The Kitchen Floor

With all the pest control stuff I got going on, cleaning is on my mind, and that’s led me to a bit of a conundrum:

I cannot mop my kitchen floor.

See, sometime last year I slipped and dropped a cast-iron skilled onto my tiled kitchen floor, and it broke a few tiles.

In a properly constructed and well-maintained home, this would be a pretty minor repair.

Problem is, my house is neither one of those things.

Tiles are not adhered to the floor. The mortar underneath is made out into grooves that, when set, create something more like a vacuum seal than a glue.

For the most part, this makes a strong, secure fit, but it is susceptible to sudden hard impact.

Like dropping a cast-iron skillet.

When a tile breaks on a floor that is not perfectly static and still, the mortar shifts ever-so-slightly, breaking this seal.

Over the last year or so, the tiles on my kitchen floor have gradually come loose, and they get a little looser every time I step on them.

If I try to mop my kitchen floor, some of the water will inevitably leak down into the subfloor and cause even deeper damage.

And so, I cannot mop my kitchen floor.

In order to fix this, I would need to chip up all the mortar under the tiles and re-tile the whole kitchen, or perhaps go with one of those penny resin floors or something.

But I’m not willing to put in that much work without also addressing the other issues in the kitchen, like the cheap pressboard counters that have swollen with water over the years, or the fact that the subfloor moves enough to unseal all the mortar. Or that I want to install a dishwasher.

So I’ve gone from a simple broken tile to a multi-thousand dollar renovation project, and I just don’t have that kind of money.

And if I’m going to do that much work, I might as well fix the fucked-up flooring on the rest of my ground floor.

So I’m refinancing the house right now, and that should lower my mortgage enough that I can afford to take out a post-covid loan to do some much-needed construction in the house.

But of course, it’s not that simple.

When one renovates a house, there are conventions and rules to follow. One starts with big structural issues, and one starts at the top of the house and works down.

Unfortunately, my bathroom needs work far more urgently, and it’s on the second floor.

Y’see, in 2018 I re-tiled my bathroom floor and made an alarming discovery:

The previous owners let the joists get wet from poor plumbing installation. So even though I’ve patched the leak, the damage is done.

That’s another several-thousand-dollar remodel.

And again, since I’m doing that much work, I might as well install a bathtub and relocate the plumbing and whatever else I want in there, which will hike up the price even more.

That would have happened this summer, except covid happened. So, maybe next year.

And then, I would need to wait at least a year, possibly two, probably five, to pay off that loan prematurely so that I could take out another loan.

Now we’re in 2022-2025.

And I still can’t mop my kitchen floor.

Sure, I can toss some soap and water on a paper towel and carefully rub away the stains of food and dead flies, but that’s a lot of work and it’s annoying and some of the water STILL gets down inside the broken grout, making my future remodel that much more extensive and expensive.

And you know what?

I’m grateful.

I am grateful for the kitchen floor I cannot mop.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s terrible- I just spent 500 words explaining why I hate it.

But I’m grateful.

I have many friends and loved ones stuck in the endless money-pit that is renting that worrying about mopping their kitchen floor isn’t even a problem big enough to pop up on their radar.

Friends with negligent landlords, who refuse to fix their kitchen floors.

Friends with broke landlords, who rent properties they can’t afford to maintain.

Friends with homes in such a state of disrepair they’re embarrassed to have company over.

I have a kitchen floor. It’s relatively stable, and while I don’t love it, it serves its job well.

Half a century ago, this problem would have resonated with a much wider audience than it does today, when a smaller portion of the population was renting.

Today, I know I’ll have a reader or two or twenty saying, “Fuck, I wish I had his problems.”

And they’re right! As far as home ownership is concerned, I’m doing pretty okay.

And so, I am grateful for my problems,

even if I cannot mop my kitchen floor.