I should've paid that guy to tile the shower. Now that I've done this, I see why folks charge so much to do it.
Yesterday morning, all that remained to be tiled was the doorway, the floor, and the step-over. Tiling the doorway would require a lot of sawing, as it was all narrow spaces. The floor I expected to be a piece of cake, since the tiles are on mesh sheets. Because I had some errands to run, it was 11:30 before I could get started. It was nearly 11 p.m. when I quit, and there's still a little more to do before we can grout.
Before leaving to run the errands, I had stood in front of the shower, inspecting my work with a fresh, critical eye. There was another spot that bothered me, a foot above the floor in the front corner. The wall wasn't *quite* straight in that spot, and we'd had to cut the tiles progressively wider as we moved up the wall. The lower three tiles in that corner, the first ones we'd cut, were too narrow. Since I had not yet tiled the doorway, there was nothing to disturb to the left of the tiles, and I could get a pry-tool in there, using the doorway for leverage. I made up my mind to try to pop those three tiles out and replace them with wider ones before I started anything else.
This proved easier than I expected (which kind of makes me worry about the strength of this adhesive). I pried off the three tiles, replaced them with tiles that were 1/4" wider, and felt much better. It was so easy that I turned around and eyed that spot on the opposite wall, the one I said will probably annoy me for the rest of my life, thinking I might just...nah, better not.
Now, onto the rest.
Our shower is in a corner, not angled across it, but squared-up in it. To the left of the doorway is a 7"-thick wall that separates the shower from the vanity. I'd decided to tile the face of this narrow wall in the same design as the shower, itself - square tiles from the floor up to a border, then diagonal tiles from the border to the ceiling. We are using 6" tiles (they are actually 5.75", or thereabout). This meant that the 7" wall would only hold one row of tiles, with a little over 1/2" to spare on either side. At the tile store, we'd looked for trim pieces - we wanted narrow L-shaped things to put on the corners of this wall - but they didn't have any that matched our tile. We had left the store without trim, thinking we'd cross that bridge when we got to it. Well, I was to that bridge, and there was nothing to do but make my own trim. All I could think to do was cut 1/4" wide strips to border the tiles.
Let me tell you, cutting a 1/4"-wide strip of tile is a pain in the butt. First, a strip that small will snap in two halfway through the cutting process if you're not careful (and even if you are). And if you do manage to cut a strip without breaking it, there's still the problem of a raw, slightly-jagged edge that must be ground smoothe. Working with pieces that small, that close to a running saw blade, is a nerve-wrecker. Before I'd cut too many of those strips, I was wishing for a gin & tonic to relax my shoulders, but was scared to have one, for fear of relaxing enough to lose a finger to the saw. It took a long time, but I cut those narrow strips - nearly 30 of those m*th*rf*ck*rs, not counting the ones that broke in the saw - and glued them end-to-end up both sides of the tiles, leaving a space for grout. It doesn't look too bad, but I'm scared one of those strips is going to fall off the first time somebody bumps the wall. We'll see.
The floor was fairly easy. The Husband took over this part of the job. Since the tiles are so small, they contoured themselves nicely over the slope around the drain. Since they are on a mesh strip, spacing them was not a problem. Best of all, we didn't need the saw to cut the rows apart. I'd envisioned tiling the step-over with the same 6" tile we put on the walls, but when we discovered that we'd have to crank the saw back up to do this, we opted to use the tile mesh, instead, no cutting required. It looks good.
Incredibly - how long have we been at this now? - there's still a little stripping and cutting to do today, to finish places we were just too tired to tackle last night, like places where 1" tiles will have to be halved to fit into the space, and one place where I still haven't come up with an idea for finishing the edge. Those places will need to dry overnight before we can start grouting, and then the grout will need to dry for a couple of days before we can seal it, and then the sealant needs to dry a couple of days before we can use the shower. We might be showering by next Saturday, two weeks from when we started.
Yeah, I can see why they charge so much to do this.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Tiling the Shower (Days 4 and 5)
Absolutely nothing happened in the shower on Day 4, as the tile-setter was whipped and opted to employ Scarlett O'Hara's mantra, "Tomorrow is another day."
Day 5, however, was a different story. As soon as The Husband left for work, I got busy. By the time he came home from work, I was almost finished setting the tiles on the walls. I'd been climbing in an out of a chair all day. My gimpy knee was the size of a cantaloupe, my back was aching, and my stomach was growling from hunger. My face and hair were freckled with tile-saw spit. He took pity on me and pitched in to saw the final triangles for the gaps at the ceiling, and then he sent me for a much-needed shower (in another bathroom, of course) while he cleaned tools and vaccuumed debris. Bless him.
There's still a little more to do, but, overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the job we've done so far. There is one spot on one wall that doesn't suit me, a place where a tile slipped after I pinched a rubber spacer from beneath it when I was tiling on the opposite wall. The slippage created a "kink" in the diagonal grout line that, though probably not noticeable to a casual observer, will likely annoy me for the rest of my life, but I have a feeling that trying to correct it at this point might stir up a whole mess of trouble.
What remains to be tiled is a strip at the edge of the doorway, the step-over, and the floor. We also have to figure out how to deal with a couple of raw edges - places where tile meets sheetrock - as nothing we saw at the tile store seemed right for the job. I'll finish the doorway and the step-over today. I think I could finish the floor, too, but I am contemplating waiting to lay the floor tiles until we've grouted the walls. The tile we chose for the floor is 1" square tiles affixed to a 12" x 12" sheet of mesh. It should be easy to lay, but I am worried that walking on it, and especially setting a chair or step-ladder on it, while grouting the walls might dislodge, chip, or crack the tiny pieces. As for the edge-finishing part...well, tomorrow is another day.
Day 5, however, was a different story. As soon as The Husband left for work, I got busy. By the time he came home from work, I was almost finished setting the tiles on the walls. I'd been climbing in an out of a chair all day. My gimpy knee was the size of a cantaloupe, my back was aching, and my stomach was growling from hunger. My face and hair were freckled with tile-saw spit. He took pity on me and pitched in to saw the final triangles for the gaps at the ceiling, and then he sent me for a much-needed shower (in another bathroom, of course) while he cleaned tools and vaccuumed debris. Bless him.
There's still a little more to do, but, overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the job we've done so far. There is one spot on one wall that doesn't suit me, a place where a tile slipped after I pinched a rubber spacer from beneath it when I was tiling on the opposite wall. The slippage created a "kink" in the diagonal grout line that, though probably not noticeable to a casual observer, will likely annoy me for the rest of my life, but I have a feeling that trying to correct it at this point might stir up a whole mess of trouble.
What remains to be tiled is a strip at the edge of the doorway, the step-over, and the floor. We also have to figure out how to deal with a couple of raw edges - places where tile meets sheetrock - as nothing we saw at the tile store seemed right for the job. I'll finish the doorway and the step-over today. I think I could finish the floor, too, but I am contemplating waiting to lay the floor tiles until we've grouted the walls. The tile we chose for the floor is 1" square tiles affixed to a 12" x 12" sheet of mesh. It should be easy to lay, but I am worried that walking on it, and especially setting a chair or step-ladder on it, while grouting the walls might dislodge, chip, or crack the tiny pieces. As for the edge-finishing part...well, tomorrow is another day.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Tiling the Shower (Day 3)
Day 3 of the tiling project, and it's the 4th of July, the last day of our 3-day weekend. We'd hoped to finish the tiling today, but we'd been invited to two cookouts, one at noon, and one at 2, and were supposed to cook food to take to each meal. With only a couple of hours to work, we dived in.
Last night, I'd tiled the "plumbing wall" up to the point where we'd have to cut tiles to go around the water control knob. When I went into the bathroom to resume the work, The Husband was already standing in the shower, inspecting the hole we'd cut for the control knob. He had a frustrated look on his face. "I think we've covered up one of our screw holes," he said, pointing to the plumbing. ("Screw holes." You learn techical terms like this when you become a do-it-yourselfer.) We got the flashlight and looked, and, sure enough, we'd goofed. The brass plate that covers up the ugly plumbing business has two holes in it where two screws should go to hold it in place. Behind the wall was a metal bracket with two holes to accomodate the screws. We could only see one of them. We'd have to make the hole bigger.
I groaned, remembering how hard it had been to cut the backer board. The hole didn't need enlarging by much, but cutting off a little bit of that stuff is harder than cutting off a lot. What in the world were we going to use to do it? We couldn't use the jigsaw or the Craftsman cutter; there were pipes nearby, and we wouldn't risk drilling into them. The job would take forever using a utility knife. Our minds raced to think of some tool in this house that might saw, or gnaw, or file a half inch off the hole. I went to the utility room to dig around in the toolbox and the cabinet, looking for a saw we once had, but couldn't find it. I went back to the bathroom. "Remember that bad-ass little hand saw we used when we cut that metal threshhold?" I asked to The Husband. Its blade was rectangular and edged with viscious teeth. "It might be too wide to fit in the hole, but...." The Husband said he thought we could replace the original blade with the jigsaw blade. He disappeared for a moment, then returned with said saw, jigsaw blade in place. It took him less than a minute to hack away enough board to uncover the hole. We were back in business. I started smearing adhesive while he went to cut some tiles to fit around the knob.
For a few minutes, we were like a well-oiled machine, pasting and cutting and slapping those tiles on the wall. In no time, we reached the point where we'd decided to insert a decorative tile border. This stuff is cool. It's a mesh strip on which small tiles have been glued in a pretty pattern. It's all tiny squares and diamonds and triangles. You just glue the strip to the wall as a unit. We'd bought an extra strip to use for parts, knowing that the odds were against being able to use only whole strips, and we'd been right. Before the border was completely in place, we'd peeled off a good number of tiles to fill in the design in the corners and at the edges. Thank goodness we'd picked up a tool to score and nip tile, for we did have to trim a few of those tiny pieces.
Above the border, we'd planned to set the tiles diagonally (a quilter would call this setting them "on point"). This meant cutting tiles in half to place along the top edge of the border and at the ceiling. But, hey, we have a wet saw, right? How hard could this be?
Well, it's hard. Kind of. First, using the wet saw can be kind of a pain. The tile wants to chip as the sawblade nears the end of a cut, and that leaves a little notch on the corner of the triangles. (We found that if we hold the tile really tight, and keep an even pressure while pushing the tile across the blade, it doesn't chip as much.) Then there's the problem of the way a diagonal messes with the mind. After hours of looking at the tiles set square, I had to learn to re-see the pattern. We had trouble remembering which side of a triangle needed shaving once we moved it to the saw. Plus, I was now working directly at eye level and could plainly see every little imperfection in angle and distance. We didn't get many of those diagonal tiles laid before it was time to make ready for the cookouts.
7:30 p.m. - Having been outside in the heat all afternoon, and having stuffed ourselves with food, the last thing either of us wanted to do was to come home and commence tiling. At 9:30, it was lights out for us. The shower can wait.
Last night, I'd tiled the "plumbing wall" up to the point where we'd have to cut tiles to go around the water control knob. When I went into the bathroom to resume the work, The Husband was already standing in the shower, inspecting the hole we'd cut for the control knob. He had a frustrated look on his face. "I think we've covered up one of our screw holes," he said, pointing to the plumbing. ("Screw holes." You learn techical terms like this when you become a do-it-yourselfer.) We got the flashlight and looked, and, sure enough, we'd goofed. The brass plate that covers up the ugly plumbing business has two holes in it where two screws should go to hold it in place. Behind the wall was a metal bracket with two holes to accomodate the screws. We could only see one of them. We'd have to make the hole bigger.
I groaned, remembering how hard it had been to cut the backer board. The hole didn't need enlarging by much, but cutting off a little bit of that stuff is harder than cutting off a lot. What in the world were we going to use to do it? We couldn't use the jigsaw or the Craftsman cutter; there were pipes nearby, and we wouldn't risk drilling into them. The job would take forever using a utility knife. Our minds raced to think of some tool in this house that might saw, or gnaw, or file a half inch off the hole. I went to the utility room to dig around in the toolbox and the cabinet, looking for a saw we once had, but couldn't find it. I went back to the bathroom. "Remember that bad-ass little hand saw we used when we cut that metal threshhold?" I asked to The Husband. Its blade was rectangular and edged with viscious teeth. "It might be too wide to fit in the hole, but...." The Husband said he thought we could replace the original blade with the jigsaw blade. He disappeared for a moment, then returned with said saw, jigsaw blade in place. It took him less than a minute to hack away enough board to uncover the hole. We were back in business. I started smearing adhesive while he went to cut some tiles to fit around the knob.
For a few minutes, we were like a well-oiled machine, pasting and cutting and slapping those tiles on the wall. In no time, we reached the point where we'd decided to insert a decorative tile border. This stuff is cool. It's a mesh strip on which small tiles have been glued in a pretty pattern. It's all tiny squares and diamonds and triangles. You just glue the strip to the wall as a unit. We'd bought an extra strip to use for parts, knowing that the odds were against being able to use only whole strips, and we'd been right. Before the border was completely in place, we'd peeled off a good number of tiles to fill in the design in the corners and at the edges. Thank goodness we'd picked up a tool to score and nip tile, for we did have to trim a few of those tiny pieces.
Above the border, we'd planned to set the tiles diagonally (a quilter would call this setting them "on point"). This meant cutting tiles in half to place along the top edge of the border and at the ceiling. But, hey, we have a wet saw, right? How hard could this be?
Well, it's hard. Kind of. First, using the wet saw can be kind of a pain. The tile wants to chip as the sawblade nears the end of a cut, and that leaves a little notch on the corner of the triangles. (We found that if we hold the tile really tight, and keep an even pressure while pushing the tile across the blade, it doesn't chip as much.) Then there's the problem of the way a diagonal messes with the mind. After hours of looking at the tiles set square, I had to learn to re-see the pattern. We had trouble remembering which side of a triangle needed shaving once we moved it to the saw. Plus, I was now working directly at eye level and could plainly see every little imperfection in angle and distance. We didn't get many of those diagonal tiles laid before it was time to make ready for the cookouts.
7:30 p.m. - Having been outside in the heat all afternoon, and having stuffed ourselves with food, the last thing either of us wanted to do was to come home and commence tiling. At 9:30, it was lights out for us. The shower can wait.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Tiling the Shower (Day 2)
Work on the tiling project resumed just after breakfast this morning. The plan was to quickly cut and install 3 more strips of cement board to cover the step-over, do a little caulking, mud the seams, and start tiling.
The strip-cutting didn't move so quickly. Our last good masonry blade broke just as we started the final cut of the 3rd strip. "We still have the two cheap-o blades that came with the saw," I told The Husband. He said we might as well try them. Whereas the "good" masonry blades had gnawed through the cement board at an agonizlingly slow pace, those cheap-o blades sliced through it like a hot knife through butter. Who knew??? If we'd broken all of the good blades sooner, we'd have finished the sawing in half the time. With the cement board in place, it was time to start tiling.
One of the videos that we had watched had recommended nailing a straight-edged board one tile width (plus an extra 1/4" for grout) from the floor, tiling upward from that point, using the straight-edge as a baseline, and then going back to install the bottom row later. The reason for this is that the mortar bed might not be perfectly level, and if we'd started laying the tile along an unlevel floor, the whole thing would've been crooked. We used a level to draw a straight, level line, and then we nailed yardsticks along the line. The first row of tiles would nudge against the yardsticks. Rubber spacers would keep the vertical spacing even for that first row, and they would keep both the horizontal and vertical spacing even for the following rows. When we go back to install the bottom row, we'll use the spacers to maintain even spacing above them, and fill in any un-level areas below them with grout, after we lay the floor tiles.
We'd just finished nailing the yardsticks in place when some friends dropped by for a visit. We spent a couple of hours talking to them, but hurried back to work as soon as they left.
Smearing that first blob of adhesive on the wall and setting that first tile is the scariest part. We stood there for a moment, staring at the blank wall, dreading that leap. Finally I said, "Gimme that trowel," and went to smearing adhesive. With the first tile in hand, the question became, should we start in the middle of the back wall and work outwards in both directions, or should we start in a corner and work across? I expect the answer to this question might differ from one project to the next, depending on the size and location of the space, and the angle from which the space will most often be seen. We decided to start in the right-hand corner because it is the corner that is most visible. Working from right to left required us to cut a narrow strip of tile to fill in the left-hand corner, but, when the project is finished, one will have to be in the shower to notice the narrow strip. If we'd started in the center and worked out in both directions, it would have been necessary for us to cut narrow strips for both corners, and they would have been very visible from outside the shower stall.
As I was set the tile, The Husband worked the wet saw, cutting the strips for the corners. I laid about three rows of tile, then stood up to stretch and drink some water. The Husband offered to take over the tiling while I took a break. I shoved a few more boxes of tile within his reach, opened another bag of rubber spacers, and left him tiling while I went for a glass of water. A few minutes later, he came out, throwing up his hands in frustration. Something was amiss, it seemed. I quietly went into the bathroom to see what the problem was.
The spacing was off. I checked to see if all of his tiles were snugged up against the rubber spacers. They were. I peeled off a few tiles and jacked around with the spacing, lining up the edges of the tiles as best I could, but something was still wrong. The tiles weren't level anymore, and the spaces weren't even. It was then that I noticed that some of the rubber spacers were smaller than others. At the tile store, we'd grabbed two bags of spacers from the same hook, but one bag contained 1/4" spacers, and the other contained 3/16" spacers. He'd randomly used some of the 3/16" spacers, and that measly 16th of an inch difference skewed the pattern. Once we figured out the problem, we ditched the smaller spacers, re-set the tiles using the 1/4" spacers, and moved on.
We're using 6" tiles on the walls, so the work moved pretty fast when we worked out the glitches. In the four hours that we worked at the tiling, we managed to do a little less than half of the shower. Though The Husband finds this part of the work to be tedious and nerve-wracking, I find it kind of relaxing. (My quilting hobby might account for this difference; I am used to working with small squares and 1/4" seams; it's a lot like tiling, minus the adhesive.) I expect he will be more than happy to turn me loose with the trowel tomorrow when we get back to work.
The strip-cutting didn't move so quickly. Our last good masonry blade broke just as we started the final cut of the 3rd strip. "We still have the two cheap-o blades that came with the saw," I told The Husband. He said we might as well try them. Whereas the "good" masonry blades had gnawed through the cement board at an agonizlingly slow pace, those cheap-o blades sliced through it like a hot knife through butter. Who knew??? If we'd broken all of the good blades sooner, we'd have finished the sawing in half the time. With the cement board in place, it was time to start tiling.
One of the videos that we had watched had recommended nailing a straight-edged board one tile width (plus an extra 1/4" for grout) from the floor, tiling upward from that point, using the straight-edge as a baseline, and then going back to install the bottom row later. The reason for this is that the mortar bed might not be perfectly level, and if we'd started laying the tile along an unlevel floor, the whole thing would've been crooked. We used a level to draw a straight, level line, and then we nailed yardsticks along the line. The first row of tiles would nudge against the yardsticks. Rubber spacers would keep the vertical spacing even for that first row, and they would keep both the horizontal and vertical spacing even for the following rows. When we go back to install the bottom row, we'll use the spacers to maintain even spacing above them, and fill in any un-level areas below them with grout, after we lay the floor tiles.
We'd just finished nailing the yardsticks in place when some friends dropped by for a visit. We spent a couple of hours talking to them, but hurried back to work as soon as they left.
Smearing that first blob of adhesive on the wall and setting that first tile is the scariest part. We stood there for a moment, staring at the blank wall, dreading that leap. Finally I said, "Gimme that trowel," and went to smearing adhesive. With the first tile in hand, the question became, should we start in the middle of the back wall and work outwards in both directions, or should we start in a corner and work across? I expect the answer to this question might differ from one project to the next, depending on the size and location of the space, and the angle from which the space will most often be seen. We decided to start in the right-hand corner because it is the corner that is most visible. Working from right to left required us to cut a narrow strip of tile to fill in the left-hand corner, but, when the project is finished, one will have to be in the shower to notice the narrow strip. If we'd started in the center and worked out in both directions, it would have been necessary for us to cut narrow strips for both corners, and they would have been very visible from outside the shower stall.
As I was set the tile, The Husband worked the wet saw, cutting the strips for the corners. I laid about three rows of tile, then stood up to stretch and drink some water. The Husband offered to take over the tiling while I took a break. I shoved a few more boxes of tile within his reach, opened another bag of rubber spacers, and left him tiling while I went for a glass of water. A few minutes later, he came out, throwing up his hands in frustration. Something was amiss, it seemed. I quietly went into the bathroom to see what the problem was.
The spacing was off. I checked to see if all of his tiles were snugged up against the rubber spacers. They were. I peeled off a few tiles and jacked around with the spacing, lining up the edges of the tiles as best I could, but something was still wrong. The tiles weren't level anymore, and the spaces weren't even. It was then that I noticed that some of the rubber spacers were smaller than others. At the tile store, we'd grabbed two bags of spacers from the same hook, but one bag contained 1/4" spacers, and the other contained 3/16" spacers. He'd randomly used some of the 3/16" spacers, and that measly 16th of an inch difference skewed the pattern. Once we figured out the problem, we ditched the smaller spacers, re-set the tiles using the 1/4" spacers, and moved on.
We're using 6" tiles on the walls, so the work moved pretty fast when we worked out the glitches. In the four hours that we worked at the tiling, we managed to do a little less than half of the shower. Though The Husband finds this part of the work to be tedious and nerve-wracking, I find it kind of relaxing. (My quilting hobby might account for this difference; I am used to working with small squares and 1/4" seams; it's a lot like tiling, minus the adhesive.) I expect he will be more than happy to turn me loose with the trowel tomorrow when we get back to work.
Tiling the Shower (Day 1)
When we bought our tile a week ago, I imagined that we would start working on the shower right away, finishing it in the evenings, a little at a time. As it turned out, the week was crazy with meetings and working late, and we opted to wait until the weekend, when we would have 3 days of uninterrupted work time.
It was 11 a.m. yesterday (Saturday) when we started. The weather man had predicted the temperature to reach nearly 100 degrees, so we set up the outdoor part of our work station first by situating the patio umbrella to knock the sun off of us, and directing a large box fan toward the table where we'd be doing the cutting.
Step 1: hang the 5' x 3' tile backer board, which would have to be cut to fit the small shower cubicle. We'd watched internet videos on how to do this. Piece of cake, they'd said. Just mark a line with a pencil, score the line with a utility knife, and snap the board in two along the cut, they'd said. We dragged the first piece of 5' x 3' backer board onto the table, marked it, and scored it. It did not just snap in two, like the video guys said it would. The problem was that we were cutting only a 1" strip off the long side of the board; there wasn't enough room to grasp it or put weight behind it for a clean break. We scored and scored and scored. We flipped the board over and scored some more. Finally, after about 45 minutes, we managed to break off the 1" strip, one ragged little piece at a time. Our backer board was dotted with big drops of our sweat.
"This scoring-and-snapping technique ain't gonna work," I said to The Husband as we raised up, our backs aching from having bent over the table for so long. "We need power tools."
Years ago at Christmas, my mother gave the family men-folk a Craftsman All-in-One cutting tool. We had never used the one she'd given to The Husband, but just last week, my nephew had commented that it was "the stuff." I fished it out of the utility room. We inserted a cutting bit, took it outside, plugged it up, and tried it. The cutting bit finally punched through the cement board, but it would not then proceed along the line we'd drawn. We switched bits. Same deal. "We need a cutting bit for masonry," The Husband said. I said I'd run to the hardware store to get one.
On the way to the store, I remembered how the video guys had cut the holes for their pipes. They'd drawn squares instead of circles. They'd drilled holes at each corner of the square and used a jigsaw to cut the lines between the holes. We'd already looked for our jigsaw but had not found it. I'd buy one at the hardware store, along with some masonry blades and, for good measure, a masonry cutting bit for the Craftsman tool.
The hardware store did not have a masonry cutting bit, but they did hook me up with a jigsaw and three masonry blades. I brought them home, and we went back to work. We cheered when we brought the first piece of board inside and discovered that the holes we'd cut actually fit over the plumbing pipes. I held the board in place while The Husband nailed it. He'd not finished nailing the top of the board when he bashed his thumb with the hammer. I sent him to put a Band-Aid on his bleeding thumb while I finished nailing that piece. We went back outside to cut another board.
The first jigsaw blade broke as we were cutting the second board. We inserted a new blade and kept working. The cutting went painfully slow. Since we were cutting such small strips from the edges of the boards, the vibration was terrible. Our marked lines were a blur, and we'd have to stop every inch or two to make sure we were actually cutting on the lines. The air under the umbrella was thick with cement dust, and we nearly suffocated inside our masks despite the breeze from the box fan. Sweat poured. A horsefly bit me on the neck, sending waves of pain-chills down my arm. Our noses were full of cement dust boogers.
Whose idea was this, anyway? When I voiced this thought aloud, The Husband cut me the "I am going to kill you" look.
We kept sawing and hammering. Broke another saw blade. Hammered the thumb and made it bleed again. Realized that if we'd hung the board on the back wall sideways instead of lengthwise, we wouldn't have to cut skinny strips to fill in. Decided to take that board down.
5:30 p.m. - "I'm going to take a short break and stir up the banana pudding," I said to The Husband as he was removing the ill-fitting board. His sister had invited us to a cookout and pool party at her house, just down the road. We were supposed to be there around 7, and I was to bring dessert.
6 p.m. - Back to work. We had to cut two more boards to finish the back wall, and then we'd be done, or so we thought.
7:30 p.m. - I gave a little squeal of triumph as we hung the last sheet: "Yay! We're done! Let's get cleaned up and go eat!" The Husband turned around to come out of the shower stall, and then he gave a little groan. We had not yet covered the "step-over" (the little ledge at the front of the shower) with backer board. That would take three more strips. Skinny strips. Pain-in-the-*ss strips. At the rate we'd been going, it'd take us another two hours to do that part.
"Tomorrow," we said in unison.
I headed for the shower in another bathroom. When the water hit my cement-dust-soaked hair and skin, I was momentarily afraid of being turned into a concrete statue. "Do yourself a favor," I told The Husband when I got out of the shower, "and shake some of the cement dust out of your hair before you wet it."
Thank goodness someone else was in charge of cooking supper.
Today, we'll saw and install the remaining strips, seal the seams, and, hopefully, begin tiling. I would not dare to venture a guess as to how long it'll take us to finish.
Come look for us if you don't hear from me soon. Since today's work will involve some bad-ass adhesive and small spaces, you'll probably find one or both of us stuck to a wall in the shower.
It was 11 a.m. yesterday (Saturday) when we started. The weather man had predicted the temperature to reach nearly 100 degrees, so we set up the outdoor part of our work station first by situating the patio umbrella to knock the sun off of us, and directing a large box fan toward the table where we'd be doing the cutting.
Step 1: hang the 5' x 3' tile backer board, which would have to be cut to fit the small shower cubicle. We'd watched internet videos on how to do this. Piece of cake, they'd said. Just mark a line with a pencil, score the line with a utility knife, and snap the board in two along the cut, they'd said. We dragged the first piece of 5' x 3' backer board onto the table, marked it, and scored it. It did not just snap in two, like the video guys said it would. The problem was that we were cutting only a 1" strip off the long side of the board; there wasn't enough room to grasp it or put weight behind it for a clean break. We scored and scored and scored. We flipped the board over and scored some more. Finally, after about 45 minutes, we managed to break off the 1" strip, one ragged little piece at a time. Our backer board was dotted with big drops of our sweat.
"This scoring-and-snapping technique ain't gonna work," I said to The Husband as we raised up, our backs aching from having bent over the table for so long. "We need power tools."
Years ago at Christmas, my mother gave the family men-folk a Craftsman All-in-One cutting tool. We had never used the one she'd given to The Husband, but just last week, my nephew had commented that it was "the stuff." I fished it out of the utility room. We inserted a cutting bit, took it outside, plugged it up, and tried it. The cutting bit finally punched through the cement board, but it would not then proceed along the line we'd drawn. We switched bits. Same deal. "We need a cutting bit for masonry," The Husband said. I said I'd run to the hardware store to get one.
On the way to the store, I remembered how the video guys had cut the holes for their pipes. They'd drawn squares instead of circles. They'd drilled holes at each corner of the square and used a jigsaw to cut the lines between the holes. We'd already looked for our jigsaw but had not found it. I'd buy one at the hardware store, along with some masonry blades and, for good measure, a masonry cutting bit for the Craftsman tool.
The hardware store did not have a masonry cutting bit, but they did hook me up with a jigsaw and three masonry blades. I brought them home, and we went back to work. We cheered when we brought the first piece of board inside and discovered that the holes we'd cut actually fit over the plumbing pipes. I held the board in place while The Husband nailed it. He'd not finished nailing the top of the board when he bashed his thumb with the hammer. I sent him to put a Band-Aid on his bleeding thumb while I finished nailing that piece. We went back outside to cut another board.
The first jigsaw blade broke as we were cutting the second board. We inserted a new blade and kept working. The cutting went painfully slow. Since we were cutting such small strips from the edges of the boards, the vibration was terrible. Our marked lines were a blur, and we'd have to stop every inch or two to make sure we were actually cutting on the lines. The air under the umbrella was thick with cement dust, and we nearly suffocated inside our masks despite the breeze from the box fan. Sweat poured. A horsefly bit me on the neck, sending waves of pain-chills down my arm. Our noses were full of cement dust boogers.
Whose idea was this, anyway? When I voiced this thought aloud, The Husband cut me the "I am going to kill you" look.
We kept sawing and hammering. Broke another saw blade. Hammered the thumb and made it bleed again. Realized that if we'd hung the board on the back wall sideways instead of lengthwise, we wouldn't have to cut skinny strips to fill in. Decided to take that board down.
5:30 p.m. - "I'm going to take a short break and stir up the banana pudding," I said to The Husband as he was removing the ill-fitting board. His sister had invited us to a cookout and pool party at her house, just down the road. We were supposed to be there around 7, and I was to bring dessert.
6 p.m. - Back to work. We had to cut two more boards to finish the back wall, and then we'd be done, or so we thought.
7:30 p.m. - I gave a little squeal of triumph as we hung the last sheet: "Yay! We're done! Let's get cleaned up and go eat!" The Husband turned around to come out of the shower stall, and then he gave a little groan. We had not yet covered the "step-over" (the little ledge at the front of the shower) with backer board. That would take three more strips. Skinny strips. Pain-in-the-*ss strips. At the rate we'd been going, it'd take us another two hours to do that part.
"Tomorrow," we said in unison.
I headed for the shower in another bathroom. When the water hit my cement-dust-soaked hair and skin, I was momentarily afraid of being turned into a concrete statue. "Do yourself a favor," I told The Husband when I got out of the shower, "and shake some of the cement dust out of your hair before you wet it."
Thank goodness someone else was in charge of cooking supper.
Today, we'll saw and install the remaining strips, seal the seams, and, hopefully, begin tiling. I would not dare to venture a guess as to how long it'll take us to finish.
Come look for us if you don't hear from me soon. Since today's work will involve some bad-ass adhesive and small spaces, you'll probably find one or both of us stuck to a wall in the shower.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Yeah, rain!
We had a home-grown supper Tuesday night: potatoes, squash & onions, cucumbers in vinegar. While I was cooking, my sister-in-law came in, saying she could smell the squash & onions from outside. I sent her home with a few squash for her own supper.
For the most part, the garden is doing well this year (knock on wood). The beans and peas popped right up the minute I planted them (well, almost) and have been thriving. The butterbeans are blooming. Most of the okra is about to be knee high. I had to re-plant some large skips in the okra row, and those seeds have just now sprouted. This might be a good thing, as maybe it won't all start producing at once. The squash plants are acting weird. The first three hills are sporting HUGE, green, leafy plants and have already yielded three or four meals worth of squash. The next four hills are puny, and lime green. The only difference in care and climate of the two groups is that the latter four hills are planted near some sunflowers, which might be shading the squash a little, but not enough, I would think, to effect such a large difference in the plants. Go figure.
Our potato crop may be a little disappointing. You may remember that early in the spring, something dug up about half of the potatoes. We re-planted, but something dug those up, too. (B*st*rds.) We did have some nice, leafy plants. Lately, they have been withering, which I understand potatoes are supposed to do when they're finished making. Last week, I de-grassed the potato rows so that we could find the potatoes to dig them. As I pulled up the grass, the withered potato stems came up, too. I laid the stems back where I'd found them to mark the spots where the plants were. When I left the garden, Pop-Pop went out there and planted tomatoes on top of the potatoes, thinking the spots were empty.
I may be seeing the first signs of blight on the tomatoes. The lower leaves of one or two plants are yellowing, and one has peppery spots. I've been spraying them regularly with Daconil, but used the last of it week before last and didn't remember to buy more. Last week, I sprayed with liquid copper fungicide left over from last year. Since it has rained since then, I went to the garden center, bought some Fung-Oil, and applied it this evening. I also mixed in some stuff that's supposed to cure blossom end rot, hoping to nix two problems with one spraying.
The corn I planted last week is sprouting. Time to think about a scarecrow, I reckon. Don't know what I'll do about the corn that survives the crows, once the raccoons find it.
Every time I see baby corn plants, I think about a story The Husband's family tells about my sister-in-law and a cousin. When they were kids, they would spend summer days with their grandparents. Pappy always raised a garden and would get the grandchildren to help him work it when they visited. My sister-in-law and her cousin decided one day that they would surprise Pappy by chopping weeds in the garden without being asked. Pappy's corn was small, and they chopped down every stalk, thinking they were weeds. The kids (who are now adults with kids of their own) remember this as being the only time they were actually afraid of Pappy. I can sort of see where Pappy was coming from. ;)
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Temporarily Interrupted Gardening
Having worked hard in the garden earlier in the week, I don't have much to do in the dirt this weekend except plant 4 more Roma tomato plants that I bought yesterday. Thursday evening I sprayed fungicide on the tomatoes and, just to make it look more like a "real" garden, planted two short rows of corn, strategically located in the middle of the garden for visual balance. ;) As I was doing my final walk-through before coming home to hit the shower, I noticed several squash ready for picking. I'd told Nanny that she could have these first fruits. If she hasn't already gotten them, I'll pick them and leave them on her back doorstep when I go down there in a few minutes to plant the tomatoes.
Unless some garden emergency arises (e.g., a sudden appearance of tomato worms), I'm done in the garden for a bit, and ready to tackle an indoor project, tiling a shower. This shower was previously a one-piece fiberglass insert. Some time ago, the floor developed a crack. We puttied it and taped it and did all sorts of things to it, but the crack kept getting larger. We decided that instead of installing another fiberglass deal, we'd tile the shower. We pondered various materials, got several estimates for turn-key jobs from professionals, and somewhere along the way decided that this should be the kind of project that we can do ourselves. The only part that I was nervous about tackling was the removal of the old shower and the preparation of the liner pan and mortar base for the floor, so we did hire a professional to do those things. The plumbing pipes also needed to be recessed into the wall just a tad, and he did that, as well. As soon as the mortar base is dry, the shower will be ready for us to install the tile backer board and begin tiling.
We've picked out our tile, but haven't bought it (or the other supplies) yet. We'll make a run to the tile store later today to get everything we need. By tomorrow, the mortar base should be dry. I'd like to think that we can tile this small shower in a day - a professional probably could - but we've done enough of these little projects to know that they take about twice as long as we've estimated, so it'll probably be next weekend before we're finished. I'll show you a picture when we're done!
Unless some garden emergency arises (e.g., a sudden appearance of tomato worms), I'm done in the garden for a bit, and ready to tackle an indoor project, tiling a shower. This shower was previously a one-piece fiberglass insert. Some time ago, the floor developed a crack. We puttied it and taped it and did all sorts of things to it, but the crack kept getting larger. We decided that instead of installing another fiberglass deal, we'd tile the shower. We pondered various materials, got several estimates for turn-key jobs from professionals, and somewhere along the way decided that this should be the kind of project that we can do ourselves. The only part that I was nervous about tackling was the removal of the old shower and the preparation of the liner pan and mortar base for the floor, so we did hire a professional to do those things. The plumbing pipes also needed to be recessed into the wall just a tad, and he did that, as well. As soon as the mortar base is dry, the shower will be ready for us to install the tile backer board and begin tiling.
We've picked out our tile, but haven't bought it (or the other supplies) yet. We'll make a run to the tile store later today to get everything we need. By tomorrow, the mortar base should be dry. I'd like to think that we can tile this small shower in a day - a professional probably could - but we've done enough of these little projects to know that they take about twice as long as we've estimated, so it'll probably be next weekend before we're finished. I'll show you a picture when we're done!
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