Progress?

I feel like this summer took both an eternity and passed without actually taking up any time. The heat lasted forever, the months themselves flew right by. Between going back and forth to Colorado, going to visit the family in Canada, Natalie coming into the country for a road trip and the ridiculous kidney infection in the middle I'm not sure what happened. Anyway, it's September already and I'm clearly behind on my blogging (and everything else in my life).

The master bedroom is as good as it's going to get for a while, simply because I don't want to put the last bit of bamboo floor down before I do the master bath. I'd then have to carry tiles, floor boards, mortar, etc... over the bamboo and that just sounds like it's inviting trouble. Essentially that means it isn't going to be done any time soon. I do think it will look good though - check out the picture above! Obviously that door isn't going to stay mushed-pea green, that was the old color. Because we all love mushed-pea green, especially with a renaissance angel theme. I wish I was making this up, but that's really what they had in the master bedroom and master bath. Lovely.

The master bath has become the non-room. I just pretend it doesn't exist, which seems to work well for me. And for giggles, because I don't have enough of those, I tore up the downstairs bathroom too. Funny right? Right? Yeah. Retrospectively I'm not so sure about it either. It's just that the creepy seashell motif was really starting to get under my skin. In any case, it is now without popcorn ceiling, toilet, or really any identifying feature of a bathroom.

I'm thinking of painting it a dark green. Maybe? I'd like it to loosely coordinate with the living room, which currently has a warm brown, deep red, and sage green thing happening. Of course dark green in that little tiny room might make people feel like they're peeing in a confessional, which could be uncomfortable. Actually, I could go with that and pretend it's a deliberate poetic statement. It's not, but nobody has to know that I'm not being hugely ironic. In reality, I just like green.

Deconstruction

It's funny the way these things come when you need them. I suppose any big project is like that. It's been a frustrating month and so this project was well-timed. There is something incredibly liberating; joyful even, about tearing a room apart with nothing but a hammer, a crowbar and your own hands. I'm not much of a destructive person, but I have to admit this came when I really wanted to tear something apart.

Of course, I'm also a little daunted by the fact that my master bath, although never beautiful, had at least been functional before I got at it. Now, sadly, it has no plumbing with which to function. No toilet, no sinks, no tub, not even many walls. It started just because we were thinking we would replace the tub surround, and so had to pull the tile off the wall. Once that started, we found out that the tile was the only thing holding the wall together - apparently there was long-standing water damage. In any event, what started as a relatively minor project turned into a room stripped down to the studs and about 10 trash bags of rubble.

So - who's coming to visit who knows anything at all about bathroom remodels? Hmmm? Any takers? It would be nice if you had also recently won the lottery, so that I could buy the raw materials. That would help too. Anyone?

Now that the destruction is done, I'm largely ignoring the existence of the master bath and will probably finish the master itself before I wade back into the scary gaping-hole that I've managed to create. Mom and dad helped me to lay the first couple of lines of bamboo in the bedroom so that they're straight and I can carry on over the summer. My parents, like the sane people they are, have escaped to Canada where it is not hovering around the 100 degree mark, but is a normal human temperature. I'm stuck here, sans plumbing.

I'm back, as though from the dead.

Not that I was actually dead, just silent. Given that silence is contrary to my usual state, it is akin to death, perhaps a little death. Actually the problem isn't that I've been silent, only that I've been silent here. In other arenas I've been writing my little hiney off, but thankfully the hiney is back on and normal communications can be resumed.

The house has also been on pause, which is slightly frustrating but now work can begin again post-haste. I do have furniture, which is a thrilling and fascinating luxury. I can't even describe the joys of being able to come home and crash down on my couch to stare lovingly at my fireplace (which is, quite obviously, not lit as it is 4 million degrees (approx) in Texas and my AC unit is frantically trying to keep up).

I've found, that all distractions aside it is much more relaxed now that I actually have finished rooms in which to live. There just isn't the same sense of urgency when I actually have a relatively comfortable living space. Now I'm much more lax about construction - instead of working into the evening I stop at 2:00 pm and enjoy the rest of the day like a sane person. I'm calling that 'progress' rather than 'laziness.'

At this point one of the stumbling blocks I'm running into is finances. Buying paint for the master bedroom isn't a big deal, but buying the amount of bamboo that it's going to take for that floor is a little daunting. Likewise, things like towel racks and soap dishes for the master bath are no problem, but bath tubs and tiles for a shower surround are a little more costly. Given that I'm trying to do this thing without going into debt I may have to meter out projects as finance allows.

In other news, my garden is flourishing and apparently I'm a compulsive plant-buyer. It's just that they looks so sad and lonely in the store all by themselves. I just know they need me to bring them home and make them a part of the family. Only problem with that logic (lack of logic here being entirely discounted as the problem) is that I have limited yard space, and each new plant requires it's own, backbreaking hole. That would be just fine if I had some overall organizational scheme in which I dug big beds in one terrible day of labor and then filled them at my leisure. I just don't. I dig little weenie disconnected holes that require hot sweaty messy work pretty much every other day, and then try to cobble them together into something attractive and interesting. As we speak I have a lonely avocado plant hanging out randomly in the middle of the back yard looking kind of sheepish about being in such an odd spot. The plan (retroactively) is to extend the garden that runs along the back of the porch out to engulf the avocado in an attractive kidney-shaped arm. Of course, this plan was devised after the avocado was in the ground.

Anyway, I'm glad to be back in the saddle!

The Horror of a Pink Floor

From the start of the floor-staining ambitions I've pictured the floor as a warm brown/burgundy combo - swirled and mottled and generally more interesting than a flat color. As it turns out, interesting isn't hard to come by in stained concrete. Huh.

Everyone had a different theory on how I should apply the stain, but generally the consensus was that if you want more uniform color a roller is good and less uniform color you use something more irregular - string mop, rags, whatever. Given that I wanted irregular I went for the string mop.

The color is semi-transparent and layer 1, which was brown, went on easily and looked completely blah and boring - flat, kind of dead-ish brown. I went to talk to the paint guys at Lowe's about the brown/red idea and they suggested a red called 'gem stone' which provided hours of fun and entertainment and at least one melt-down.

Apparently semi-transparent isn't actually the same in all colors and different colors have different levels of transparency. Who would have known this?

Long story short is that gem stone is apparently so close to not being transparent that it mops on to the floor in big terrifying dark pink/fuchsia streaks that immediately start to absorb into the concrete and don't want to wipe away causing minor hysteria. Fun! Nobody could ever say it was flat and boring.

Thankfully I started in a corner that is going to be largely hidden by other things, so the shockingly pink part of the floor will be mostly covered. In the end I had to dilute 'gem stone' with about one part stain to five parts water to increase the 'transparency' and then put another brown coat on top of it to tone it down.

All in all the final product looks pretty good - a swirly brown-red that is warm and pretty without being the center of attention in the room, which is good. I don't want people staring at the glare coming off of a hot pink floor all the time or anything. That would have been a little bit different than the look I was trying to achieve.

I'm really happy it's done because that means that I can actually get my furniture! Woohoo!

Etching Concrete

The concrete saga is never-ending. It really feels like it's been weeks of crawling around scraping little bits of stuff off of the floor - paint, ceiling texture, wall stuff, glue, god only knows what else. The good news is that yesterday we finally reached the stage where we felt like we could etch it to get ready for staining.

Staining the floor is the next major milestone simply because once I have a floor, I can actually get my furniture out of storage and start living like an almost-normal person. With chairs and things. Major step forward in Amy's world.

As it turns out, etching the concrete is really really fun. You get all kitted up in what feels like a hazmat suit - wellies (rubber boots, for those of you who haven't the foggiest what I'm talking about), rubber gloves, body condom if you happen to have one lying around. Then, you pour acid all over the floor and scrub it around with stiff broom. Then the fun really begins. Now you bring the garden hose inside your living room, which defies any and all sense of normalcy, Essentially then you spend the rest of the day hosing water onto your living room floor and squeegeeing it out the back door with a giant squeegee.

In all, there is something really satisfying about spraying out your house with a garden hose. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think it satisfies some internal joy in doing-what-I'm-not-supposed-to. Maybe that's it. Of course it could just be the ridiculousness of it all, or the opportunity to wear wellies. Who knows?

After the car-wash-style etching, then came the concrete primer, which was considerably less fun. Picture spreading watered-down elmer's glue all over the floor - I'm relatively sure I've never been so sticky in my whole life. Also had a minor panic incident this morning when I came downstairs to find the floor all streaky from the nonsense primer. Damn damn. Mom and dad managed to calm me down by pointing out that it's probably just not quite dry in some areas and so those areas look darker, not that my floor is forever going to look like a streaky mess. At least we're hoping that's what's happening. In truth, none of us have done this before so really, they could be making this all up. The best news is that if it looks absolutely aweful, we can always just paint over it with a solid color and forget about the stain entirely.

Pictures of dirt!

So - I know the garden just looks like dirt right now - but there are seeds in there! And onions! More than I care to count actually... I'm going to be overrun with spinach, onions, lettuce, radishes and peas. Who's coming over to help me eat everything?

The living room is starting to look like a real room, and don't worry Jan - it isn't edged around the fireplace yet. I'm not going to leave it looking like that. :)

Door dreams

So clearly I'm a complete slacker for not posting with any kind of regularity- the writing project has been monopolizing my time and energy but that's no kind of excuse. Progress is, actually, being made on the house - albeit incredibly slowly. The best news is that the color choices in the living room, which I've been agonizing over, have been made and look fabulous. Walls are painted, ceiling is painted and the floor is being sanded and scraped (inch by painful inch - not kidding) to prepare for stain. I may soon, fingers crossed, have a real living room. This would be a huge step for me because it would mean that I could finally hire movers to get all of my stuff here - given that i can't even remember half of what I have, that will be like Christmas all over again.

We've run into a minor problem in terms of the back door though. The cement around the door was crumbling and the jam? The sill? The bottom part, at any rate, of the door was rotting out. Dad and I chipped the whole thing out (involved a wedge and a rubber mallet - highly satisfying) but now there's a slightly alarming gap below my door that is actually big enough for Cat to get in and out. Going to have to fix that before I develop a varmint problem. Mostly I just wanted to use the word varmint in a sentence...

In cheerier news, I've planted my little vegetable garden, and apparently have enough onions to feed an army - I'm really not sure what I'm going to do with them all if they come, but I've got a similar excess of spinach and lettuce, so expect lots of random food to be distributed this spring. I've also planted peonies, for the first time, which are apparently ridiculously picky and have to be the right depth to bloom. Naturally I just shoved them in and covered them with dirt like everything else, so I'll keep you posted on peony progress (because I'm sure you're all waiting with baited breath).

I've also taken a ridiculous ton of rose cuttings so if anyone wants climbing roses, I'm going to have some spares. Put some morning glory seeds to soak this morning, so I'll start those indoors and move them outside in a few weeks. Clearly I'm more excited about the garden than anything else. But that's probably because I don't have to scrape anything to work in the garden.

Best Offer I've Had All Year!

So - with my actual work, you know, the kind where I make money, I've had a ridiculously short-deadlined writing project that is amounting to about 20 pages, theoretically comprehensible, per week. Hence the house has been moved to "back-burner" status and I'm getting in about one good work day per week.

Essentially this means I'm going to be camping out in a partially finished house for quite some time. I'll learn to love plastic sheeting and construction dust. I will - I'm sure. Mom and dad were kind enough to come in on my designated house day this week and help with the ridiculously tedious, boring, uninspiring work of patching and painting the closets in the master bath. Wheeee! I know, I know. It is hard not to envy us right now, no? The worst part is I don't even have anything funny to say about it, it really is as dull as it sounds.

In better news, I received the most compelling offer I think I've ever had, and if not ever, then certainly it's the best offer of 2009. Some local lawn company papered my house with totally reasonable lawn-mowing rates, and an intriguing add-on service as pictured above. Bold as brass, right out there in the open. Isn't it wonderful to live in such a progressive society that lonely female homeowners can have such a valuable service, delivered with discretion to their home, for a small weekly fee? Not only that, they take all major credit cards. It's like Manna from heaven. :)

Sexy new ceilings and serious hot water

So - I have a confession. (bless me father for I have...)

Actually it's not nearly that good a confession, so don't get your hopes up. I did, sadly, have to contract out my first job. Sigh. I can no longer say it's all been done-myself. But, from this contracting I did get a fancy new on-demand water heater (tankless, very sleek, I feel all kinds of fancy with this thing!)

I went to the home-show this past weekend with Jan, Marg and an assortment of other folk and stopped to ask a local company about the tankless water heaters, which was kind of entertaining. The conversation went something like this:

KR (old-timey owner of water heater company): so how old is your current heater
Amy: Well, it was put in when the house was built, but I think it was second hand because it says 1978 on the side.
Long pause.
KR (to fellow water heater guy): What is the shelf life on a gas water heater?
Other water heater guy: 8-10 years, why?
Long pause.
KR (to me): Do you like your floors?

It was kind of funny actually because the water heater people were mildly panicked about my apparently antique water heater and rearranged their installation schedule to get me a new water heater on Tuesday (i.e. two days later). The whole thing had kind of the air of self-congratulation re. crisis averted. It felt like there should have been a champagne toast or confetti or something.

When they hauled the old one out they were remarking about it's unusual weight and the possibility that it was actually half filled with sediment. Lovely. So now I have a fancy-pants new water heater that is mounted outside, so if it malfunctions (which I have been assured it never does) it will malfunction on the grass, and not my floor.

Outside of that little bit of excitement Dad and I scraped the popcorn off the downstairs ceiling and he put in a ridiculous amount of work to get it sanded and patched and primed, so I have the uber-sexy smooth ceiling - which looks fabulous. Now I just have to figure out what I actually want to do with the downstairs. Ideas anyone? Color scheme? It's a ridiculously long room, so it could take some color, but I haven't thought beyond major repairs to actually form any ideas about style. The only think I've decided for sure is that I want to stain the concrete, but beyond that, I'm at a loss. All ideas welcome at this point!

The merit of reading instructions.

So, hypothetically speaking, if one were to discover a minor swamp in the bottom of the dishwasher because it has suddenly ceased to drain, should one:

a) shake one's fist and swear like a sailor?
b) disassemble the awkward-to-reach bottom/filter/outlet of the dishwasher?
c) check to make sure the drainage hose actually drains somewhere?
d) all of the above?

Um... So I chose D. Wasn't the right answer, but I chose D.

I took apart, in the smelly swamp of stale dishwasher water, all of the filter-bits and cleaned them to make sure water could drain out. I can not emphasize enough the disgustingness of this job - the filter had what looked like a rubberized mold layer on the bottom that jammed up all the little holes. Given the mold-plug over the filter, I sensed victory and ran the dishwasher again. Alas, no drainage except onto the floor where it over-filled.

Dad had the genius idea of disconnecting the outflow hose that drains into the garbage disposal and, like magic, the disconnected hose drained just fine into a bucket under the sink. That sent us scurrying around the house trying to find the garbage-disposal instructions to see what went wrong (they were in a baggie on the low shelf hidden behind my car in the garage. Obviously. Where else would they be?).

In the Troubleshooting Guide we find...
Problem: Dishwasher flooding
Possible Cause: Knockout drain plug still in place.
Solution: Fire the idiot that didn't read the instructions. Seriously.

No - actually it said Insert screwdriver in knockout plug and tap with hammer. But I'm sure they were thinking fire the idiot...

So, having knocked out the knockout drain plug, and reassembled the red-herring filters at the bottom of the dishwasher, I felt a fit of cleanliness come over me and sprayed out the inside of the dishwasher with "Awesome Orange" - the off-brand orange oil cleaner to 'really do the job right'. Huh.

After this, the dishwasher was spic and span and we gave it a test run.

This is when it turns into an "I Love Lucy" episode. Apparently "Awesome Orange" foams like mad, hence creating the foam-overflow river in my kitchen. The saddest part is, this is not the first time I've had the foam thing happen, but I'm not telling the other story.

So anyway, dad and I had to bale out the foam-filled dishwasher a few times throughout the cycle and then run it again to clean the thing out. After that, we stopped for lunch because by this point we'd frittered away the entire morning with the only productive part (the knockout drain) having taken all of 5 minutes. Best quote of the day happened when I asked dad if he wanted tea - he said, in a serious, slightly grim voice "Tea? We should be drinking rum."

The afternoon, however, was actually productive - we took up the laminate flooring that was slapped together over half of the living room (I'm assuming this was a well-intentioned attempt at making the house more attractive to buyers). Then we scraped the gross, smoke-stained popcorn ceiling off of the entire downstairs except for the kitchen. The kitchen, in a bold interior design move, was completely hermetically sealed with plastic like some freakish crime scene. Granted, it kept the kitchen clean, but it's kind of creepy now that it's past sundown.

The only bad part is that I just discovered this little piece that's supposed to go under the bottom-most filter in the dishwasher sitting on my kitchen counter, innocently, as though it's supposed to be there... Damn.

Happy Holidays!!!

I'm off to the beach with the folks so everyone have a wonderful holiday and I'll start up again with the whole pesky work thing when I get back!
Much love,
Amy

Acoustic Irony

What is that saying about the road to hell? Paved with good intentions I believe. Well, by the looks of things I've managed to lay a few stones myself. In an effort to do the house 'the right way' I've been attempting to go the extra distance in terms of the little perks of a house, like acoustic barriers.

In a two story house with all bamboo (eventually) floors upstairs the whole echo/elephant-walking-noise issue comes into play. In a well-meant effort to reduce this effect, I spent several hundred dollars and a very tense couple of hours with my father attempting to make these huge foam rolls of acoustic under-padding fit the first room we bambooed. *Please excuse this new addition of the verb 'to bamboo' into the english language. I'm pretty sure that's the correct conjugation - to bamboo, bambooed, bambooing, perhaps bambooer? Bambooee? Oooooh I like that one.*

As it turns out, this accoustic barrior seems to have had the opposite effect we were hoping for. Apparently the foamy-ness of the acoustic stuff makes it very springy and hence difficult to nail the bamboo through with any solidity. So, as you walk in the first room, in spite of the effort we took to secure the sub-floor, the bamboo planks shift and creak.

In an experimental fashion I've begun the second bedroom with no underpad at all, which does seem to cut down on the shifting and creaking (and, in a happy coincidence, the cost as well). My recent visitor, Reverand Phil (who looks like a David to me, and so in my head is Rev. David) was kind enough to say that his wood floor creaked at first, but that effect reduced as it 'settled in'. So I maintain some hope that my floor is just 'settling' and not actually bouncing on the foamy thing. Granted it's a small hope, but hope none the less.

Attached is the picture of the meager progress I've made on the second bedroom. I have to admit I'm not looking forward to doing the floor in the master bedroom because there is just so much of it. Eek!

Found objects and holiday laziness

You may have noticed that I haven't been writing. There's a simple reason for that, which is that in true holiday spirit I haven't been working either. I took a week off for sanity, and then holiday season started in earnest so I just haven't had time to do anything. Lazy, lazy Amy.

In progress-related news though I now have one bathroom that actually has a mirror, sink, toilet and shower ALL IN THE SAME ROOM. I can't begin to describe the new level of luxury living that this has brought with it. All that's missing now is a door.

This house has a character of it's own, and I would honestly love to meet the last people who lived here because they were either really funny, really crazy, incredibly negligent or some combination of the three. I suspect it's crazy with a hefty dose of negligence, but I'd like to think they were funny on purpose sometimes too...

Along that vein, I'm going to post a list of found objects. The little pieces of the former owner's lives that they left behind. Mostly in highly mysterious places.

The Found-Object List of '08

1. Decorative Marbles (2) - Found under carpet in master bedroom - wouldn't they have noticed the lumps?
2. Child's teacup (1) - Found while digging out an herb garden. Within the earth of the backyard.
3. Barbie's Pink Fetish Sandal (1) - Pink, strappy, fetish-height sandal for barbie. Can't tell if it's the left or right sandal because barbie has scary same-on-both-sides-feet. Also within the earth of the backyard.
4. Toilet roll holder (1) - In the U-bend of the downstairs toilet. IN. THE. U-BEND. Seriously this would have taken some effort.
5. Marbles (3) - also within the earth of the back garden. But for the lack of sand, I would think sandbox play-area.
   
6. Scary toy shoes (2 - matched pair) - Marg - these look like they could have been your baby shoes. Also, in the garden. Can hardly get the plants in for all the flotsam and jetsam floating around in there.
7. St. Arnold's Ale Mug (1) - In the tank of the upstairs toilet. Why? Who knows. Sick joke? Misguided attempt to use less water? Just couldn't think of a better place to keep it?
8. Back-Scratcher (1) - on the roof. Where else would you put it?
   

I'm hoping '09 unearths (possibly literally) a similar collection of ecclectic oddness. Maybe at the end of this process I can make an installation peice or something. I do still have one toilet to remove and that seems to be a good hiding place...

SNOWED!

Ha! It's really sad that I bounced out of bed like a kid on Christmas to see if any of the snow stuck (hence the pictures in the still-dark morning - I was afraid it would melt before I snapped one). We've got a tiny wee dusting, but I'm keeping it! My poor confused rose bush that I planted is both blooming, and sitting in snow. And yes, I know it's completely lame to decorate a house for Christmas when the inside is utter chaos, but still. it's my first Christmas in my own home so let me be a bit of a geek about it.

Thunder-Snowing???

I swear Texas never ceases to surprise me. Last night we had a thunderstorm with fabulous lightening and the long rolling booms of thunder aaaaaand snow. SNOW! I've seen a lot of snow in my time (Canadian. Not so much here in Texas) but I've never seen a thunder-snow-storm. Especially not on a day that starts out literally 70*F (that's about 21*C for Hedgie and all the miscellaneous Canadian folk).

So cheers to Amy's first thunder-snow-storm. Now I just hope I covered my garden in time - seriously I've got a good crop of lettuce and some baby beets and baby chard that I'd hate to lose.

The Groutmare

I think I got my just desserts for bragging about how easy it was to lay the slate tile in the bathroom. It was easy to stick it to the floor - it has not been what I (or my knees) would call easy to make it actually look like a floor. Enter the groutmare.

Remember mud pies when you were a kid? The pure unadulterated joy that you got out of making just the right texture mud to make a pie-ish thing that you could then smash, throw or smear nicely on the front of your outfit (or, if you were that kid, eat.) Yeah. They're still fun as an adult. Mixing grout is about like that - you get it to mud pie texture, then have a coffee break because it needs to rest or rise or settle or whatever it is that grout needs to do. So far, so good.

Given how enamored I am of my slate tiles, I was a little scared of the grout at first but figured that it's kind of a necessary step, so I should get on with it. Essentially you glop the mud/grout on the floor then use a rubber thingy to shove (through the clever application of brute force) the grout into all the little gaps between the tiles. Joey, my local hardware store flooring guy informed me, with some measure of hilarity, that it would be great for building my "Popeye forearms." Thanks Joey. Now not only am I the weirdo girl who is fixing up her house, I'm the girl with "Popeye forearms" too. At this point I might just as well grow a full handlebar mustache and beer belly for all the attractive feminine energy I'm exuding.

Anyway, forearms aside, you essentially spend a few hours on your knees jamming this mud into the spaces, while becoming liberally coated yourself. Then you spend the next few hours alternately sponging the floor, and cleaning the sponge all the while cursing the mud pie mixture because a) it won't stick where it should and b) won't come off where you want it to. Essentially the mud mixture creates a thin, unattractive, incredibly tenacious film on top of the tiles, but peels right out of the spaces. The film, as it turns out, takes roughly 90 (and counting) rounds of scrubbing to come off, but I've still got streaks so I'll keep you posted.

GROUTMARE!!!

I'm convinced this is the reason that the word "grout" sounds like a disease. Like one could get a raging case of the grout, or perhaps cause a scandal - i.e. 'He seemed so perfect until I found out about the grout!' It should come with a rash and some hand-wipes.

Not only that, the grout that I chose is a deep charcoal grey - really rather lovely with the slate, but not so good under my fingernails and in all the little teeny lines on my palms, knuckles and hands in general. My hands looks like B-movie zombie hands. I'm getting more attractive by the moment - Popeye muscles and zombie hands. Now all I need is a hump on my back and maybe fangs and I'll be the movie-monster-hybrid girl. The best part is that due to the setting grout, I can't use the shower in that bathroom for another 24 hours, which means that I'm stuck in the bathroom without a functional shower. I have a tub, but it's not helping the zombie hands. Maybe next time I should hire someone else to do the grout part...

Slate floor and on-sale turkey...

So, Thanksgiving was fun. I went to my family's house and took a WHOLE DAY off from working on the house. Novelty! In the true spirit of thanksgiving, we had pot-roast with Yorkshire puddings and chocolate mousse and then watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. God I love a traditional holiday celebration.

Of course, then the work began. The weekend finally came to tile the guest bathroom, which has been intimidating me for a while now. Actually, the whole thing worked like a charm. I was expecting the slate to be a nightmare to work with, but our little wet saw worked wonders and the slate was more durable than I'd thought. The only real problem is that slate tiles aren't actually uniform in their thickness, so some sit up a little higher than others. The goal is to pound the high ones lower into the mortar with a rubber mallet (ooooooh that's a fun toy) but I don't seem to be very good at that part.

So essentially I have a very lovely, slightly uneven but good-feeling-on-the-feet tile floor. It still has to be sealed and grouted and all of that, but at least it's stuck down. Yipee!!! This means I'm one step closer to having a nice bedroom to sleep and a nice bathroom to get clean - what a luxury! Now if we can just stop every faucet in the house from dripping...

In a totally random whim at the grocery store I found free-range hormone/antibiotic/scary-chemical-free turkey for ridiculously cheap after the actual thanksgiving rush died down, so I cooked my very first turkey (easy as pie. Easier actually.) while I was putting down the slate. Move over Martha Stewart - I'm gaining ground.

First houseguests!

I forgot to mention that I had the pleasure of hosting my first house-guests this week. (Of course they had the lesser pleasure of sleeping on camp mats on my living room floor - sorry kids.) Rasa, her husband David and their little smiley elf of a son Sky came to visit as they were in town teaching flying lessons to the brave and adrenalin-seeking.

It was fabulous to catch up with Rasa and meet her beautiful family, and also to host people who are used to camping so that my house, such as it is, is a step up and not just terrifyingly primitive.

Thanks for the visit guys and if you ever need a sitter for Sky...

Housekeeping???

Oooooooookaaaay.

Reality is starting to hit. My master bathroom (roughly the size of my old apartment) is coated in fine white powder as a result of sanding the ceiling. My guest bath has a newly-installed cement board floor, which is to be followed by slate in short order, but currently it's kind of gritty/crumbly/grainy mess. The areas that have been purged of vinyl tile (mostly essential-to-walk-on-toilet-surrounding-areas) are sticky and there are sticky footprints all over the floor close-by. The paint, which isn't supposed to be on my cement floor in the first place, chips and flakes and sticks to things. I don't have any bathrooms that have doors. Generally I can't touch any surface in my house without attracting some type of residue.

I need another toilet to smash.

The double-edged sword of home renovations seems to be that 99% of every job is preparing for the actual job to happen. It's tiring and tedious, mostly because you don't really see any finished product for ages. The great thing about it is that it forces you to finish the project because even when you're 90% done, it still looks as bad as (or worse than) it did when you started. It's that last little bit that gives you all of the rewards. A lot like giving birth really, hours and hours of backbreaking labor involving sweat, muck and general unpleasantness for that final, rewarding push. Of course, having never had kids, this is only a loose analogy. Or maybe it's more like sex for a man? All that tedious foreplay for the five second pay-off? But then, I've never been a man having sex either...

I think tomorrow I'm going to putz around and do fun things, like attaching doorknobs and trying out paint samples and maybe seeing what's in the 20-odd paint cans left in the awesome little crawl-space under the stairs. The crawl-space is currently storage, but I'm so tempted to make a little Amy-sized cushion-lined nook off of the living-room that I could curl up in to read. But who other than me wants a nook like that? For that matter, who other than me would fit in a nook like that? But the paint cans are the project closer at hand, and for whatever reason rummaging through other people's old junk is fun to me - probably why I like garage sales and flea markets and creepy old abandoned houses. The hopeless optimist in me waiting to unearth treasure (same reason I keep dating. Ha!)

One Room Done!!!!

I am feeling especially celebratory, as one room of the house is actually done. DONE!!! And it looks spectacular, if I do say so myself. The bamboo is in, the walls are painted, the ceiling is smooth as a baby's bottom. This means I have one clean, lovely room to live in while I slog about in the muck that is the rest of the house.

Actually, this whole week has been rather a success - one scary old toilet that didn't really flush has been replaced with a fancy new low-water-use version. The garbage disposal that shook the counter when it was turned on and made a noise like a Harley Davidson has been replaced with a quiet efficient disposal (and by me alone, I might add.) The bathroom has been mostly painted, now it just needs a floor... All in all I'm feeling rather smug and self-important like the Shera (SheRa? She-Ra? You know - female version of He-Man complete with bulging muscles and fake breasts) of home repair. She-repair maybe?

I also got to have the uniquely satisfying experience of smashing the old, non-flushing toilet into tiny little bits with a hammer, so as to be able to fit it in the trash bin. I would highly suggest this as an inexpensive and rather more fun alternative to therapy. Also, just in case you too have a non-flushing toilet, check your bathroom for obvious missing pieces such as, for instance, the toilet paper roll holder. There is a possibility that this missing item may indeed be lodged in the U-bend of the toilet, only to be discovered via toilet-smashing therapy. Hypothetically speaking, of course.