Aside from the time I spent working on my laptop, I did get quite a bit done at the house. I was going to do the final sanding of the wood floor, but then decided that doing the tiling would probably scuff it up a lot. So, instead I decided to start working on the area around the stairs, which will be tiled.

First I pulled up all of the old floor in the area.

Bought and put down durock after I fixed a couple bad boards in the subfloor.

Laying out the tiles to see how it will look.

I didn’t install any of the tile yet. It took a bit of messing around to get it looking pretty good. My first attempt, stupidly, had me line up the tile with the door, which is really not straight. I finally got around to measuring a certain distance from the stairs, which means the tile will line up with the stairs. I think that will look the best. At least, it looks good so far. It’s going to be very difficult to get a layout that will have no small strips along any wall or edge. If I can keep any thin pieces along either the outside wall or the hole going to the stairs, then I’ll be happy.