Kitchen makeover: Day 4

First job of the day was to fit the wine rack shelves that we built on Monday. Just a case of screwing some right angled brackets to the cupboard walls - the only difficulty was that it was quite difficult to work under the cupboards.

After that it was time to start on the tiling. The first thing was to set-out where the tiles would be. Everyone I've spoken to and everything I've read on tiling all say the same thing - setting-out is really important!.

We started off by dry laying a line of tiles between the internal door and the kitchen door.

We then did a line of tiles perpendicular to this and adjusted the first line so that none of the cut tiles by the walls and cupboards would be less than 2".

After this it was almost time to start laying. Some of the advice said to cut tiles as you go and some to lay all of the whole tiles then go back to do the cut tiles.

I decided to go with the first option, so before laying the first tile I cut the tiles I'd need for that part of the floor.

The cutting machine is a bit of a scary beast (and makes a hell of a noise) but it does the job and makes it easy to get an accurate cut.

Finally, it was time to lay the first tile. I started at one end of the room so that there was no need to step on freshly laid tiles. I was ultra-careful about getting this one square - as any mistake would be magnified as the other tiles were laid. Slight hitch with the first tile - as I got a bit over excited when levelling it with a rubber mallet and shattered it.

For the rest of the day it was a case of laying a few tiles then stopping to cut a few. The cutting was the time consuming bit and, as is the way of things, it took longer than I'd hoped. It's getting there though!

Today - we're going to switch our attention to the worktops so that we can cut them in the garden while it's not raining (hopefully!).