TERRIBLE DECISIONS: Friday

On July 24, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

Basically took yesterday off from bathroom stuff because of the carpet/tile people coming in to clean; clearing the living room and dining room of anything we could carry counted as work enough, and I spent the day in here working on Searching for Malumba.

I will be satisfied with myself if, by the end of the day, I have:

Cut the door trim so that the tile fits underneath it (already done!)
Fixed the last couple of screws on the plywood piece so that they’re flush
Measured, cut and glued down the Tavy Thin Skin over the vinyl tile and plywood
Restored the living room and dining room to usable status

I will consider it a bonus if I have also:

Laid down a skim coat of mortar over the Thin Skin.

No tiling is planned for today. I’m hoping to get that done this weekend, and I should be able to, especially if I get that skimcoat done.

GOD DAMN YOU FOUR TILES

On August 17, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

The accent tile has got to be completely dry before I can put a tile above it, or it crushes the mesh and shoves them together.

The accent tile is not dry. It’ll take another hour before I’m comfortable.

My mortar is not going to last another hour, and I’m out of mortar. As it is 8 PM on a Sunday, I cannot acquire more mortar at this time.

Which means it’s going to take ANOTHER GODDAMN DAY TO GET MY TILE DONE.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGHHHHHHH.

(There’s a weird optical illusion on the left side of the image, where it looks like some of the tiles are either totally the wrong size or cut in weird places. Not the case. it’s the reflection of the grout lines on the tile on the side facing the shower faucet.)

Terrible Decisions: So far so good

On July 27, 2014July 27, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

The left wall is completed except for the bullnose edge, which is going to be a piece of cake, and the larger middle wall is well along its way– the gap in between it and the walls on the left and right are all tiles that have to be cut to size. We are figuring that we’ll spend the evening after the boy goes to bed cutting tiles and then we’ll actually finish the job later this week. I hung nineteen tiles today, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but shit, I’m exhausted. Bek has been trying to cut the tile, which is turning out to be hellishly complicated, and we’ve each ruined a couple of them trying to get it done right.

One more day ought to do it, though.

In which my day refuses to start

On July 27, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

Hellaciously busy evening last night; I didn’t get home from OtherJob until after midnight, then got up a bit after 8 this morning and spent some time lying on the couch and moaning.

Most of today will be spent tiling, and I mean that f’reals this time, since the measuring that took up most of Thursday is already done. One big difference: today will involve cutting tile, which gives us a whole new way to screw stuff up.

So… whee?

Whee.

Pictures and the usual as the job goes on. Or, y’know, the sudden ending of all life on Earth.

In which that was unexpected (Terrible Decisions, part XIV)

On December 22, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

This is Mr. Bulkhead:

Mr. Bulkhead lives in my bathroom, above my tub. He holds my shower fan and is covered with tile on his lower side. Until this evening, I thought he was full of blown-in insulation from the attic. Then I dremeled my way into him to see what I was in for when I demolished him later this week.

I was a bit startled with what I found.

If you were to poke your face directly into the hole up there, this is what you would see– a perfectly clean and dry space (any dust you see is from cutting through the drywall– not so much as a spiderweb despite the hole back there,) seriously over studded on the bottom (I assume to carry the weight of the tile?) and featuring unexpected and currently (that’s a pun) inexplicable electrical wires. I think that the one on the left runs to a power switch in the hallway– or maybe to the power switch in the bathroom itself, if it turns toward the camera and goes through a bunch of studs along the way. The other one is a bit of a mystery, because it’s not coming from the attic like all the other power lines in the house– I’m guessing there’s a junction box buried in the wall somewhere(*). Best guess is that it feeds a power outlet in the entryway to the house, although it seems like it’s in a weird place for that. Note the drywall along the back wall; that drywall has the bathtub surround tile on it once it gets south of the box.

Here’s the fan:

I cannot believe that that rinkydink summamabitch has been keeping my bathroom dry all these years; that tape should have dissolved somewhere in the eighties. The new fan is considerably larger and more powerful; we got the best one we had available to us.

Hooking it up is gonna be interesting. I had the idea that we’d be pushing away a bunch of insulation around it, moving the ceiling up, and tying it into the existing vent pipe however that might be done; the nice clean box we have is now calling that plan into question– like, maybe we keep the damn thing now that we know what it looks like? I dunno. We’d still have to redrywall at least the “floor” of the thing since the ceiling tile still has to come down. That electrical line in the back has me concerned, too; to keep that in the wall we’d have to notch out the studs back there or something. Doable, obviously, but I wasn’t planning on moving electrical lines even if it’s easy.

On the plus side, the wallpaper removal has been the easiest thing in the world. I’m honestly not sure right now if this new discovery has made this job more or less of a pain in the ass. As always, I’ll keep y’all updated. Especially if I hurt myself.

Suggestions and advice are welcome, obviously.

(* It’s my understanding that you’re not supposed to do that? Although maybe that wasn’t code when the house was built? I dunno; right now I don’t even know what it’s back there for, so speculating about whether the possibly-nonexistent junction box is up to code or not seems kinda pointless.)