These tiles might be ugly but they look comfy

The wife and I were giving the house its yearly spring cleaning top to bottom once over which included scrubbing floors, getting into the corners in the back of closets and the like. We just moved into this house, as our first home, in July of 2006. So there are still plenty of things that need work, and on a limited budget its one small step at a time.

Jen found a hint of blue peeking out from under the hideous beige tile in our foyer. You can see the tile in the picture to the left. It wasn’t bad, didn’t show dirt very well. But it was reminiscent of hospital tile, it was formless shapeless and boring to say the least. This hint of blue was a missive of royal blue peeking out from corners, and around the entire area. We quickly pull up on f the tiles only to find a lovely Blue and gold tile which the previous owners had for some reason covered up.

So of course we got straight to pulling the old tile out, which took about 1.5 hours to get it all out. But we were left with a mess of sticky floor. Linoleum glue sucks… In fact after trying everything in our cleaning aresenal we came up with the only contraption capable of removing the residue. First off a good dosiing with Acetone to turn the glue into goo, then a quick scrub with a Scotch Brite pad to collect the now gummy goo before it turned back into glue after the acetone evaporated. Then spray everything down with Goo Gone to remove the tacky, sticky bits left over. THEN scrubbing the floor with soap and water.

So 5 hours later out 6′ x 6’new foyer was done. Only problem is I had a hangover from the fumes for the next day and a half. The door was wide open with a fan blowing right out, it was just overpowering.
Just a small note, if you know a quicker way to get that god awful glue off the floor, keep it to yourself for a couple of weeks, until the pain has subsided. If someone tells me vineger or something else simple rips it right up i swear i’ll cry…

And all of this prompted the removal of the carpet on the stairs in the entry way as well, because that was dirty as can be, and incapable of being cleaned. Everytime you get it looking nice it only lasts for about a day. Wooden stairs will be so much easier to clean. Don’t mind the stairs I need to sand down and refinish them, so they will be B E A utiful in time.

Isn’t owning a house fun?