peel and stick

When we decided to re-do Baby's bathroom, one of the must dos on the list was a new floor. The previous floor was chicken-nasty linoleum (the kind you scrub and scrub and it never looks clean). We decided that an affordable option would be peel and stick tiles. They come in a box of 20 tiles for a little less than $20 at Lowes. We went with a natural stone looking tile, since we just wanted the floor to look nice and not be a show-stealer in the bathroom. 

I laid the floor by myself, since the directions made it look pretty easy. (I wore a mask and gloves for anyone worried - like my husband was- about fumes from the adhesive.) The first thing I did was clean the floor really well by sweeping and dry dusting. I didn't mop, because your floor needs to be completely dry before you start. Next, I used a putty knife to scrape off any big drops of paint that had fallen during the painting stage of the process. I left the drops that were flush with the floor, since I knew they wouldn't cause an uneven surface. 

My dad suggested starting the corner where the bathtub meets the wall and moving outward toward the  doorway. The directions on the box say to start in the center of the room and move outward. I followed my dad's advice, since it seemed like the easier of the two choices. I laid the first tile down as close to the wall and bathtub as I could get it and used my level to make sure it was in straight. Then I just continued along the line of the bathtub. 

The tiles are very sticky, so it's a good idea to make sure that you're ready to put the tile down as soon as you pull off the paper backing. Luckily, they aren't too sticky that you can't pull them up after they're down. A couple of tiles weren't quite level when they went down, so I used the putty knife to pry them up and re-stick them. 

I left all the cuts until the end, filling in the rest of the room with as many whole tiles as I could use. To cut the tile, I used a regular old utility knife with a razor blade. I changed the blade several times during the process, to make sure it stayed sharp for cutting. To make my cuts, I would lay out a whole tile and then use a pencil to mark where the cuts needed to be made. I would then use the level as a guideline and make several deep cuts along the same line. The knife wouldn't cut all the way through the tile alone, so after several cuts, I was able to just snap the cut-out piece off. (Kind of like a perforated edge.)  A lot of the cuts weren't perfect 90-degree angles, but every single cut would be hidden by a base board or carpet transition, so I wasn't too concerned.

  This would have been a one-day, 2 hour job but I ran out of tiles. We needed 4 more tiles than were supplied in the box. Luckily, Lowes also sells the tiles loosely for 88 cents so we picked up the remaining tiles that night and I was able to finish the project the next day. It's not perfect, but it is definitely an improvement in the flooring.