A lesson.

Working in health care PR, I get to receive calls from the media from time to time asking about a patient's condition. Due to HIPAA rules, we, the hospital, cannot give out anything other than the following conditions:

Critical = you could go at any time.
Serious = you are very sick, but likely to make it
Satisfactory = you are out of the woods, but still in the hospital
Fair/Good = you are much better, probably fair or good.

So when the media covers stories such as the Fort Hood shooting, and says stuff like:

At a thoroughly surprising evening press conference, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone at Fort Hood told media gathered that the shooter in today's attack, Malik Nidal Hasan, is not dead but in stable condition at the hospital.

Stable is not a correct term.

The Laundry Room Process

When we moved into the house, this is what the laundry room looked like:

Just incase you didn't notice the green on green linoleum and counter, here's a close-up (with my foot...)

So I pulled off the baseboards and started peeling up the sheet of tile.

This is what the subfloor looked like.

We started in the middle and worked our wait out, standing on each tile as we went. We bought enough tiles to cover the 10x6 laundry room (60 sq ft x $.88/tile = $53) plus a few extra in case we messed up.

Notice the spacers holding the tiles apart for the grout. We found it was much easier to cut the tile with scissors or the table saw, than using the suggested utility knife.

General oversees hub's helper putting in the last few tiles.
The next day, we pulled up all the spacers and used pre-mixed grout ($11) to give it the ceramic-look.

It was so easy to do the grout, it only took us about an hour and it comes up easily with water.

And this is the finished product. Not bad for about $65. Now the kitchen will be a much bigger challenge, with an eat-in/bay window area, there are a lot more angles to cut.

step 4. enjoy

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step 3. grout

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Step 2. lay pretty tile.

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Green Stuff

My new favorite site to buy stuff from is brightandbold.com. I already love my envirosax, and use them every time I go to the grocery store, but I only had one and most of the time I buy more than one bag's worth of stuff. Therefore, I needed another.

So I ordered myself a bag and also got the bonus back of green stuff. I got a set of green paper towels (basically large flat sponges), a fresh produce saver disc (sits in the fridge and keeps stuff fresh longer), a notebook (that I won't use and will probably give away), a snack taxi (to replace ziploc bags, I will use this!) and some cotton bags (not sure what I'm supposed to do with these...).

So if you need some green stuff, you should check them out! (and no, they did not ask me to write this. I did it all by myself)

Some Kitchen Thoughts

I am the opposite of a morning person, so naturally I start pulling up the old tile at 8pm on a week night. Even though the hubs and I have tackled several DIY projects at our old house, putting new tile in the kitchen floor is going to be a bigger deal than I originally imagined. This mostly due to the fact that the current vinyl tile was one of those large sheets of tile, rolled out while the house was being built. Then they added molding (not a huge deal), door frames (annoying, but do-able) and cabinets (might be a deal-breaker). Also, the current vinyl tile was rolled straight from the laundry room entrance from the garage into the kitchen. Cool for the dudes building our house, except they put the carpet that goes from the living room hallway into our bedroom right on top of that vinyl tile. So, I can't peel it up without ripping the carpet too...

So the hubs and I have a major few decisions to make on this massive DIY project. Stay tuned.