sorry for the delay

There was this tile job, see... well this one was not as complicated as some (ahem), but it has a great story nonetheless.

I got this little tile job about the same time a blog buddy took me up on my invitation to come up and say hey. Thankfully, Leo McCool over at butchgirlcat was amenable to coming to the tile job during her visit.

And honestly? Leo rocked. She's wicked smart (just got her Ph.D.) and can read sixteenths of an inch without being shown which lines those are on the tape. I like that. I guess the best way to do this is with pictures. I'll put them up, explain what they are about and fill in the rest. Here goes.


First, let me say this. Never install wall-to-wall carpet in a bathroom. Never. Never, ever, EVER, you understand? Oh nasty.


This job is going to have some challenging spots I think. I'll have to cut around the back of the commode and around that air vent. Hmmm.


First things first, gotta take up the old carpet and see what's underneath.


Oh, this is interesting. There seems to be TWO carpet pads under here: a blue one with a moisture barrier and an older, yellow one stuck to the floor with industrial grade adhesive.

In case no one you know has ever mentioned this, those carpet pads are really nothing more than large, flat SPONGES! That means they absorb. It's what they do. Putting them in a bathroom next to the sink and the tub and shower makes no sense, never mind the toilet!!!! Ewie!!!

I pulled back that foam and is smelled like a colony of weasels had lived there for a decade. Oh man, it was bad. I had to open the window, open the doors to the house, and take a walk outside for a minute. That wet foam had been under there for years before I peeled it back. It was a new kind of bad. You can see the lines left by various soakings of the carpet and the pads beneath. Yeah. It was bad.


So I got all the foam scraped up and all the nail strips around the edges and I sanded what I could of that horrible industrial glue off the hardwood underneath it all. Yes, that is a hardwood floor. Looks like maple, actually, three-and-a-half-inch-wide white maple. Yeah. wrecked with glue and nasty foam.


It looked like there might be moisture damage to the wood near the front of the commode, but it turned out it was ok. That would have been a horror show to fix!

This is one tight damned corner behind the flush and in the corner. and the glue was extra thick back here. Lovely, I tell you. Just lovely.


Just so you know, it is very difficult to cut a ceramic tile on a curve. Leo and I did our best to cut around this little ogee. What fun. Not.


In order to get all of the carpet bits out and to make sure there was no rot anywhere, Leo and I pulled the toilet out of the room and sanded the floor underneath. The hair dryer was for drying up the water we splashed around while moving the thing. The nuts and bolts were so rusted that we had to cut them off with my Hitachi reciprocating saw. We both grinned.


Leo helped me paint the floor with a pigmented shellac to seal it and cover any stains and smells that got into the actual wood. Then we drew lines on the floor and dry-laid the tiles. We had to make some pretty fancy cuts. Unfortunately, Leo had to head back to civilization before we got them all cut, but she did an admirable job with the wet saw and following directions. Here are all the tiles dry-fit in place.


Notice how the tiles fit around the front and back of the toilet. Those were miserable, miserable cuts to make. On the up side, I only wrecked one tile in the process. Below is a shot of the three most difficult tiles I had to cut. See how tricky that one was that has to accommodate the hot air register? Yeah. Loads of fun. (Actually, I like the challenge.)


And this is what they look like with the grout in the joints. Some of the corners are not as square as I would like, but they do the job and look decent. As for that grout on the baseboards? This is the first in a series of steps to re-do the bathroom from floor to ceiling. The baseboard is going to be painted black, so I did not worry too much about it.


Now look at the cuts in these tiles. Gah!!! Crazy-making cuts, I tell you! I am most pleased with my efforts!


Again, the trickiest ones. That one behind the toilet loops all the way around, and that one with the heat register was delicate going. I was very glad to be done grouting them.


And here's that one by the curvy part of the tub. Damned tricky stuff, I tell you.


Ah yes. The home owners have a puppy. His name is Malachai, which I think means he is the first Jewish Siberian Husky I have ever met. He likes to eat harnesses and then get loose. He's not terribly bright. While I was on this job, he had was his people called his "British operation, you know, the snip & chip." They joked that their dog had a sex change and would soon have puppies and that they had LoJack installed so that the next time he gets out they can call the police, who will activate the identity chip and he will simply lay down and wait for them to come get him.

I work for such creative people!

Of tiles and opportunity

So we are home from the conference. We are exhausted.

My session on laying ceramic tile went extremely well. I had approximately 9 people there - and since I had anticipated a crowd of maybe four or five, it was a bit of a free-for-all. A couple of the people had laid tile before and they were able to help the others who had never had the pleasure. My dear friend Lis showed up and helped me run and fetch and clean tools and keep everybody on track and up to speed. I would truly have been lost without her. The fine folks at Women Unlimited poked in occasionally to see how things were going and someone took a ton of pictures. I'll try to post them here as soon as I get my mitts on them. They're all a little fried today. I'm not going to push.

So we took eight or nine women, some of whom had never so much as picked up a tile before, and we got 'em messy, covered in glue and grout, and no longer afraid of tiles. First we had them spread the mastic (big word for tile glue) on some boards, then they laid out the tiles, using the spacers. Once the tiles were stuck down, we put aside those boards and got out the boards with tile already on them. They selected the color grout they wanted and we mixed it up with water. I got the measurements wrong on the water, so we had some fudging to do, but we got it worked out. Then we had to let the grout sit for 10 minutes while the Portland cement in it did its chemistry thing. During that time, I answered questions as best I could, admitting it when I simply didn't know. I explained how important it is for the surface you're sticking the tiles to to be extremely solid so that there were no shifts and tweaks with the seasons - those will crack the grout and allow water to leak in and rot wood, etc. I talked about the different kinds of tiles and how to cut and chip with the little plier nippers to make cutouts for pipes and faucets and such.

When our grout was cured enough, we mixed it again and then spread it on the pre-laid tiles. Everyone had different tiles to work with, so everyone had a little different experience, but I noticed that they all seemed to be checking out how the others were doing and commenting on the differences and similarities. (I made sure we all wore gloves to save our fingers from the chemicals in the grout.) Then we wiped down the tile boards, exposing the finished product. Everyone seemed very pleased with how their efforts came out, and then - bless them all - they helped clean up so the next session could come in and learn in a room that was not trashed. We had it cleaned up sufficiently and on time and they left exhilarated at their new-found skills. I left thrilled that we would not be billed for a carpet.

One of the most poignant encounters of the day involved a woman who helped me out when I was setting up the session. She worked in housekeeping, cleaning rooms and doing traditional housekeeping stuff at the hotel. She spoke with some of the Women Unlimited folks upstairs, she told me, and asked for a job bank application. She helped me change the room around to accommodate a messy project, found me some extra trash bags, and even got me access to an empty hotel room across the hall so we could fill our rinse pails in the tub there and dump the dirty water into the toilet. She hustled around to help me. I never got her name, but she was a lifesaver that morning.

I could tell she was interested in what we were doing by her eyes. They were curious and almost jealous - there was wonder and yearning in them. I got the feeling that she was not really thrilled with her lot, cleaning rooms in a hotel in Augusta, Maine. Looking around her, she saw lots of women doing lots of things that were more interesting and pretty much guaranteed to pay more than whatever it is that she's making now. The wheels were nearly visible, turning in her head as we went about the conference and she went about her housekeeping tasks.

I learned later from the Women Unlimited staff that she returned after her break with the job bank application all filled out. She wants to be a part of what she saw that weekend. She wants to do something more meaningful than scrubbing hotel toilets and making beds. She wants to make better money, she wants to have the skills and confidence she saw Saturday at that conference.

It is my hope that we see her again at next year's conference, wearing boots and Carharts and talking about her first season working on a road crew or with a flagging operation or operating some kind of equipment. From the look I saw in her eye, I think it is a real possibility.

God, but that is why I love Women Unlimited. Women Unlimited changes lives. Period. It is what they do. It gives hope and opportunity in places where no one else has offered such things.

If you are interested in helping them continue to perform miracles, get in touch with them HERE and make a donation. If you're not long on money, that's OK. Little donations are good too, as are materials. They always have a list of stuff they need. Hand tools, lumber, odds & ends. Check them out. Give if you can. Tell 'em Dawn sent you. They'll know you're OK.

And yeah, I made a fancy speech on Saturday night at the banquet. I'll write about that tomorrow. I am still processing it all. And stay tuned for pictures, too.

Tiles are taking over...

I had planned to post the recipe for tonight's supper - carrot ginger soup - but it appears that I already did that. Oh well. It was as yummy tonight as it was back in August when we made it.

Not much to report today. I am still semi-consumed by this tile workshop thing and have been practicing on L. Yesterday I made her learn to put tiles down with the adhesive and today I taught her how to apply grout. She has decided that I do not charge nearly enough for installing tile. Heh.

L has been extremely patient with me as I have practiced teaching people how to lay tile. Yesterday, I put on my teacher voice and we spread adhesive on some plywood and then laid out the tiles.


We each did a couple of boards of tiles so that there will be something ready to be grouted at Saturday's workshop. Here are a couple of samples ready to go.


We did a couple boards with that cool artisan-made tile I got down on Little Deer Isle and for fun today, I taught L how to apply grout and then clean the tiles. Here is the finished product of her efforts. She and I are both quite proud!


That's it for today. Writing over at the other blog is taking some of my time, but not as much as I had feared. It is the research that is exhausting!

back again

like a bad penny.

Please accept my apology for my recent absence. Had some stuff I had to get down and written over at the other place. To make up for it, here are some pictures of what I have been up to.

Remember that teeny delivery shed I was working on? Well I got it done and here it is just after we placed it in its (hopeful) permanent location. There may be some maneuvering around come spring, but we're hoping this will be the place it wants to stay. The bungee cord is still through the hasp gizmo.


And here is a couple pictures of the inside. I know it doesn't seem like all that much, but this is primarily for package and dry-cleaner delivery, so a closet pole makes a world of sense, even if the thing looks like the world's smallest privy out there on the lawn.



And here is a shot of it with the door open. Isn't that a snazzy door? It's made of v-notched matched pine boards. First time I ever made one that came out the way it was supposed to. I was very pleased with myself.


And here is a shot of the shed from the back and side. Notice the dark gray asphalt shingle roof with real metal drip edge. This thing was really a miniature building. And the bonus? The roof was exactly one sheet of shingles wide. Sweet. It took under one bundle of shingles to do the whole thing and required very little cutting. I was sooooooo happy!


The customers are still raving about how happy they are. I am glad. I fussed and fretted over this for a while. I am pleased with how it came out, and am more pleased that they are happy.

Next, I recently had to go visit a friend down at a funky neat and cool interior design/decoration place on Little Deer Isle. Place is called Harbor Farm and they donated a bunch of colored tile samples for me to use in my workshop next weekend.

First, let me show you the approach to the bridge over the narrows out to Little Deer Isle.


Yes, the bridge does go straight friggin' up. Just like that.

It is not an optical illusion. It goes way the hell up.

Damned if I know why. Perhaps so tall boats can go under? I've never seen it, but that does not mean it doesn't happen. Anyway. One lane out to the islands, one lane back. Up and over. Not for the faint of heart. Especially on windy days - whew!

The bridge is the exact same design as the ill-fated Tacoma Narrows Bridge out in Washington State. I just love this video. It is silent, so don't worry that your computer isn't working. Just incredible.



My friend Lib narrates this in wonderful fashion. She'll do it again at the conference next weekend. I may or may not attend her session. Depends on what else I may have to be doing at that time.

In order to prevent a similar catastrophe happening to the Little Deer Isle bridge, engineers rigged these triangular wind buffers to prevent the wind from catching in the tall girders and thrashing the bridge around like the one in Tacoma. They work pretty well, from what I hear, but only the hardiest of souls venture across when a gale is blowing out of the northeast. Here's a shot of the buffers.


So out I ventured onto Maine's connected islands to collect colored tiles for this project I am doing. Here is a sample of the more than 100 4-inch, mostly artisan-made tiles we got.


I am now sorting and fussing and sorting and fussing to make them work and fit in some kind of series of patterns. Working up the patterns and making it all fit onto the boards is going to be more involved than I had anticipated. I am glad I am doing the prep work in advance. If I had tried to throw this stuff together the night before the early morning session, I'd have been screwed.

So that's what I have been up to. I also put up the wood trim on that sun room project, with help from a friend who taught me volumes about how to be patient and do the fussy stuff. I don't have pictures of that just yet, but hopefully I will later this week. Stay tuned.

Home again, home again

Jiggedy-jig, as they say.

If only my life were that simple.

My truck broke down last night while I was headed home from Massachusetts. I had just had some Popeye's fried chicken at the Kennebunk plaza and headed up the highway. I was on the phone with my friend Mike when what felt a lot like a blow-out on my front left tire happened. He was an absolute peach and talked me through it, I got over to the side of the road, put my hazards on and called AAA. After waiting through the required automated message hell for a couple of minutes, I got a nice lady whose first concern was that I was ok. That was really nice. Got out and checked the tire, only it was not flat. Not sure what it was - maybe a ball joint? Axle? Ty-rod? I don't know enough about vehicles to know what it was. I do know I couldn't drive it like that.

We worked out the details of where I was, where I wanted to go, and the fact that my aunt recently upgraded us to the premium membership (thank goddess!!!) which allows for 200 free miles of towing. Turns out I was just about 180 miles from home. It took about an hour and a half to find a flatbed driver willing to drive nearly 400 miles round trip on a Saturday night with a storm coming, but a nice guy named Chris from Grondin & Sons Towing out of Sanford showed up and treated me nice. He even took Route 3 out of Augusta to Belfast and then up to Ellsworth to shave miles off the trip. AAA covers 200 miles. Every mile after that costs three bucks. Ouch. I was all for saving miles.

So we got underway at around 11 p.m. and I called home from Ellsworth at around 2:30 a.m. to have my sweetie meet me at the auto mechanic's garage. I got home here at around 3:30 or 4 a.m. and went straight to bed. I was utterly exhausted. That whole simulated blow-out thing scared the hell out of me and was discouraging as well. I had spent the money from this job six times already in my head, and none of it had been to fix my truck. What a pain. I had bills paid, fuel oil purchased, and maybe a hotel room at the upcoming FFFlea in Providence. Now all of that hinges on how much the mechanic is going to take. Damn. Back behind the 8-ball again. Some days it seems I can't win for losing.

On the up side, I did finish the bathroom. But not without incident.

Remember how I complained that the old tile had been stuck to 3/8 inch drywall? Remember how I said it was inferior and a bad idea and the wonderboard stuff I was using was much better - it being a half inch thick and all? Well, the added thickness of my wonderboard and the new tile was just enough for the shower fixtures to not quite work.

Oh, the plumbing bits are fine. The screws and bolts and such are just about a quarter inch too short to reach what they're supposed to. Because I did it right. And there is no access panel in the back because the landlord paneled over it. That would have been easiest - just get in there and lean on the fittings enough to get me what I needed, but nooooooo. That would be too easy.

I ended up sweating an extension into the pipe that is the tub fill spigot thing to make that work, the shower head thing was ok (thank the goddesses!) but the knob control thing was an issue. I ended up leaving the pieces for the lady's son to assemble today when the hardware store opens and he can get some number 8 by 32 machine screws that are 2 1/4 inch long. The whole family is under strict orders to not use the shower until at least 8 p.m. tonight to allow the tiles and grout to do their thing. I expect I may get a phone call asking how exactly the thing goes together, and if I do I'll talk them through it. I hated leaving the job not quite done, but I am some kind of glad I was on the road last night and broke down under a medium-clear sky and a full moon as opposed to today with a howling snowstorm. Bleah.


So here are the pictures of the finished product. Note that I made a couple of little shelves with the leftover trim boards. These are to make up for the towel racks that got ripped out with the tiles. I am most pleased with the result. If the colors look odd, know that the tiles and wood trim are bright white, the tub, the accent stripe and the tiled ceiling are all sea-foam green. The new floor is an off-white pattern.

progress not perfection

Oof. After yesterday's mishap involving a hammer (my small one, thankfully) and my finger, today didn't go all that fantastically well either.

I managed to get the last two pieces of wonderboard cut, drilled and hung in a timely fashion, then I cut up the fiberglass cloth to do an industrial version of seam-taping. Think drywall, but with fiberglass resin and cloth instead of tape and mud. Yeah, this bastard ain't gonna leak because of anything I did, that's for sure.

I put fiber putty over any cracks and seams. I then put resin and cloth and more resin over the seams, and I dabbed resin on each screw head to prevent any kind of chemical reaction with the adhesive or rust or other nastiness. Then I went around the bottom and sealed the gap between the top of the metal tub edge and the wonderboard with more fiber putty. That thing's goin' nowhere. Heh. Make me bang my finger, will you? I'll show you. The house could tip over and come apart in a raging flood and the shower enclosure would float away on its own. Like Chrsitopher Robin in his inverted umbrella. Only smellier, much smellier.

Yesterday's efforts were time-consuming but rewarding. It was great to work with Kevin and he was genuinely cheerful to do the nastiest and most menial tasks. I'd love to be able to hire him full time. What a great kid.

We got the demolition debris hauled off (460 pounds!) and most of the wonderboard hung. I finished that up today. No Kevin, though. Not in the schedule and not in the budget. I'm at that stage now where I can do one thing while I am waiting for another thing to soak, dry, cure, or whatever, but there just isn't space for two people to be doing things at the same time.

Since the fiberglass resin was reluctant to cure, and I didn't want to stick tiles to it while it's still tacky, I opted to cut a big hole in the floor and see what there was to see on that front.

Luckily, the plywood was rotted only along the edge of the tub and out maybe a foot or so at each end where the shower curtain allowed splashing. The plywood came up relatively easily, exposing a mish-mosh (why am I NOT surprised??) of planks below. The planks at the edges of the tub were a little soggy, so I set the clamp lights on them and left for the day. They'll be dry enough to address in the morning. I have this marvelous stuff from Minwax called Wood Hardener. I don't know what it is, but it is a miracle product. You paint some of this stuff on punky old wood, and it hardens it like fiberglass. Put some Bondo on it, sand it once or twice and paint it. Nobody will know the wood was ever rotten. I'm going to put some of that on the wood before I go for lunch and then deal with it when I get back.

The plan for tomorrow is to put up tiles first, douse the punky wood, go for lunch, come back and lay the floor and maybe do something with the walls. One needs some plywood and both need paneling. We'll have to see how far I can get. Tiles and floor are absolute must-do things, though. Wish me luck.

And here's a picture of the fingernail progression. I'm not entirely sure it used to point over to the left like that.

Another tile job

So I've got another tile job. This one looks to be both easier and more difficult than the last one. Easier because it will not be in a broom closet. More difficult because it is going to involve partial demolition. Oh, and it involves 1970s colors, I think. That could be a problem.

See, the ceiling in the half bathroom downstairs started leaking a while back whenever someone upstairs was showering. A previous contractor sort of patched the ceiling downstairs, but then hurt his back and hasn't been seen since. Upstairs, some of the tiles in the tub surround started to come off, revealing what the renter/client described as "dark, wet wood" which means the tiles were probably mounted to plywood. Not uncommon, but nasty once a leak develops in the grout, because the wood swells with the water and forces other tiles to come loose and fall off. It's a bad situation. That's why I'll be putting up wonderboard and sealing it with fiberglass resin. I don't want any wood to get wet. Ever.

Because she was concerned about the water leak causing more damage, the lady I will be working for took the pro-active step of lining the inside of the tiled shower enclosure with shower curtains and plastic sheeting. She did an admirable job, too, in keeping most of the water from getting at the tiles and loose grout. Here are some of the pictures.

First, you can see the plastic and duct tape sealing job. Inelegant as it appears, it is working very well.


Next you can see how she taped the shower curtain up with clear tape to cover the tiles and grout where she feared there might be leaks. Again, it is not an ideal long-term solution, but it is working very well as a stop-gap measure.


The ceiling tiles seem to be ok. I mean aside from the fact that they are turquoise. There is not much I can do about that. I plan to leave them if it is at all possible (dear god, please let it be so!). I HATE putting tiles up overhead. Gurk!


I am unsure the actual vintage of these tiles, so I measured them to see what I might find in the store when I go shopping. Modern tiles I think are 4 1/4 inches on a side. These are 4 1/8. Doesn't it just figure? The measurements and counts will be all different. Grr.


Add to this mix the fact that the tiles wrap around the entire bathroom to a height of about four feet. I will not be replacing them all, just the ones on the three interior walls of the tub enclosure, and probably the few around the corner from the faucet end of things so that I can stop at the "inny" corner instead of the "outie" one. Someone please tell me you understand that. In any case, I will have to be very careful in my ripping and tearing. I don't want to have to replace more tiles than is absolutely necessary, and I don't want to damage the tiles that will remain. It will be fussy work at the edges. In the middle I can swing a medium-big hammer, but not at the edges. Urk.

Oh, and the stairway is narrow and outrageously steep - essentially a carpeted ladder. I am not looking forward to humping cement board up there, or tile or tools, saw horses and grout. Did you know that tile adhesive comes in 50-pound bags like cement? Yeah. I'm looking forward to that. I am thinking that the old tiles might get put into five-gallon pails and lowered out the window to the back yard. Those stairs are just killer!

So that's what I am up against. While staying at my aunt's house. While blogging in secret, out behind the gym. While sleeping in a twin bed in a room that is very, very pink and frilly. Sigh. I did charge extra for that stuff, dontcha know.

On the bright side, I will be able to attend all of the old meetings that I used to go to when I was newly sober, some years ago. Methinks I have changed a bit since those days. I was thin, enthusiastic, (acting) straight and my hair was brown, at least when I wasn't dying it strange colors. Oh, and I was 20 and hadn't done any real recovery work. Now I'm a fat, grumpy old lesbian with gray hair and a bad attitude. But at least I've done some stepwork. Oh, it'll be fun to see them all. Seriously, it will be fun. I am looking forward to it immensely. Just not the tile part. Or the pink room.

Oh hell

Gotta go back. Did an estimate, made it worth my while, and she liked it anyway.

I go back to my aunt's house next weekend and stay for a week.

So I can do a tile job for a neighbor lady.

And NaBloPoMo at the same time.

I'm thinking there will be lots of pictures of tiles.

I had so hoped to write about sex.

Damn.