Tile underlayment and saving money on delivery....

When we finally got the tiles up, we'll admit that the floor wasn't perfectly smooth. Yes in my infinite wisdom I tore up the tiles in the kitchen   We did what we could to get it smooth but just to make sure we decided to install a product called Ditra.  It's a tile underlayment, attached to the concrete with thin set.  It also addresses hairline cracks in the concrete, so that when the tile is installed, it doesn't end up cracking.  It serves as a buffer between the concrete and the tile.  I learned that your tile floor actually moves over the course of the day, with humidity, heat, it expands and contracts.  Who knew?  This took two days to put down.  The first two strips used the mortar that I purchased at the tile distributor, then we ran out.

So we picked up a bag of Custom unmodified thin set.  You can see the gray color, that's the new mortar. 

Looking good! One more strip but it's time for me to go home, before we left, we were noticing areas that were rippling, and we put heavy things on the seams to ensure that it stuck.

After inspection, the new mortar didn't stick, not at all.  That is bad
I am not pleased.  This means that all that grey mortar needs to be scraped up.  More dust, more blisters.  I posted a question over at Floor Elf, who has a nifty website for DIYers putting down tile, and Roger has been very helpful.

Here we are almost done scrapping up the bad stuff it was such an ordeal, tomorrow we will clean and do nothing else

So onto more pressing issues.  Once I bought the tile, I was quoted $400 to have it shipped to the house.  The tile store that had it closer would have charged me $250, but the tile was $1 more a square foot, what's a girl to do, so $150 cheaper for shipping, $750 more expensive for the tile. 

Hauling the tile in my car

 My car is rated for 1,800 lbs, the tile was 4,378 lbs.  A Ford F150 is rated for 1,600 to 2600 lbs.  The tile came on two pallets, one with 240 pieces = 2,400 lbs. the other with the remainder.  Add 10 bags of mortar 50 lbs each, 2,900 lbs.  Avis rental with unlimited mileage, $125, gas $80 = $205 and the fun of driving a really tall truck.  Once the pallet was securely fastened, and that is really important, you do not want that pallet shifting behind you, it was a race to get the truck rented, loaded, unloaded and back in time to not go over the 24 hour rental.   

This would mean 9 hours driving

8:30 am pick up truck

9:30 am pick up tile and mortar - this took much longer than I anticipated.  We could only get 1 pallet on the truck.

10:30 am start driving really slowly avoiding the brakes at all costs.  I have a new found respect for truck drivers.

3:00 pm arrive & unload

4:30 pm start back

7:00 pm Get pulled over because your tail lights are out. After I explained that it was a rental and didn't know how to turn the lights on. he explained that you essentially have to reboot the car.  He said that the tail lights don't automatically come on if you've been driving from day into night.  It took us 5 minutes to get the lights on.

9:30 pm Return the rental

10:00 pm Home 

The tile store will store the tile for free for two weeks without incurring storage fees, so the rest of the tile will be picked up in two installments. 

I'll have really nice arms after packing the next two 900 lbs hauls.

I dream of a mani pedi and massage.... zzzz