Tag Archives: Armstrong luxury vinyl floor tile

2015/11/14 (S) Tiling the Cockpit, #1

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I was up at 6:30 AM and got a shower.  Linda got up closer to 7 and we were on our way to our ham radio club breakfast by 7:20; but not before I released two more mice.  Either we have a significant colony living nearby or the same few animals are finding their way back into the house.  We find it hard to believe, however, that if they are returning they would re-enter the trap.

We had a good showing for breakfast, minus a few regulars due to the ham fest in Ft. Wayne, Indiana today and tomorrow.  We were the second two people to arrive so we got to sit across from the other Bruce and Linda.  They are leaving for their new place in Florida before the next breakfast so the next time we see them will be in the Sunshine State.  We had a lot of work to do on the bus this weekend so we did not linger over breakfast and were on our way home by 9:15 AM.

The seat cushions and spacer cushion for the built-in sofa in the bus.

The seat cushions and spacer cushion for the built-in sofa in the bus.

By 10 AM we were working on the floor tile for the front of our motorcoach, which I often refer to here as the “cockpit” as a convenient shorthand.  In a sense the cockpit consists of several sub-areas.  I think of the “entry” as consisting of the stairs and the first landing.  At the same level as the landing is the “driver’s area.”  I sometimes refer to this as the pilot’s seat as most of the controls for operating the bus when it is in motion are located here.  The dashboard, however, extends into the landing area and contains controls for some of the house systems.

One step up from the landing level is the “front passenger seat platform” which I often refer to as  “the platform” as a convenient shorthand.  The portion of the platform closest to the entry door side of the bus is where the front passenger seat is located, which I sometimes refer to as the co-pilot and/or navigator seat.  It’s really not a co-pilot seat as you cannot operate the bus from there, so navigator is really the more appropriate term.  In the center of the platform, and extending towards the driver’s side of the bus, is a step which gets you up to the main floor level.

Because the pilot and navigator seats are on different levels from the main floor those seats are not usable as part of the living room, making the front portion of the interior a distinct and dedicated space with its own character, much like a cockpit in an airplane or ship.  Nonetheless, we used the same fabric on the these two seats as we did on all of the other living room furniture and we are using the same tile on the floors and walls as we used on the main floor.

Bruce uses the heat gun to soften a piece of the floor tile so he can cut it. (Photo by Linda. )

Bruce uses the heat gun to soften a piece of the floor tile so he can cut it. (Photo by Linda. )

We worked from 10 AM until almost 4 PM measuring, cutting, and dry fitting the tiles for the landing and driver’s area.  The driver’s area in particular took a lot of time as every tile had to have something special done to it.  Intricate curves had to be cut to fit around the steering column, brake pedal, and the perimeter of the area and holes had to be drilled for the seat base bolts.  All of this intricate trimming was done by heating the back side of the tiles with a heat gun (much hotter than a hair dryer) and cutting the softened tile with a razor knife.

We quit working for the day at 3:45 PM and changed clothes.  By 4:15 we were on our way to meet John and Diane Rauch at the Livonia 20 Cineplex on Seven Mile Road just west of I-275 for a 5 PM movie.  Ever since Daniel Craig started playing the role of James Bond in the 007 movies we have gone to see them with John and Diane not long after opening day.  After the movie we went to the Macaroni Grill, which is walking distance from the theater on the northeast corner of the intersection of Seven Mile Road and Haggerty Road.

We had to wait awhile for a table but we had plenty to talk about and the time passed quickly enough.  We were seated by 8:20 PM and finally left our table at 10:20.  We started with bread, olive oil, and wine.  We split a two liter bottle of the Chianti house red wine.  It was priced the same as five glasses, but we each had more than two glasses, so it was a good deal.  All four of us had a “make your own pasta” dish with a salad, and each one of us chose a different pasta and add-ins.  I had linguine with a garlic olive oil sauce, mushrooms, tomatoes, and fresh spinach.  Linda had farfalle (bow tie) pasta with arrabiata (spicy tomato) sauce, garlic, mushrooms, and spinach.  Both dishes were well prepared and tasty, and they were vegan!

I stopped at our local Shell station to fill the fuel tank in Linda’s car and it was a little after 11 PM when we got home.  We had another mouse in the trap so I took the trap to woods on the southwest part of our property and released it.  Back inside I went straight to bed.  It had been a long but productive and enjoyable day that ended with too much food and too much wine too late in the evening but we were glad to have had a wonderful conversation with our longest standing Michigan friends.

 

2015/09/04 (F) 100 Pounds

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We set our alarm for 6 AM, got up, had granola for breakfast, and then went to The Home Depot to rent a 100 pound floor roller.  The roller consists of three steel rollers, each about 4″ wide and 6″ in diameter, on a common axle.  A three foot long handle attaches to the axle between the middle and outside rollers.  A pair of small wheels attach to the crossbar at the base of the handle for transport and can be swung up out of the way or removed.  We rolled the roller out to our car and loaded it into the back.  We then went back inside and purchased up a hard edge grout float, a small offset float, sponges, a bucket, and a bottle of Armstrong Once and Done floor cleaning concentrate.

Bruce rolls the floor tiles in the kitchen with the 100 lb. roller.

Bruce rolls the floor tiles in the kitchen with the 100 lb. roller.

Once we got home we got right to work on the bus.  We had a few pieces of vinyl tile that still needed to be cut and installed at the front of the bus and that took us over an hour.  Once that was done it was time to glue the tiles down.  I got the Armstrong S-288 adhesive and the trowel.  We read the directions on the adhesive bucket and finally figured out that I should probably not spread more adhesive than could apply in about 20 minutes as the product is time sensitive.  The adhesive would then have to set until it was tacky but did not transfer to my finger when touched, which would be 10 to 30 minutes, but we would need to have the tiles set within an hour of when I started spreading the adhesive.  The tiles then needed to be rolled with the 100 pound roller.

We started in the center of the coach and installed the tiles as follows:  1) Remove selected tiles; 2) Spread adhesive; 3) Clean up tools while adhesive cured; 4) Lay tiles carefully back in place; and 5) Roll the freshly set tiles.  It sounds easy and straightforward enough, but each step had its own issues.

For Step 1) we had to agree on how to remove and stack the tiles so they were in the correct order for installation and to remove them so as not to disturb the surrounding tiles.  At Step 2) I had to be careful not get adhesive on anything except the area of the floor I was working on.  I also had to make sure the working area was completely covered but also completely troweled off correctly.  In Step 3) the tools needed to be cleaned before the adhesive set so we could use warm soapy water to clean them.  Once set, the adhesive would have to be cleaned off with mineral spirits.  Step 4) was the most critical.  The tiles get installed once the adhesive has set to the touch, i.e. still pliable but no transfer when touched.  The adhesive effectively acts like a contact cement–it is not possible to slide a tile once it is down–so getting each tile correctly positioned on the first try was critical.  Step 5) was the easiest, once we got the 100 pound floor roller out of the car and into the bus.  The tiles needed to be rolled as soon as they were installed, which was easy except for the limited confines of the bus interior.

We ended up doing this six times in the following order:

  1. Kitchen;
  2. Built-in sofa portion of the living room;
  3. Front passenger side of living room’
  4. Hallway;
  5. Foot and front side of bed;
  6. Rear side of bed; and
  7. Bathroom.

This corresponded roughly to the order in which we had done the dry fit and it was critical that the central tiles get installed in exactly the right locations.  We used plastic spacers at all tile intersections and between tile edges where needed.  (The spacers were 2-sided.  One side was an X for use where four tile corners meet.  The other side had three tabs in line for use between the edges of two adjacent tiles.)  These spacers were removed when we pulled the tiles out and replaced when we installed them.  We also divided the job up to keep the number of tiles being set to a small enough number that we could meet the time requirements of the adhesive and to make sure we did not get trapped in the back of the coach.  We finally installed the last piece (for now) at 9 PM.  We had short breaks for lunch and dinner but each cycle of this process took about 90 minutes.

Bruce spreads Armstrong vinyl floor adhesive in the hallway.

Bruce spreads Armstrong vinyl floor adhesive in the hallway.

My knees were sore by the time we quit.  They have never done well with kneeling due to the boney lumps that resulted from Osgood-Slaughter’s disease in my late pre-teens.  Occasionally kneeling down on one of the spacers, which had pointy centers on one side, did not help.  I probably got down and up at least 100 times throughout the day, maybe more, which was hard enough all by itself.  Although I am in better health and physical shape than I was in my 30’s and 40’s at 63 I am certainly not in the prime of my youth.  At one time Linda and I had a hundred pounds or more to lose between us.  Time, use, and the abuse of being overweight have inevitably taken their toll on our joints.  At the end of the day I was left thinking that flooring work is a young person’s game.  Whether hardwood, carpet, tile, or even continuous sheet vinyl, much of the work is done on your hands and knees, or bent over, and it is tough work.

I took a long, hot shower and then Linda took her shower while I checked e-mail.  We had some Coconut Bliss ice cream with fresh strawberries and then turned in.  We watched an episode of Joseph Rosendo’s Travelscope, set the alarm for 7 AM, and went to sleep.

 

2015/09/03 (R) Floored

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I turned the lights out at 11:30 PM last night so I was starting to wake up at 6:30 AM this morning and finally got up at 7 AM.  We have had light to moderate fog the last few mornings which always coincides with very still air.  It is a calm, quiet time to gaze out over our own personal “misty moors” and appreciate where we are and the lifetime of work that got us here.

Linda was still sound asleep so I closed the bedroom door to shield her from the noise of the coffee grinder.  That was probably unnecessary as she was sleeping with her good ear down, but I did want to wake her prematurely.  I ground up 8 scoops of the Cafe Europe (reg) / Columbian (decaf) blend which yielded nine scoops of grounds.  I have figured out over time that to make 9 cups of coffee takes about 10 cups of water as that quantity of grounds absorbs and holds almost a cup.  (These are 6 ounce coffee “cups,” of course, not real 8 ounce cups.)  More importantly the strength of the coffee seems to come out right.

Once the coffee was brewing I washed out the grinder reservoir and wiped out the grinder.  It seems to hold coffee grounds as if they were magnetic and being relatively fine particles they get into all of the small nooks and crannies.  Why a coffee grinder has small nooks and crannies is one of those product design questions that suggest the designer(s) never actually used their product for its intended purpose.

My main reason for getting up early was that it was no longer comfortable to stay in bed.  My lower right back has been sore for over a week now and is worse when lying down than when working, much of which has been on my hands and knees.  My secondary reason for arising early was that I wanted to get an earlier start working on the bus today.  We need to finish the dry layout of the vinyl tile floor today so I can apply the adhesive tomorrow, with Linda’s help, before we have Madeline for the weekend starting Saturday sometime.

I assumed my usual position on one of the living room sofas with our male cat, Jasper, at my right side, and quietly enjoyed my coffee while doing some online research and starting this blog post.  Speaking of which, I am now (once again) over six weeks behind in uploading posts to our blog.  By the time we are done working in the evening and have had dinner I need what little time and energy I have left to write the draft post for that day.  Uploading them is a whole different process that also takes time and thought.  I am determined, however, to be caught up before we leave for the winter and to post daily while we are away.  Being behind is not fun for me, and posts that are 4 – 8 weeks old are probably not interesting to anyone who might read the blog.

I need a very specific trowel, an Armstrong S-891, to apply the Armstrong S-288 vinyl tile adhesive.  As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, The Home Depot and Lowe’s do not sell this trowel or one even remotely similar.  Lowe’s did, however, have a plastic spreader that has the correct notch size and spacing.  Someone in the floor department at one of the stores suggested we try Blakely’s Supply in Wixom so I plan to call them this morning.  Don at Lynch Carpet in Howell, where we got the tile and adhesive, mentioned another place so I may have to call them back and get the name of the business.

We’ve had the tile since early July so we could have taken care of this a long time ago but didn’t.  As much as I tried to “work ahead” with respect to the design of the project, procurement of materials, and contracting with the cabinet maker we did not attend to everything in a timely manner.  Exhibit #1 is the wallpaper, which had a 2-week lead time, and exhibit #2 is this trowel.  Overall we have done well keeping things moving along and in retrospect this will look like a well-planned and smoothly executed project, but right now I need something that I don’t have.  🙁

I called Blakely’s at 8:30 AM.  They do not carry Armstrong products but they did have a trowel that matched the specifications of the S-891.  They had one in stock so I asked them to hold for me.  With the Labor Day weekend almost upon us we decided to drive to Wixom and buy the trowel before busying ourselves in the bus.

The round trip would have taken an hour but we went to The Home Depot in Howell before returning to the house and bus.  This particular Home Depot has a tool rental operation and we wanted to see if they had a 100 pound floor roller.  They did.  In fact, they had two of them; $22/day (24 hours).  If I call before they close tonight they will hold one for me to pick up in the morning between 6 – 8 AM.

By the time we got home we were finally a little bit hungry and had our usual breakfast of homemade granola with fresh blueberries and banana.  Thunderstorms were forecast for today so we brought the saber saw into the bus so we would not have to walk outside to the garage to use it.

We resumed working in the bathroom and got all of the tiles for that space measured, cut, and fitted into place.  We then continued from the hallway into the bedroom and up the front side of the bed towards the driver’s side of the coach.  It seems that our pace has slowed yesterday and today but that’s not really the case.  What has happened is that all of the pieces have to be cut, some of them along four or five lines that cannot all be scored and snapped, and we are working in a much more confined space that makes it difficult to make accurate measurements.

By 3:30 PM we were part way down the foot of the bed and decided to take a lunch break.  Linda made sandwiches on toasted rye bread with vegan deli slices, onion, tomato, and lots of power greens.  She chatted briefly with our son about arrangements for this weekend and then we got back to work at 4:30 PM.

The rain that had been forecasted for most of the day finally arrived but did not affect our work as we had everything inside that we needed.  We worked until 7 PM and finished the floor tiles in the bedroom.  That left five or six pieces to be cut at the front where the main floor and cockpit meet.  My sister called and I said I would call her back when we were done.  We figured it would take at least an hour to finish these pieces.  We were tired and hungry and decided to defer this work until first thing tomorrow morning.  We shut off the air-conditioners, turned off the lights, and locked the bus.

While Linda prepared dinner I cleaned the cat’s litter tray, checked my e-mail, and replied to one from BCM.  Dinner was fresh steamed broccoli, whole grain bread, and mock chicken with orange sauce.  Another Gardein product, the “chicken” was very tasty.

I called my sister back after dinner and we had a long chat which wrapped up just before 10 PM.  Linda and I went to bed and settled in.  I was finishing up this post around 11 PM when it started raining.  From the sound it was quite a downpour but it did not last even 15 minutes.

 

2015/09/01 (T) Tiling Kate

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We both slept until 8 AM this morning and even then got up slowly and reluctantly.  We probably need a day off to rest, relax, and catch up on some not-so-physical tasks, but now is not the time.  There is too much to do and time is slipping by.  The fact that hot weather, muggy weather is forecast for the rest of the week probably had some effect on our enthusiasm for getting back to work.  We should probably get up at 6 AM and quit working by early afternoon, but I am not on a sleep schedule that accommodates those hours.

We had our usual homemade granola with blueberries, split a banana, and had OJ/GFJ to wash down our vitamins.  I made Ethiopian Yirgacheffe half-caff coffee, but not as much as usual.  We enjoyed our coffee in the living room with our cats and finally got back to work at 10 AM.

Dry fit of Armstrong Alterna floor tiles.  The starting point was where the kitchen was where the kitchen transitions into the hallway.

Dry fit of Armstrong Alterna floor tiles.  The starting point was where the kitchen was where the kitchen transitions into the hallway.

Today was one of the milestone days we have been working towards all summer; we (finally) started laying out (dry fitting) the new floor tiles.  I had done two layouts on 1/4″ grid paper back in early June; one with the sides of the tiles parallel and perpendicular to the centerline of the bus floor, the other with the sides turned 45 degrees.  We both liked the turned layout better so I used it to estimate the number of tiles we needed and placed the order back in mid-June.  They took a few weeks to arrive but they have been sitting flat in their boxes since early July waiting to be installed.

My original drawing has tiles lined up with opposite corners on the centerline of the floor, although it looks good on paper there was no way I could draw it at a scale that allowed me to accurately account for the 1/8″ grout spacing.  The drawing was just a “proof of concept” and a starting point for the actual layout.

We laid tiles out according to the plan from a starting point in front of the refrigerator that would allow one of the grout lines to go down the center of the hallway in front of the pantry.  Unfortunately that did not allow the tiles to reach the front edge of the floor by the cockpit or work out well for the toe kick space under the kitchen base cabinets or hallway running back to the bathroom and bedroom.

A famous problem in mathematics is finding convex polygons that can “tile the plane.” What this means is that the polygon can fit together with itself perfectly so that there are no gaps.  Some of Escher’s artwork was based on the use of such polygons and that is the context in which most people would be familiar with this concept.  Among “regular” polygons, which are equilateral and equiangular, triangles, squares, and pentagons can tile the plane.  So can right triangles and parallelograms, which includes the rhombus.  Beyond that it gets a bit tricky and someone just recently discovered a previously unknown irregular pentagon using a computer program to systematically examine a very large number of possibilities.

What does that have to do with our bus remodeling project?  Not much, really, beyond the obvious fact that the new vinyl floor tiles for our motorcoach are squares with an edge length of 16 inches.  Floor tiles are almost universally square in shape because they are easy to manufacture and can be laid out on a floor in several different ways. Finding a way that fits a particular space in a balanced way is the tricky part, however, and more so in this case because the tiles need to form a continuous pattern of grout lines (if possible) while working their way down the hall and into the bathroom and bedroom.

We shifted the string of tiles running down the centerline towards the kitchen cabinets on the driver’s side of the bus so the corners just reached the recessed base.  We then shifted them towards the rear of the coach to get reasonable size pieces at the front edge by the cockpit.  We filled in some tiles to either side of the main fore-aft string to make sure they would make it to the edges with reasonable size pieces.  When it was clear that this positioning was going to provide a balanced installation in the kitchen and living room we started working our way down the hallway and into the bathroom.

The tiles continued to fall into place and fit well in the bathroom but did not flow into the bedroom quite the way we wanted.  We may have to offset a grout line as we transition from the hallway to the bedroom but were otherwise satisfied with our dry fitting.  We returned to the front of the coach and placed every full tile that we could.  We then started trimming tiles to fill in smaller pieces.  We limited ourselves to pieces that had one or two straight cuts and no notches or tabs.

It was 4:30 PM by the time we got to the door of the bathroom and bedroom threshold, where a critical decision would need to be made regarding the offsetting of a grout line.  We have learned that the end of the work day is not a good time to make critical decisions.  With company coming in a couple of hours we quit working and got cleaned up.

I sat in the living room and worked on this post.  Kate sent a text message at 5:30 PM that she was leaving Wayne RESA and heading our way.  We figured she would get here at 6:30 and that is when she arrived.  She brought a dip that she made from cannelloni beans, garlic, and lemon juice, some baby carrots, and some pretzel chips.  We enjoyed the appetizers with some Bell’s Oberon beer while we chatted about work, travel, and family.  Kate travels every chance she gets, usually with her S.O. Brian but sometimes by herself.  Europe is a favorite destination but she frequently visits family members all across the U.S.A. and sometimes overseas.

After catching up a bit we gave Kate a tour of the bus interior.  She liked the new floor tiles and our choice of seat fabric but was suitably impressed with the pull-out pantry which pleased us.  I turned off the three residential air-conditioners as we exited the bus.  Linda then got busy preparing dinner while I showed Kate the pieces of the custom desk and built-in sofa.  I turned on the A-C in the library (where the desk and sofa pieces are stored) to cool it off and lower the humidity.  It had been off all day since we were running the main house A-C plus the three A-C units in the coach.

Dinner was ready at 8:30 PM, a simple but tasty meal of burgers and fries with a second round of Bell’s Oberon beer.  (Linda bought a real beef patty and got a slice of real cheddar cheese for Kate.)  We had fresh strawberries and Coconut Bliss non-dairy ice cream for dessert and then continued to chat about photography, cameras, travel, and the low power Radio station, AM 1700, that Brian runs in Ypsilanti.  A local blogger does a weekly interview show that Brian then podcasts.  The most recent one was an interview with a professor from U of M Ann Arbor who wrote a book that was recently made into a movie (Diary of a Young Girl).  The podcast was “liked” by Sarah Vowel, who is sometimes featured on “This American Life.”  Very cool.

Kate had to go to work in the morning and left around 10:15 PM.  Linda went straight to bed but I had a couple of things to take care of first.  I had initiated the download of an updated NVidia GeForce driver for my ASUS laptop computer.  I e-mailed several documents to my sister Patty, and then downloaded the final draft of the August/September Bus Conversion Magazine, proofread my two articles, and e-mailed a couple corrections to the publisher.   I installed the driver update and then went to bed.  I wrote for a while and finally turned out the light at midnight and fell asleep.