bamboo planks. Then I just had to tear up all the bamboo. I filled up one, then two trash cans.

Next, I assembled the new mitered corner threshold where the old bamboo in the sitting area would meet the new kitchen tile. Because I could use a straightedge, making a perfectly straight cut across the planks was easy until I got close to the trim at the bottom of the stairs. Hand-cutting it with a cut off tool, I did what I could to make it as straight as possible. Also, the floor is pretty badly bowed so I needed to put in some finish nails after glueing to hold it down over time. I pre-drilled the holes. 

At that point, I knew I had to somehow scrape up the felt-like underlayment to get down to the bare plywood subfloor. I just wasn't quite sure how to do that. It was like cement. In the end, I actually used a circular saw by sliding it with a perpendicular-to-the-plane-of-motion effect and, somewhat ingeniously, an electric planer. It was incredibly dusty work, but after an hour or so I had most of the mess cleaned up. The floor was finally ready to tile.

First, we had to decide on a layout. We ended up going with large-format, 12x24" ceramic tiles in a zipper (vs. staircase) pattern. We wanted black from the beginning, something that resembled slate. After buying some samples, we chose one from Lowe's and got eight cartons. It was surprisingly not expensive.

Before we could start laying tile, however, we also needed to plan out the heated flooring. Backing up, after I asked K the now-infamous question of how she felt about the floor, she came back with, "We're going to heat it, right?"

Of course we're going to heat it. Starting from scratch on a new tile floor always merits putting in a heating element. So we planned out the wiring diagram.

After looking at piggybacking the heating element onto one of the available circuits in the kitchen, I ultimately decided to run a new branch circuit from the breaker boxes in the garage. I'll mention that in the post about all the electrical work we did. Once power was where we were placing the thermostat, we had to run all the heating cable across the floor. We'd done this already with our primary bath in the previous house.

For that installation, the cable we got was embedded in mesh. For this one, with the larger square footage, we only had the option of bare cable. We went with the SunTouch WarmWire and CommandPlus smart thermostat. I also picked up two boxes of cable strap from Home Depot. Like with our other bathroom installation, I sourced both the wire and thermostat on Ebay for a steep discount. One evening after the kids were asleep, K and I strung all the cable.

Worth noting: the approximate coverage given by SunTouch for the length we got at the spacing we used (the standard 3") ended up being short so we couldn't heat under where the stools will go next to our island.

I used a router to dig a channel for the splice, the sensor, and the end of the cable.

With the heating cable installed and all the other tasks complete because I had dared ask K how she felt about the floor… we were finally ready to lay some tile. It took us two solid days. We had never laid large-format tile before. In the end it wasn't terribly difficult. 

My biggest lesson was in cutting the stuff: having started with my trusty twenty-plus-year-old garage-sale-find wet tile saw, I realized by the end of the first day it wasn't cut out (haha) to handle large tiles. So first thing on the second day I made a quick trip to Lowes to pick up a 24" tile cutter. Holy. Cow. What went from a ten-minute, tedious job to cut a single tile with the wet saw became a ten-second motion to simply and cleanly cut a tile.

With the wet saw, I'd start by making small cross-cuts before running the tile lengthwise through the saw. Despite that, we made a lot of progress that first day. It was just tedious.

We went with a 1/16" grout line and used the Lash system of levelers to keep from getting the dreaded "lippage." They worked pretty well. The job took a lot of levelers, close to three hundred. Worth noting, I ended up finding the pliers tool I opted not to buy when we did the floor at Goodwill for $2 later in the summer… for the next time we tile, I guess. There will surely be a next time.

We had to be careful of course applying the thinset over the SunTouch warming wire. It's easy to nick the cable with the notched trowels. The trick is to notch the mortar in the same direction as the cable. Despite being careful, I would often measure the resistance of the cable with my ohmmeter to make sure we hadn’t nicked it. Thankfully, it always read the correct resistance given the temperature of the room at the time. We were good.

Eventually, we were setting the final tile. Getting it even with the height of the threshold took notching the subfloor like normal and notching/back-buttering the tiles with the 1/2” trowel. Basically, two full layers of thinset. The notches ran perpendicular to one another. Then tapping the tiles with a rubber mallet to get them perfectly situated with the threshold. No lippage. We also used lots of 1/16" drywall shims to space the tiles against the existing flooring. Seriously, those shims are useful for so many different types of projects. Never leave home without them.

Uhh…

When the thinset had dried, it was time to grout. K wanted a black grout. No contrast. Applying it also went quickly. 

The last step was to fix the threshold between the kitchen and the extension and then caulk the seams around it and the threshold I built. The threshold I fixed isn't perfect. In hindsight, I should have done that before we laid all the tile to ensure the threshold met the tile height perfectly. There's some lippage, but it's okay. We're still learning as we go. Everything is a process. Of course, coffee was involved.

Eventually, the flooring was done.

We absolutely love it. We love how it feels, like stone. Solid. We love how it separates, highlights even, our kitchen from the rest of the living space throughout the downstairs. More than anything we did, the flooring is what sets our kitchen apart. What makes it no longer feel like a pass-through room, but rather a focal point. A gathering space.

We spend a lot of time cooking, preparing meals and lunches and snacks and all the things, in our kitchen. Hadley has taken to sitting at the island. We take joy in staying home. It's a rare thing for us to eat out. Disappointed often by the fact we could cook something better at home for a fraction of the price, we're always trying out new dishes along with revisiting tried-and-true staples. K is an incredible cook. I've always liked to dabble. With the new floor, heated and all, our kitchen finally started feeling like ours. For the first time.

And we still had a lot of work to do…