My new porcelain tile kitchen floor is in and grouted. The only thing left to do is seal the grout which I'll do towards the end of my remodel. Until then, the floor is protected with a layer of heavy paper so that the walls can be finished and painted.
Laying the floor went fairly smoothly. I rented a tile saw at 7 a.m. last Thursday morning with hopes to finish in one day. What made the project move slower than anticipated was the hardness of the tiles. The PEI (Porcelain Enamel Institute) rating of the tile is 5 which is the highest possible rating for the resistance of the glaze to surface abrasion. This basically means the tiles I chose are extremely wear resistant and super hard to cut. Each tile cut took at least two slow passes and sometimes four through the saw.
By 8:30 p.m. that night, I was more than 75-percent done but knew I had to stop. The neighbors certainly wouldn't want to hear the tile saw running during the night and my back was killing me. I also didn't want to screw up my project by rushing at the end.
Friday morning I got back to work and was done by noon. My friend Bill came by and helped me by making the last few cuts and handing me the pieces through a window. I literally had worked myself into a corner and needed to crawl through the window to get to the tile saw. Working into the room instead of out was not ideal but necessary since I wanted to start laying the tiles first in the area that mattered most, the arched kitchen entryway.
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