What the Heck is a Chalk Line?

So now that I have a little more free time on my hands, it's time to work on all of those projects around the house. One of the biggest projects that I wanted to tackle was taking up the carpet in my family room.  The carpet is a cream colored barber that still smelt like the previous owners cat.  It also had a beautiful electric blue paint streak right by the doorway.  It was the only memory I had of the electric blue walls that blinded me every time that I came in the back door.  My dog also liked to claw at the carpet, which left it in tatters.

As soon as the carpet was taken up, it was time to chose new flooring. Since my dog loves digging in the backyard and tracks her muddy paws into the house,  it was decided that a tile or laminate floor would be best.  Next we had to look at price, since the budget is limited.  Also I was looking for something that would be easy to install. I am very much a girly girl and would hate to break a nail.

We decided on peel and stick tiles.  The price was right and according to the instructions on the box, it looked very easy to install.  On the day of installation I worked in the morning and planned to spend the evening finishing the floor.  As I am leaving the mall I get a phone call asking me to stop at Sears and get a chalk line.  A what??  A chalk line?? What the heck is a chalk line??

I then went to Sears and perused the hardware department.  I saw a label claiming to be a chalk line, but to me it looked like measuring tape.  There was no chalk to be seen!  I continued to look around and found a few other packages claiming to be chalk lines that also looked like a measuring tape thingy jingy. So I bought one.

I continue home, throw on my work clothes and get ready to install the tiles.  Just as I was about start laying the tiles in a corner, I was told that we needed to start from the center of the room, hence the reason that we needed a chalk line.  We measure the room, find the center, then I lay the line down on the floor and start to pat the string to get the chalk on the floor.  It's not working!  Why do I see no chalk?  Then I was told that I had to snap the string, wow that worked great!  I now see a nice straight chalk line.

From there we start to install the tile.  Things were going great until we worked our way our to the outer walls.  The tile are too big and need to be trimmed down. Not only do the have to be cut, they have to be lined up to the pattern!  Ok I can do this.....I will just cut a tile in half and it should fit. Umm no....it's still too big.  I will trim it down a little. Crap I trimmed it too much and now it's too short.  New tile......trim, trim again, trim a little more, yay it fits!  And this particular tile only took me 20 minutes to lay.  Only 32 more to go like this!

So it's now 2am and the floor is done.  It looks very good and I no longer smell the cat urine.  Please let the tile stay stuck to the floor.  I would hate to go throw this process all over again!