DYI Herringbone Tile Floor

3 Materials
In the beginning of time, we bought an ugly house and had a vision... here goes..
This is the main focal point of the room. It is approx. 5-600 sq ft room...UGLY!
This is the Front door... with ugly old carpet and border... and a wall unit... yikes!


We have not changed the front door yet - that is next.
First my Hubby (Lewis, the talented boat mechanic) and I made a long plastic/ duct tape tunnel to blow dust out the door with a fan while he saw cut the concrete floor to add 2 electrical floor outlets in the center of the room for lamps etc. What a mess...
Now we installed the conduit for the electrical in the center of the room after cutting concrete and electrical floor boxes, and cleaned to add a moisture barrier.
Next, we put down a product called RedGuard (Lowes/Home Depot) which is a moisture barrier they use in showers before tiling them ( we figured it couldn't hurt since the house was built in the 70's as added long term protection, as we don't want to do it again). Sorry no pics of application. Then the tiling starts...
I modified the design to my spouse's dismay :( by adding glass tile border on both sides and putting inserts in center of herringbone. Now he is not happy with me. This is when the cussing starts. I go shopping...LOL
Here's hubby working hard every weekend after work for 6 months. Unfortunately for him, every tile had to be leveled since the floor was not perfect, which made for a long installation. But man, it looks great!!! (See the insert?)
Here's the grouted and cleaned floor. It looks great! I am in love with my Honey...more, every time I look at my floor.
So now we finally get to the center, after many back breaking months. The conduit is in, as well as the moisture barrier and border tile done. Hubby says call someone to do the middle, I have had it! Lucky for us, this is the easy part - straight format, easy and fast, $800.00 labor...Whew.
So, here it is before we cleaned it. They just finished grouting the middle... Hubby and I grouted the wood-look tile with chocolate grout. This was a messy reno, but so worth it now. Sorry - it's tough to get good pics in this room.
This is the design for in front of the fireplace. It has some difficult angles, but it works. You can see the different tiles we used and how they came together. We also used the glass tile in the fireplace surround - I think it worked out well.


If you look in this pic, I gave in and let hubby choose to do travertine on the hearth - what a disaster that was! He ripped it out a few month back and you will see what we did instead in the last pic. We didn't always agree to the colors and designs, but I got my way in the end. :)
This is a nice close up of the colors and how nice it came together. I can't believe we are still married...YIKES that was a tough reno. Lewis said no more tile for him - EVER. We will see. :)


The total cost on this floor is near $3500.00 and that includes the extra $800.00 labor we spent to finish. So, I firmly believe it would have cost us near to 10 k if we had paid for it , but then we would be broke and wouldn't be able to gut and reno the horse barn...... which is next... LOL


Shhhh.. he doesn't know yet..
Here it is 5 yrs later - I took this yesterday. I don't have one of the front. we still have the ugly front door, but we're working on that...


Hope you like it! We sure are happy... and still married... :0


Happy Home talking to everyone. Love seeing all the great ideas everyone has. Keep them coming!


Liz and Lewis
Suggested materials:
  • Wood like Tile /Grout   (Lowes)
  • Glass tile sheets   (Home Depot)
  • Moisture Barrier 2 different kinds.   (Home Depot/Lowes)
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  2 questions
  • P chastain P chastain on Sep 17, 2016
    moisture barrier (you used two) the only one listed is the Red guard I saw in your posts. Thanks, Pat
  • B. Welch B. Welch on Sep 17, 2016
    Would like to know more about the beautiful work of art you did on the fireplace, which to me, is as dramatic as the floor. The travatine looked good but not nearly as dramatic as the finished look. Did you use tile inserts with the wood trim along the platform of the fireplace? Also, the addition of the pilistars along the side of the fireplace really adds a unique emblishment to the glass tiles you added. Speaking of the glass tiles, what type of adhesive did you use to get them to stick over the old brick? Your husband did a great job on this room with a lot of cost savings, I'd say both him and the house are keepers ; -) In my opinion its the best DYI job I've seen on this web site!!!
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