Our teenage son is ready for a room overhaul and he says carpet is out!  He wants tile so we all agreed/compromised on these porcelain tiles that look like wood planks.

We were not compensated in any way by MARAZZI or the HOME DEPOT for this post.  However, if either one of these companies would like to provide more of this tile we would be more than happy to complete two more rooms! 

Eddie & I are DIY'ers all the way.  Our motto has always been to try it first and only pay someone if we screw things up.  Knock on wood, but so far we've learned we can do a whole lot of stuff ourselves.  

Here's a few pictures of the installation process.

To begin with we set our chalk line and worked off of that just to make sure everything was square.

We made sure our seams were very small to mimic a real wood floor.  Our biggest trouble was a couple spots were our concrete dipped.  We just added extra thin set under those spots.

Moving right along!  I would work ahead and lay thin set and make the cuts on the wet saw so that Eddie could just keep laying tile. Our teamwork made this project move along at a pretty good pace & helped save Eddie's back since he didn't have to get up and down a lot.

We let the floor dry for about 48 hours only because this whole project fell in between shifts at the fire house.  Normally, 24 would have been fine.  

Let the grouting party begin...

I love how the tiles have a textured surface.  I'm not going to lie...I hated the whole grouting process.  The directions said to let it dry about 20 minutes before you started cleaning off the tiles which we did.  The directions also said to wipe them down twice...  I think I did this FOUR times because I wanted to make sure it was all off so we didn't wind up with a hazy floor.

The grout color we used was Polyblend #52 Tobacco Brown.

Here's how it looks now that his room is put back together.

I really wasn't sure how I'd feel with tile in a bedroom but we all couldn't be happier with how things turned out.  

We still need to purchase a large rug to go under his bed so he has something soft to step on after getting out of bed.  I'll update ya when we find the perfect one.

ITS PARTY TIME! 7-21-13

I know, I know!  The party is way late.  I'm so sorry y'all.  We have been so busy this summer that I'm having a time keeping up.  I've still been pinning & sharing your amazing projects through the week, but our weekends have been so crazy lately that getting features up is nearly impossible.  I'll get things back on track when summer is over okay?!  

Last week our goal was to hit 100 links.  We hit that goal plus some!  Thank you all for telling your friends and sharing the party, please do it again this week.  I'll be checking out links through out the week and sharing my favorites on:

GOOGLE +  

FACEBOOK - THREE MANGO SEEDS

 PINTEREST - ITS PARTY TIME BOARD

Follow along to see if your project is shared!

Ready to party?

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I co-host this party and we would love it if you would share our button & tell your friends about the party.  

If you would like the chance to be featured here on the blog simply add a link back to this party somewhere in your post. 

By linking up to this party you are giving Three Mango Seeds & It's So Very Cheri
 permission to share you post and pictures via social media and our blogs.

Now, show us what you've been up to!

ABOVE GROUND POOL INSTALLATION PART 2

We finally have our pool installed and thought I'd show some of the installation process.

The guys arrived early Friday morning and had just a tiny bit of leveling to do before laying the pool foundation.

Foundation laid.

Adding sand for the base.

After the sand was level they wet it down to help create a firm pool floor.  Plus, they started filling up this other pool so that when they were ready they could fill up the pool faster.  

It was kinda funny because my son came out and was like, "Ugh, is that our new pool?"  

I was surprised at how tall the walls were!  It sure seemed a lot bigger in our backyard than it did in the store. LOL

Almost ready for the liner.  Earlier, they had laid out the liner in the front yard to heat up which would make it easier to put in and get the wrinkles out.

I missed the photos of them actually putting it in!  But here you can see what the smaller pool was used for.  They used a pumping system to quickly add water to the liner to keep it from blowing around.  

I was surprised at how quickly the pump system drained this pool and added it to our large pool.  This filled just enough to cover about a foot of the bottom of the pool.  It actually took the next two and half days to completely fill up.

I was totally naive about the whole process.  I really thought once the guys left it would be ready to jump into!  Not!

Let's just say the head guy gave me a quick run down of what I needed to do once it was full and an ever quicker run down on how to work the pump during this process.  When it actually came time to do it his directions weren't making sense at all.  We called the pool place and come to find out we didn't get everything we needed to successfully open the pool.  Geesh!

Long story short, the pool is open and things are going pretty smoothly.  It really is pretty easy when you have all the necessary tools! HA!

We're still working on yard work, adding more flower beds & shrubs plus a pool deck.  I'll be showing you more of that soon so check back.  

Do you have a pool?  We've saved for quite some time to be able to do this and I'm so happy we have it...I just wish there wasn't quite so much work that came with just putting one in!

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