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.

Frustration!!!

So I have to say that camping out in my own house is kind of an adventure - at least it's an adventure when I'm feeling well. It's a nuisance when I'm not. These last couple of days I've had either a head cold or some kind of toxic-paint-fume-induced malaise. Either way, I haven't felt like my normal spry self. Just kind of tired with a stuffy head. Not enough to do anything about, just enough to want a hot bath and chicken soup. A real bed wouldn't hurt either.

Eric came over one evening to help me sand and prime the ceilings, which was fun. Basically I was stuck three rungs up a ladder, while he stood, feet flat, and sanded the ceiling. I suppose it's easier if you're 6'4" and long-limbed. He's planted himself firmly on my list of people to call for help in high places.

Mom and Dad came in on Friday for the much-anticipated start of the bamboo flooring project. I rented a nailer that basically operates like the strong-man contest at the fair. Once you position the nailer, you whack the plunger with a rubber mallet (I kid you not) and then, like magic, your nail is secure in your board without any damage to the surface. At least that's how the tool rental guy billed it. I had hopes for one complete room of bamboo floors - those hopes were only beginning to wane when, by noon, we barely had the underlayment down. Then, when we started into the ridiculous nailing process, all hope was lost.

Basically, in the 10 or so hours my parents were here helping, we managed to secure three rows of boards. Three!! I think Aunt Lyn was right when she said she'd clear her calender in 2012 for the housewarming. The first row was naturally tedious because it's too close to the wall to use the nailer, so you have to pre-drill and nail all of the boards (naturally at awkward angles, with unnaturally thin nails). Once we got far enough away from the wall we could use the magic nailer thingy and had hopes of just speeding through the floor with ease. Ha! Not so much.

As it turns out, only a strong-man from the fair could actually use the nailer correctly - You really have to beat the hell out of the thing to get it to work, but then if you hit it too hard (not a danger for me, but my father had some trouble) then the nail mangles the board. Grrrrr. Clearly this is not the right tool for the job. I can't believe I have almost a thousand square feet to put down in bamboo... Maybe carpets aren't so bad after all.

The farting fish and barbieflesh

Among the various treasures left in the house, my favorite by far has to be the farting fish shower curtain. It's even better than the hand-glued, shell-encrusted bathroom light. Also better than the back scratcher that was (mysteriously) on the roof. The farting fish shower curtain is truly a work of art. It's designed in such a way that it could have been a terrible accident, or it could be subtle humor at it's best. I'd love to think that the last people who lived here were actually comic genius - I don't think I can keep it up for very long, but I would love to think that.

Jan and Marg, who are my favorite people on earth at the moment, came over and helped me paint on a Saturday night as if they had nothing better to do (bless their hearts!) so I actually have one room that looks almost like a real room! With the exception of the fact that it's been painted a color that has been lovingly renamed "barbie flesh." It looked very neutral on the sample, it looks pretty damn pink on the walls. Sigh. Everyone's been vastly optimistic, saying things like "furniture will really change that color - make it look less... well... more, um..." Yeah. Less like barbieflesh. I know.

Dad took me on the unfortunate floor-buying errand today as his Forrester will hold more than my Civic. It is a sad day when your near-70 year old father is trying to protect your youthful back by moving the 50lb boxes of tile himself. I will feel sooooooo guilty if he herniates anything. Of course Mom helped dig-in the 5 hydrangeas that I decided to plant along the back porch, so I'm not exactly sparing any of my loved-ones the agony of renovations. The good news is that now we have enough bamboo to do the floor in the barbieflesh room, and enough slate to do the floor in the farting fish bathroom so some time in the foreseeable future I may actually have a room to sleep in and a room to get clean in. Luxury!

As an Aside, my Aunt Lyn suggested that the house, in light of the omen, be renamed "One Flew Into the Cookoo's Nest." I'm pretty sure she's on to something...