Gettting Laid
Thursday, June 19, 2014 at 8:12AM 
The Florida lifestyle really does not lend itself well to wall to wall carpeting. It's hot here and; more often than not, it's humid. Summers are particularly humid. Carpets hold smells, just the regular smells of everyday living and cooking and pets. They also hold allergens. All of this becomes very noticeable when it's humid. Houses are built of stucco and if you can afford it, floors are mostly tile. When you buy a new house in a development, the model homes always have lots of beautiful tile or hardwood. The trick is, of course, that all that tile or hardwood is an option, and a significantly expensive upgrade. In a new home EVERYTHING is an option. We bought our house as a foreclosure during thr bust in the recent housing market. It was the first bank owned property in this development of over three hundred homes. We were fortunate that the person who originally had it built put in the most options of anyone so far, including the caged pool. The thing he did not do was put hard surface floors in the bedrooms. A lot of people from up north, want carpet in the bedrooms. They want to wake up and put their bare feet on a warm carpet. There's nothing worse than getting out of bed on winter morning and putting your bare feet on a cold hard floor. I'm a New England girl. I get that. But Dorothy, we're not in New England anymore.
One of my goals when we bought the house was to replace the carpeting. Four years later, I'm starting. I originally thought I wanted hardwood floors to replace the carpeting. We have three dogs. That's twelve little dog feet with scratchy nails. I talked to lots of flooring sales people. At stores other than big box stores like Lowes or Home Depot, those who deal in only flooring were pretty divided on using real wood floors in this part of Florida advising that the floors absorb humidity, expanding and contracting, possibly shrinking and pulling away from the walls. While I love our 20x20 diagonally set tile that covers the rest of the downstairs rooms and bathrooms, it is no longer made. A real dilemma.
Eventually I ended up at the tile wholesaler from whom we were able to order the beveled glass and stone tile I saw in Architectural Digest and wanted for the new kitchen backsplash. They patiently listened to me whine and then showed me a product from an Italian tile manufacturer, a porcelain tile that comes in both 6 inch and 9 inch widths and 36 inch lengths. Unless you touch it, you cannot tell it isn't wood.
They also recommended a fellow to install the floors. We called him to come over and price the job. He arrived, a handsome guy named Allesandro who emigrated from Italy five years ago. If you've ever been to Florence or Rome or Venice, ever been to Italy at all, you know that the Italians are masters at laying tile. Allesandro quoted his price and did say we'd have to wait three weeks to a month before he could do the job. He was very busy. To me, that meant he was good at what he did and we signed on the dotted line. He figured the materials needed, called it in to the wholesaler and had us write a check that he would deliver. We would pay his labor when the job was finished.
Two days later a big flatbed truck with a fork lift on the back appeared in front of our house. We took delivery of the boxes of tile, boxes of transition pieces and jugs of grout stuff. That was easy. Figuring out where to squeeze it all into the garage, not so much.
This morning Allesandro called and said he'd start tomorrow. He said his guys would move the furniture and rip out the old carpet. He asked that we remove the small stuff and clean off the walk in closet floors in both rooms. So....that's been our day. Stacie came over and was a huge help. I'm excited about the new tile floors. At least something here will be getting laid soon.
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Reader Comments (1)
Love that last line - looking forward to the finished project!