I have lived with the world's worst home renovator for my entire life. You guessed it - I am referring to myself. I try really hard to make my living space more beautiful and a nicer place for friends and family to visit, but whenever I decide to better my place, it only gets worse.

A few years ago, I decided to renovate the floor in my kitchen. It had linoleum-style tiling that looked like it had been installed around the War of 1812, really old, dingy and a God-awful yellow color, which was hardly yellow at all anymore. I went to The Home Depot to research the situation and the sales person sold me on some tools and products to remove it saying, "This will be easy!" and more tools and products to lay down new tile saying, "Anyone can do this!" I was convinced that I could make it happen. I picked out 40 pieces of individual linoleum tiles, the peel and stick kind, that were pretty and flowery and just right for the decor I wanted.

I decided to start the project after work one Friday evening and that's where the nightmare began. I was scraping and pulling up tile for over 12 hours straight. As the sun came up on Saturday morning, I was still scraping and peeling and there was tile and glue everywhere. People always say that they are often pleasantly surprised by the floor that lies beneath their floor and that sometimes the original floor is so amazing that they decide to keep it. Well, this was not one of those situations. Beneath my disgusting yellow-tile floor there was an even more disgusting orange tile floor.

I continued to work on the floor all day Saturday. I was exhausted, covered in glue and there was grime and dirt everywhere. I just could not remove the glue. Several tiles were off the floor, but others seemed to want to stay put forever. The glue would not come off the floor; it was like some sort of super-strength, super-hero glue and it was everywhere. I finally took a break from the madness late Saturday night and went to sleep.

On Sunday morning, I woke up to a horrible whining and crying sound. I ran into the kitchen and found my cat stuck to the floor. She had decided to walk into the kitchen and apparently got stuck in the sea of glue and in trying to unstick herself, she instead got more and more stuck. I had to call for back-up, which is always embarrassing.

I called my boyfriend-at-the-time and he came and worked on the floor for two more days, removed the tile and glue with industrial glue remover (the guy at The Home Depot never even mentioned industrial glue remover!), secured the new tile and then made fun of me for about a year. It looked amazing! I, obviously, can not take any credit for the renovation.

I married the boyfriend who fixed my floor and we have since moved to a new apartment with a more modern kitchen. He made me promise not to start any home projects with out him and I agreed. All's well that ends well! However, to this day, and despite the change of location, my cat refuses to step foot (or paw) into the kitchen.

Learn more about this author, Valerie Zane.
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