Dancing in the tile aisle: part 2

Previous scene: Home Depot, choosing bathroom floor tile.

We wandered about, Paolo doing whatever Canadian boys do… and me holding up my idiot-swatch to potential tile contenders. Ideally we wanted those long oblong ones… for reasons neither of us could articulate.

“What abooooout…. vinyl tile?”

“What’s that?”

“No idea. I just read the sign.”

Never heard of it. As mentioned yesterday, both of us immediately liked the same tile. In fact, it fit the bill in every single category. But… what’s vinyl tile?? The Home Depot display had a ready list of its advantages:

• We could cut it to size with a knife… no tile saw required.
• We could lay it on top of our existing vinyl floor – OMG.
• It could be grouted almost immediately – whaaaat! Wait, what? You can grout this stuff? Sure enough, the picture on the box looked like actual proper tile.

Vinyl tiles, where have you been my whole life! Oh, you’ve been right here – dressed as the enemy.

Old kitchen floor: vibrant vinyl

Remembering that convenience of installation shouldn’t be our focus – we took some pieces out of the box and, shedding flip-flops, walked all over it.

I liiiiiike it.

Everything about this tile was ding-ding-ding – just as we wanted. The box held exactly 10% more than needed and cost, oh, about $25? For the entire box. Yea – don’t tell people that, either.

Would it seem like we’d cheaped out to potential buyers? Honestly – we couldn’t imagine they’d possibly notice the difference. It had us fooled even as we walked across it. Besides, if a future buyer likes everything in the bathroom but the tile, they’re going to be far happier it’s vinyl & dead easy to rip out, right?

We left Home Depot with our vinyl (!) tiles, a little pot of ready mixed grout, and our grouting supplies – and basically skipped home. Now this, this felt like progress.