My kitchen tiles made me realize I'm conservative

When I first viewed the run-down old house I ended up buying fourteen years ago, I fell in love right away with the the old-fashioned tile-work in the kitchen. It amazed me to think those tiles had survived so many years and were still (mostly) intact. I imagined the owners back in the 1930s planning their renovation and how they would have thought the white tiles and black trim were the height of modernity. The house was built in 1907, so presumably the original kitchen would have been quite a bit more rustic.

Some friends in my kitchen the day I took possession.

On the night I took possession a few friends came with me to toast my new home, and of course they liked the tiles too. But they also had plenty of ideas for kitchen improvements: one suggested a dishwasher, another new cabinets, and they all agreed I should tear down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room (on the right side of the photo to the left), and put in an island. They thought the resulting open concept space would be amazing.

I will admit to being tempted, but in the end I resisted all of their suggestions because following any of them would have required getting rid of the tiles. 

I'd never owned a house before, and I was surprised to discover my feelings about it were fundamentally conservative. Politically and socially I'm not conservative at all. I believe in changing things for the better, sometimes in fundamental ways (solar power instead of coal; bike lanes instead of road widenings, etc). But when it came to my house, I didn't want major overhauls. I just wanted to restore it to its former glory. And in the kitchen that meant restoring the tiles.

I loved the tiles but some were missing and left ugly gaps.

Keeping the tiles presented a number of challenges though, as I was soon to discover. Several were missing, leaving unsightly gaps, and replacing them was not a simple task. It turns out 4" x 4" is no longer a standard tile size. 

Nowadays tiles are all either 6" x 6" squares or 3" x 6" subway tiles. It also turns out that there's no such thing as "white" when it comes to ceramics, and the ivory tone in mine proved quite hard to match. 

Replacement tiles were hard to match.

I went to Home Depot and New Canadians Lumber and nothing was even close. Then one day I was riding my bike along Dundas and noticed the ML Tool Rentals and Tile Center. There I found some 6" tiles that seemed like they might be good enough, and they also rented me a tile cutter so I could cut them down to size.

My parents happened to be visiting from Ottawa for a few days so my Dad helped me install them. He mixed up the grout for me and after we got the new tiles in place he kept going, covering up the old discoloured grout between the neighbouring tiles with bright new white grout. The result looked much cleaner, he said, and it was true. I told him I'd regrout the rest of the tiles later that week, after he'd gone, but I didn't get around to it.

My dad helped me with the repair, look closely and you can see the whites don't match.   

I suspect to some degree I inherited my affinity for preservation and restoration from my dad. He came of age in the depression and always preferred to fix things rather than throw them away. He learned how to re-bind books for example, and took great care to fix my mom's well worn Fannie Farmer cookbook, taping the cover back on whenever it was in danger of coming off.

Over the years I replaced the faucet, counter, sink, and missing tile.

Over the years I've undertaken several more tile repairs. Once for the narrow tile under the faucet that was missing, another time a tile got damaged during plumbing repairs, and then some tiles popped out during a window repair. Each time when I had the grout mixed I took the opportunity to cover more of the old unsightly dark grout, and then I would call my dad and report proudly about my progress. I've made other kitchen improvements too, replacing the faucet, and then the  stove, and finally building a mini-island out of a a friend's discarded birch countertop.

Spontaneous crack from shifting house?

By the end of last year, I thought I'd done all the tile repairs I'd ever need to do, but then over the winter the house must have shifted because a tile just spontaneously split down the middle and popped out. 

My dad was sick at the time with prostate cancer, so I didn't have time to fix it. I was spending all my spare time going to Ottawa and visiting him.

In September I finally had the sink and countertop replaced, another task that's been on my to-do list for years. And then last week I fixed the cracked tile. Once again after I got the replacement tile stuck in place I did a whole bunch more regrouting. I thought of my dad while I did it. He died in July, so I can't call and report to him on my progress anymore.

The kitchen I've ended up with definitely couldn't be considered "modern," like it would have been back in the 1930s.  But it's my kitchen and I love it.  I hope my Dad can see it from where ever he is.  I think he'd like it too.