I turned the lights off at midnight last night so I was awake at 7 AM this morning and got out of bed at 7:15.  I fed the cats and then closed the bedroom door while I ground the coffee beans so as not to disturb Linda, who was still sound asleep.  I was having my first cup while finishing yesterday’s blog post and enjoying the company of Jasper, our male cat, when Linda emerged at 8:15, got a cup of coffee, and joined me.  Juniper, our female cat, was quickly in her lap.

Around 8:25 AM we heard a clap of thunder, which got the cats’ attention, and then it started raining.  Linda pulled up the weather radar on her iPad and there was a small but intense cell moving in our direction.  More thunder sent the cats scurrying for a safe hiding place but by 8:40 the storm had passed.

Having had a large, late supper last night we decided to skip breakfast and by 9 AM we were ready to get back to work on the bus.  Our goal was to finish dry fitting the Armstrong Alterna Luxury Vinyl Tiles by the end of the day.  We are at the point where we have placed all of the full 16″ x 16″ tiles so everything that is left has to be cut to fit.  In order to help make that possible I turned on all three air-conditioners and set the thermostats for 75 degrees F.

We started by cutting two pieces that had to follow rather intricate profiles, one by the right side of the refrigerator alcove and the other at the forward end of the kitchen cabinets.  We then filled in most of the edge pieces in the living room and kitchen, which is actually just one large space.  We continued down the hallway as we needed to “lock in” the locations of the tiles before moving into the bedroom.

We were finally a little hungry by noon so we stopped to have lunch.  Linda made a yummy fruit salad with strawberries, blueberries, peaches, and bananas blended with vegan blueberry yogurt.

Dry fit floor tiles viewed from the hallway looking towards the kitchen and living room.

After lunch we worked on the area at the rear end of the hallway where the entrances to the bathroom and bedroom are located.  Our original plan was to have the tile laid out with continuous grout lines but the reality is that the layout needed to be balanced and we needed to avoid tiny triangular pieces and skinny strips of tile.  After much deliberation and measuring we concluded that we would have to offset a tile as we came into the bedroom, placing the forward corner at the center of the adjacent tile edge.  We also had to employ a “slight of hand” by having a tile with other tiles on all four edges that was not, in fact, a 16″ x 16″ square.  It turned out to be 16″ by 14.75″ but that shape allowed us to maintain the grout lines. The difference is surprisingly subtle and I doubt that anyone will notice it.  Hopefully we won’t either after a while.

With those key decisions made we did an approximate fit past the end of the bed and around to the side at the rear of the coach.  Once we were satisfied that the tiles would lay out in a reasonable way along both sides of the bed and across the foot we resumed measuring, cutting and fitting the tiles from the hallway into the bedroom.

Cutting and fitting pieces has to be done with careful measuring and cutting and is slow work.  By 6:30 PM I no longer had sufficient light to work in the bedroom and it was clear we were not going to achieve our goal of finishing the dry fit today.  The lighting in the bathroom, which is mostly artificial, was good enough to keep working in there so we installed two more pieces.  One of them required us to remove a long narrow strip from an edge.  We used a hair dryer to gently warm the edge of the tile on the back side and then cut it.  It wasn’t exactly like cutting butter, but we were able to remove the narrow piece without using the saber saw.

By then it was 7 PM and we were done for the day.  We also wanted to have dinner before it got too much later.  Linda made a couple of large salads with all kinds of good things.  After dinner I started up my computer, checked e-mail, and replied to several.  I then drove to The Home Depot in search of an Armstrong S-891 trowel or something equivalent.  They did not have anything even close to what I needed so I went to Lowe’s. They did not have what I was looking for either but they did have a 4″ x 6″ plastic adhesive spreader that appeared to have the correct tooth size and spacing on one edge so I bought one.  It was $1.36 before sales tax.  (I probably spent that much in gasoline for the round trip.)

While I was gone Linda searched online for additional installation information and “how-to” videos.  She located the S-891 on Armstrong’s website so we finally knew what it looked like.  It’s a serious metal trowel with an open handle design and would be much easier to use than the plastic spreader.  If we had taken the time to deal with this on Monday we could have ordered one on Amazon and had it here tomorrow, but we didn’t.  I will probably call around in the morning and see if anyone locally has them.  If not, the plastic spreader will have to do.  I cannot wait until the middle of next week to glue and grout the tiles.

We watched an episode of Rick Steve’s Europe and then an episode of Music Voyager before going to sleep.