Angela Law

Today was ceramic tile day. It came out awesome. We did gray and white in a checkerboard pattern. The tiles were 6″x6″ in size. I’m really happy with the job. There was one snag, of course. We bought a box of the ceramic baseboard trim. I started taking the pieces out of the box and they came out in pieces. Uh oh. We ended up just three short. All told, there were six broken pieces that will be going back to Lowe’s sometime soon–that stuff’s too expensive to chalk up to a loss. There were three other broken pieces that we were able to get parts from. That’s a lot of broken stuff. Plus the one box of ceramic tile we ordered was obviously dropped on its side at some point and the ends of half of the tiles were broken off. But at least we were able to use these at the “cut” pieces. And we have a half box of each color left over so there was enough to cover any losses.

Brian took his bike to Lowe’s and is trying to buy the pieces we need plus a few extra to have on hand. I sure hope they have them in stock. I hate it when a job is so close to being done, but you can’t complete it.

Tomorrow will be an easy day. Brian goes back to work. I’m off for one more day, but I can’t work in the bathroom tomorrow because the tile needs to set for 24 hours before it gets any traffic. Tomorrow evening we’ll be able to grout. Then, at least the floor will be done. So, I guess during the day I’ll get caught up on my other work that I’ve been ignoring for the past week. A nap would be nice, too.

Brian managed t’ finish up th’ plumbin’ today. ‘t seems t’ be workin’, but we`re goin’ t’ keep our one good eye on ‘t fer a wee days t’ make sure thar be nay leaks before we close up th’ plumbin’ access area.

I continued t’ work on th’ walls. Thar be still much patchin’ t’ do, but things be finally startin’ t’ look better in thar.

’tis hard t’ believe we`ve been workin’ on th’ hade fer five days already. I think ’tis on accoun’ o’ th’ plumbin’ tookst so long t’ do–th’ three days ‘t encompassed seem like one. We`re nay too far off track, tho. I`d say we`re only about a tide behind me virtual schedule at this point. I be kind o’ lookin’ fore t’ Thursday, tho, as we`re takin’ th’ night off. I`d say se’en days straight be long enough t’ work–we deserve a break.

Translation provided by Pirate Speak.

One phrase describes today and that is “plumbing disaster”. Of course the way plumbing projects usually go around here, I’m probably being redundant with my phrasing. Actually things went pretty well up to a point–all of Brian’s soldered joints worked, so that was definitely a plus. When he turned on the water, one joint was leaking and it was a threaded one. The problem is that something was soldered to the piece connected to the thread, so it could not be tightened.

He took the section of pipe out and then tried to resolder it, but there was water in the lines that we could not get out (for those of you not versed in plumbing, this is a losing proposition). So, we decided to take a different approach and went to the dreaded WalMart to try to find some new parts. They had no copper fittings whatsoever, but I did see a canister of MAPP gas. Brian always uses propane. I read about MAPP gas the last time he had problems soldering something. I tried to find some at Lowe’s, but couldn’t, so we just stuck with the propane. As it turns out, MAPP gas totally kicks ass. I should add that for three hours, Brian tried to resolder the pipes with propane. After we got the MAPP gas, it took five minutes to resolder the same pipe. That is some good stuff.

Anyway, we turned the water back on again and there was a small leak around the other threaded pipe (do you see a theme here?). To top things off, only hot water is coming through the spigot at the moment. We’re hoping it has something to do with the bread we stuffed in the pipe while trying to resolder. With any luck, it will dissolve overnight and everything will be in working order in the morning. The leak seems to have stopped as well, though things like that make me nervous. We’ll see how that’s working in the morning, too.

Hail Mary, full of grace…

Get used to it. I suspect you’ll be reading these posts until the end of October.

Today wasn’t as productive as I’d hoped. Of course, I’m always way too hopeful about getting stuff done. Plus, we slept in this morning, so we got a later start than we should have. But, we were both beat from the previous two days’ work so neither of us set an alarm last night.

I worked on the walls for a bit–patching the plaster and some of the holes. My work is not done yet–we have to put in some new drywall around the tub and where the medicine cabinet used to be. Not quite sure when that’s going to happen. And I know we’re going to have to cut some holes into the wall for the electrical aspects of the project–those wires have to get through some how. To top things off, I’m going to have to texture paint the room before I paint it. There’s no other way for me to get the walls looking presentable since they used to have tile on them and are all bumpy from the adhesive. I had good success with this when we remodeled our kitchen five years ago, but I do not like to texture paint. It makes an incredible mess. Every time I do it, I swear it’s the last time. My only consolation is that the bathroom is very small.

Brian spent the day getting the new bathroom fixtures ready to install (no small task). This involved much soldering of pipes, and elbows, and sleeves. (oh my!) I was hoping he’d get them installed today, but we ran out of time. Cutting off the water supply is not something that you want to do at 6pm. So, this is the first thing on tomorrow’s agenda.

Today went so-so. Brian had an appointment to go to in the late morning, so we didn’t really get started until late afternoon. And by started, I mean we mostly pondered how to accomplish certain tasks that need to be done. We also managed to finish up the tub stuff that wasn’t completed yesterday.

After supper, we started on the “real” work of the day–installing the concrete backer board for the ceramic tile. We both felt that we needed to accomplish something today and this was just the thing because now we can install the tile whenever we want. This is good because after the tile is installed, we can hook up the new toilet. Having to go up or down a floor in order to use the restroom is not very convenient (especially in the middle of the night and when a five year old boy is involved). So, the sooner the better.