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Tuesday, May 8, 2012

If This Is Not Insanity...

then I don't what is. Remember the new foyer tile I was so joyous about two weeks ago? In case you don't recall, this is what I referred to:

Our foyer with 12x24 Crema Marfil Porcelain Tiles as of April 29th.

Notice any difference in this picture taken yesterday? Well, the tiles grew larger, right? This is our foyer NOW with 24x24 Crema Marfil Porcelain Tiles two weeks later!

You must think that I was insane to have the brand new tiles yanked out only after two weeks?! What happened was the long 12x24 tiles warp on both ends, so it's extremely tricky to lay them on uniform level -- so much so that one can almost always expect some degree of lippage. In our case, the lippage was pretty severe such that when I looked down from the second floor hallway, I saw tiles in waves! NOOOOOO....! I wasn't going to settle for that after spending so much time and efforts to get rid of our old tiles. After some research, I found out with more careful and skilled work, the lippage problem could be alleviated. So I talked to our contractor, and asked them if they considered their tile work presentable and acceptable by their standards. I wish I had taken a more close-up picture because it was really bad. Our contractor agreed with me to re-do the work. I even got them to agree to pay for the new tiles! But this time around I learnt the lesson, and only chose the large square 24x24 Crema Marfil porcelain tile to avoid the warpage problem.

So after another weekend of dust and ear-piercing noise (and that's why we were out of the house), we now have this, a perfectly even and smooth floor again with minimum grout lines.

The Curvy Chrysanthemum Vase from Anthropologie  indeed adds a punch of color to the space.

Has something this insane home reno front happened to you before? How did you cope with it? Did you choose to let it go and live with it, or tackle the problem head-on like I did? Mind you my decision was a stomach-acid-headache-heart-attack-inducing one and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.