Let's Build A Bar - Part 4

Let's Build A Bar

Part 4

With our cabinets finished, and while waiting on our soda fountain set up to be built, it was time to start thinking about surfaces. If I'm being honest, this isn't really my strong suit. I'm a very visual person so I have to actually see something to know if I'm going to like it or not. I can take a picture of something I like and then replicate it, but short of that it's just holding stuff up and going "Yep" or "Nope". To compound things, my wife and I don't always have the same tastes or style preferences (I like to say that she has taste, but I have style!). 

We just hit the stores and started bringing home all sorts of options. We don't like our current tile or hardwood flooring in our house but we're not ready to change it quite yet so we needed something that would work without clashing too much. We looked at a bunch of wood-look tiles but nothing really worked.

We weren't having any luck and then I remembered that we had a few pieces of this weird tile we had used for our garage bathroom so I grabbed them. We both liked it and then asked a few other people and the consensus that we got was an almost surprised "actually, that looks really good". Fortunately, Floor & Decor still carried it so we picked it up and put it down.

I've never tiled floor before, and there were some challenges like having to butt up to this curved tile. I bought a wet saw, which is key I think because you're basically building your own puzzle pieces.

I cut all the pieces out and laid them down before I ever mixed up any mortar. When it was time we just pulled the pieces out in rows and started at the back corner putting them down permanently.

  
Nel is typically my grouter, but she helped with the mortar this time as well. 

When we were grouting, Samantha wanted to help so we told her she could pull up all of the little spacers. I'm just supervising at this point, which is my favorite task.

Of course we had to let Sam try a little grouting as well.

It may not be for everyone, but I really like this tile. It reminds me of when you pull wallpaper off in an old house and there's like 5 layers of it, all different. It also reminds me of old linoleum flooring. I'm not sure why those are good things, but it seems fun to me. It also doesn't show dirt which is a bonus. 

We're still waiting on our soda machine and ice maker to be built so all I can do at this point is stone work and maybe pulls. I'm working on the stone now.