Among the difficult tasks my hubby left on his unfinished To Do List was to tile the bedroom. We had tiled the den and kitchen in our old house. When he had to have a tandem bone marrow transplant which dropped his immunities to zero, I ripped out all the carpet in the new house to keep down the risk of infections. Yes, carpet is filthy stuff no matter how well you vacuum or clean, especially out here in the desert. There was about 1/4 inch of dirt under those carpet pads. Once he was clear of his Hodgkin’s Lymphoma he tiled the area in the den that was now bare concrete with wood plank tile. It was an odd shape, but at least the walls were mostly square.

My sweetie laying tile

End result of the den tile

Tiling the bedroom went on his To Do List. And it stayed there because of several problems he simply did not have the strength to deal with. Bless his precious heart it took him a week to get the tile laid in the den and that was a fairly straight forward job except for a few odd angles. The bedroom walls are not square and there is a M-A-S-S-I-V-E king sized bed with a matching M-A-S-S-I-V-E tv armoire in there.  We’d have had no place to sleep at the time if we’d cleared the room of furniture. We put up with the cement floor, the quarter inch lip that brought my wheelchair to sudden halts in each doorway. Until now.

Now, the problems are mine to deal with. I was lucky to find the same tiles, for even less than they cost the first time around, so the house won’t look like it has a patchwork quilt for flooring when/if the boys or I need to sell it. Things aren’t good at all here financially. Crucial home repairs, health insurance, home insurance, flood insurance, car insurance and still paying off his chemo bills we had to take a loan and max a credit card for have drained my meager savings. Leaving the space un-tiled would have devalued the house considerably so it is one of those repairs that has finally floated to the top of the crucial list. At .87 a sq. foot it is only .15 more than the least expensive 16 x 16 tile I could find and it matches everything else we’ve done.

John has two days off. I’ve cleared the room of everything that I could clear by myself. John took out the two heavy night stands last night. Today, we’ll have to disassemble the massive bed and armoire. (and figure out where to put them!), and get the tiling started.

This brings me to the other problem with this room. I have Googled and Googled until my eyes are googly and cannot find any way to not have a crooked tile edge on at least one wall since the 12 pack of Budweiser builder did not insure the walls were square when the house was built. There are 4 large doorways in this room so there is enough wall showing on 3 walls that crooked tiles along any of 3 walls will be highly noticeable and it will grate on me every time I look down. I’ve been up since 3:00 am wrestling with this problem. The wall behind the headboard of the bed (massive bed) is the only wall a bed can go against unless one is shoved in one other corner. Unfortunately, it is the far wall of the room and if I just start laying tile along the near wall and let all the crooked tiles end up behind the bed and nightstands, we will have to exit through the window because we will have tiled ourselves into the room. I could lay the tiles at an angle, but this would mean a half ton of angled tile cuts and this is the first time I’ve ever tiled a room without Billiam there to mark tiles to tell me where and how to cut.

Honestly, I’m already about the throw in the trowel and we haven’t even finished clearing the room out.