In Flip #2, I hired all of the tile work done. I did that not really by choice, but I lost my free labor– my dad and an ex-boyfriend. Dad retired from DIY floor laying after Flip #1. Also, in Flip #2, it was A LOT of tile….a huge kitchen, oversized laundry room, and a bathroom. That’s a lot of tiling.

In Flip #1, though, I got lucky. The kitchen was cozy, so the floor space wasn’t expansive.

I ended up ordering special tile because I LOVED the design, and I couldn’t find a knock-off similar that I liked. Plus I wanted oversized tile, so I bit the bullet and special-ordered tile. Yes, it was expensive, but I justified it because I wasn’t going to pay labor and it was a smallish kitchen.

The actual laying of tile is super easy. The grouting is even easier. You know the tricky part? The cuts. You need a wet saw in order to do that. One little problem, though. I don’t own a wet saw. I thought I was going to have to buy one (which I didn’t want to do!). But then I discovered a little known fact. Lowe’s will cut tile…for free!

We used a pencil to mark our cuts (we measured several times) on the tile, and then we took each piece that needed cuts to Lowe’s. They patiently cut each one for us. To make things easier, we didn’t take them all at once. We wanted everything cut and laid out before we ever started actually laying the tile.

I consistently use Lowe’s on all my flips, and I have discovered so many free services they offer (remember my DIY butcher block they cut for free?!). Not having the headache of cutting tile (when I didn’t know what I was doing) made the process so easy!

After the tile was laid, we simply added the grout, and I had a brand new floor…without owning a saw!