September 28th, 2021

Decisions, decisions, decisions.  Whenever there is a reno project going on, there are decisions to be made.  Some of them easier than others.   For the most part, Tim and I are on the same page, decor-wise,  which makes the decision making process a little easier than perhaps for other folks whose styles are polar opposites.  But if you've ever walked into one of the really big tile stores then you know how overwhelming it can be to make a flooring choice.

We chose tile because that is already what is throughout the house. Every single room is tile. And here, it makes sense. It might not be the flooring of our dreams if we lived somewhere else but  we live just blocks from the beach.  And no matter how hard you try, some of the beach always comes home with us. Sand is really hard on most floors.  But tile is hardy, it's sturdy, it holds up and it's really hard to damage. Also it's consistent with what is already here. If we changed our existing  flooring  to, let's say......wood....now,   we have to change it through the entire house!  Holy Cats,  I'm not ready for that project. Good heavens!

When we bought the house, the entirety of the flooring was one type.  Saltillo.  It's charming and rustic and it begs for big chunky dark wood furniture.  And that is not Florida style at all. So we were surprised to find it in every single solitary room.  If you are unfamiliar with it, here is an example:

But of course ours is much older so perhaps it's a little faded, a bit mellowed, there are big 18 inch squares of it and we cannot find the exact tile anywhere.  We've found things that were close, but if you put "close" next to the original it looks terrible.  You may as well have neon signs and arrows pointing to it alerting everyone, "Mismatched Flooring, Mismatched Flooring!".   So instead we had to find tile that would be in keeping with the feel of it, the rustic-ness of it and yet be different.  Tricky.

We've actually been through this before.  Other work that we've done on the house has necessitated pulling up old floors.  When we had the house replumbed for instance, we had to replace both bathroom floors.  When the pantry was created, once again, new floor.    That's when we learned that we couldn't find tile that matched the original.

In short, we knew this was going to be difficult.  And when this project actually started which was before the pandemic, we had already spent the time going to one tile store after another searching from one city after another and coming up with bupkis.    But we did the work, we spent the time, we had the discussions and eventually we came to a meeting of creative minds and made our choice.  And then there was a lock down and the entire world changed and it was a year before we got back on track.  A lot of things can change in a year.

And now here it is six months later than that even - which is how long it took once we kicked off the start of it all once again until now (red tape and the process of permitting takes time). We decided that rather than reinvent the wheel, we still liked our original tile choice and thought, "Well at least that's one decision we don't have to worry about!"

We were wrong.

Part of the entire world changing due to the pandemic is that some things are just hard to come by.  The construction world has been heavily impacted by it.  And tile is one of those things. unbeknownst to us, a lot of tile comes from other countries.  Then it is shipped to America in those big shipping containers on massive boats.  Eventually it docks in the US, is unloaded and transferred to trucks where it is then driven to it's destination.  In normal times this is not a big deal at all.  In normal times, it was a perfectly, well, normal, thing to do.

But these are not normal times.

Factories are slower to produce things, shipping containers are harder to come by, not as many ships are sailing, the workers to load and unload are fewer and truck drivers, who are already over worked and under paid, are fewer to find.   Apparently the back up in shipping ports is especially bad. So many big ships just waiting waiting waiting to be either loaded or unloaded and meanwhile, just sitting there. 

Which was when  we learned that we could not longer get our originally selected tile. Or at least,  they didn't know when they would be able to get enough of it for our project, all from one batch (important) so there would be guaranteed delivery date.  And that doesn't work for us.  We've waited more than long enough for this project as it is. We don't want to delay the finish of it any longer.  We needed to go back out and look again.

We learned very quickly to ask right up front,  what brand tile can we get X amount of in Y timeframe.  And that reduced the number of choices right away. Initially we were a little bummed about having so few choices but ultimately I think it made choosing a little easier.   If you can only select from a handful of choices as opposed to hundreds of possibilities, decision making is a lot quicker.

One of the places we went was a local shop.  They allowed us to bring the tile selections home (free for nothin'!) to look at it in the light of our own home, instead of that horrible fluorescent light at the tile store, and that alone was a huge help.

We looked at the tiles in all different sorts of light throughout the day.  We considered it on a sunny day and a rainy afternoon.  We looked at it up against the furniture and the tile for the rest of the house. And all of this over a weekend.  By Monday we had made our decision, returned the tile samples and notified our contractor of our choice.  By Tuesday he had ordered it and it should arrive later this week. Hurrah!

Of course the concrete pour was just yesterday which means that we don't even have walls yet so we are still operating ahead of the curve.  But that's how we like it.   No last minute zero hour decisions to be made and no delays waiting for parts to arrive.  Our contractor has our windows in his warehouse, we have our new ceiling fans added to the pile in the guest room.  We know what colour paint is going on the walls and it's the original furniture going back in once it is finally done.  But it feels like it will probably be smooth sailing from here.  

I don't want to jinx it so I won't say anything really stupid like nothing can go wrong now.  I did NOT say that.  But I think things are pretty well in hand.  Everything that can be controlled, is.  Anything that cannot be controlled, I leave up to the universe.

​Universe, please think kindly of us.