He’d probably put white tile floors in my breakfast room with acres of graying grout.
Oh…
wait…
Reasons I think my flooring is of the devil:
1. He specializes in things that look pretty on an initial walkthrough but in the end will eat away at the fiber of your soul, one blob of crusty jam at a time.
2. They say he likes it hot. It would be just like him to torment me with a frigid slab of freeze that turns our feet to solid ice every morning as we eat our Eggos.
3. Dirty, nasty, sick and wrong are his favorite things.
Imagine a world that was impossible to clean, a world where you could spot a breadcrumb from 30 paces, a world where Magoo dumps all his food overboard to signal that he’s finished dining. This is my world. The grout gets greyer daily but somehow the tile around and beneath the filth seems to grow brighter and whiter, making the play-doh dust stand out decisively.
Personally, I think God would have chosen Brazilian hard woods.
On another note, Michelle from Scribbit is holding a writing contest you should think about submitting something to. She also did an interview this week featuring yours truly in which I said nothing for about an hour and then she compiled it into something worth reading. Check her out.
First of all, the title alone was enough to brighten my day.
We lived in a small rental house while we were building our new one. It had been recently remodled complete with white tile floor, white tile countertops, white kitchen cabinets, and an all white bathroom as well. The only saving grace was the Dark Gray grout in the kitchen. The bathroom had what had once been white grout and it made me want to inflict pain on our land lord… Baby Girl was 19 months old when we moved in. The kitchen did not stay white long…but in the end a toothbrush and Soft Scrub with bleach returned it to it’s former glory (after we’d moved out). of course it was a VERY LITTLE house.
I am one with you on the entire tile/grout issue. I hate our beautiful grey italian tile in the kitchen. I hate the nearly black grout surrounding every single-dingle piece of beautiful grey tile. i hate walking on ice every winter. I hate the back-pain that ensues from standing on that crappy tile every time I cook a meal. I don’t ever do dishes, because it’s just too much. My kitchen is not a haven of clean. I refuse to get on my knees and scrub every square inch of grout with a toothbrush, just because there are too many square inches, and it will only get filled with grease and cheerios again tomorrow. Or later today. Sure, they don’t break, or get stained, or knicked, or scratched, but that is all trivia. I can’t stand on it. I can’t stand it. Plus, the geek who put it in didn’t care very much about whether they were level. So even sweeping is nigh unto pointless. The grout in your picture looks positively pristine, compared to mine.
Whew! Glad I got that off my chest. So how’s the family?
That is an adorable little boy.
I have to contribute my vent on whatever idiot thinks carpeting a dining room is a good idea. My 21 month old uses the same signal for meal completion as Magoo and I exercise great restraint not swearing EVERY TIME. On the upside, I can tell you what we’ve had for dinner for the last 3 months based on her carpet mosaic.
well, at least your linoleum tiles don’t peel up every time you scoot your chair across your rented kitchen floor. 🙂
I have decided to ingore my floors. They never get dirty. They are always clean. It’s all about right attitude right?
I loved the interview. I esp. liked the part about raw writing. It is what brings people in, but to me it’s just not worth the vulnerability. So my blog will continue to be just ‘normal’.
Is there really an ideal kitchen floor material? Seriously I want to know. I hated our linoleum and then we spent a small fortune installing tile and I hate it even more only with colder feet. Can they just invent a soft-self-cleaning-radiant-heat-teflon surface for us? Is that too much to ask?
I have got your answer….. ready….. In your Right or left hand take hold of a fat permenent BLACK Marker. Change your gray grout to Black. It will accent the white you can clean, while illminating the annoying graying process altogether.
I must have been a house elf in my former life 🙂 Cause I sure as heck ain’t one now!
At least your floor isn’t stupid laminate that’s bubbling up at the seams. It looks clean, until you run your foot over the ridge.
I second Julie Q’s question! We have linoleum which isn’t hideous, just starting to show it’s age. I wanted tile. No? I also considered Pergo. No? ACK! What options are left?
I thought I had solved the tile/grout problem by installing hard-wood in our new home … but nooooooooo … because our home is slab on grade we couldn’t use regular wonderful hardwood, we had to use a pre-fab hardwood that would adhere to the concrete … and everything that falls, slides across or sits on with more than 2 psi leaves an indentation or even a hole in the wood. Thank goodness it was hubbie who threw the bowl and left the 50 mini holes! We have decided to enjoy not worrying about it until the kids are gone…
I am with you on the tile! It never looks clean, is a pain to mop well, and the grout is crappy. I would so much rather have laminate or wood, something with a smooth surface that I could easily run a broom or mop over. Although I do like the self-cleaning floor idea Julie Q. mentioned. What good is NASA if it isn’t making life easier for housewives? Geez, get on it!
I lurve the DuPont laminate floor my husband just installed all through the first floor of my house. They have about 1/4 padding underneath, so they’s soft to the tooties. And my big slobby dog can’t scratch them like he did the hardwoods. I swear my next house will have radiant heat in the floors, so there will never be cold feetsies.
How ’bout a dropcloth. A white one. So that you can bleach it.
What I have is a dog. Works great on wood floors.
Ya, we had evil tile and carpet in places we rented and I just started putting a tablecloth on the floor under my kids. Worked great!
Clorox Bleach Pen. Try it.
Wow, Satanic flooring…who knew he had gone so far??? I didn’t know how how nearly I averted disaster when I went the laminate route…
1) The Biscuit loves the photo of Magoo. Maybe it was because he was in his high chair while I was reading, but there was much excitement, shouting and pointing (and frowning when I scrolled him off the screen).
2) Luckily, though our dining room is carpeted, we rent from my mom and she doesn’t care what her grandson throws on her carpet. Phew.
oh, I have tile with light brown grout. I agree, it must be of the devil. If I could do it over again, I would have hubby put in a slab of cement. no grout, maybe with a drain so I could just hose it down. Hubby was not amused, since he spent weeks putting in the satanic floor… An idea I am considering, my father in law got tired of grout that never stayed clean, and he simply painted over the grout with white paint. seems to be working so far.
enoying your blog!
Jenny in Ca
Ha ha… if you use the permanant marker idea to color your grout black, just make sure you do it in the dead of the night, after administering large doses of Nyquil to your children.
If they witness you in the act of coloring your grout with a permanant marker, you will curse the day forever!!!
We put tile on the floor of our bathroom… but it is 18 inch tile, a lovely dark brownish mix of colors, with dark brown grout… and we installed radiant heating under it. It is heaven on the feet…
My husband pees sitting down, he says it’s more relaxing…and so my boys do too… no overspray! and so I hardly ever have to mop!
You should take away from this two things: never let them see you doing anything you don’t want them doing themselves… and always let them see you doing the things you want them to do.
(In other words, NEVER let your little boys watch daddy pee standing up unless you desire to clean up overspray the rest of your life… or maybe just live with a stinky bathroom…. Whenever I think about this issue I want to kiss my dear husband’s feet.)