So, when last we met up for our Crafty Tuesday…we were in the middle of our kitchen redo saga. We had found tile and it was being prepped and laid.

Right.

Those of you lucky enough to be within yelling distance, or any of my FaceBook friends, already know how this all turns out. But for those of you who haven’t been around these parts while we vacationed, this is the rest of the story.  It was about mid-Wednesday (remember we are leaving on Saturday morning!!) when my contractor delicately told me that…well…the tile I so lovingly picked out and hauled and paid for? Yeah, it wasn’t going to work. Apparently our house is old. Not a big surprise. And the entire kitchen floor slopes about 2 inches from one side to the other. Uh, big surprise. Oh, and also? There are some little dips and valleys that tile just wasn’t going to be happy on.

So…back to the drawing board, since we didn’t have $15K to put a new sub-floor in, and the floating the tile option wasn’t going to work with the many other issues our kitchen has going for it.

J. came through again. After taking me to lunch and another visit to Lowe’s we found this stuff called “Resilient Vinyl Floor Planks.” And honestly…the look of it is not that much different from my first love, the tile. It installed much easier, was cheaper, and is much more resilient and easier to care for in a kitchen than hardwood. Although I couldn’t do the herringbone layout – it still worked out ok.

And so now, we have this:

And this:

I put the laundry room photo up there first, since it is against the cream cabinets it will give you a better idea of how the floor will look once the kitchen cabinets are painted! Right now there is a lot of wood going on, but I really like the floor and it is very close to the other dark wood we have throughout the house. I think it is a good compromise and it was HALF the cost. So win-win for all.

Next on the agenda is doing all of the baseboards (this week!), repainting trim and ceiling, and starting the cabinet painting. The snowball effect has begun.