January 2005

January 1, 2005:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hope you all had the champagne bottles pointed the right way at midnight. If not, well, our sincere wishes for a speedy recovery... Oh, and don't worry, the resultant brain damage is severely over-emphasized, and the flashbacks aren't nearly as bad as they promise. In fact, if you just drink more, you'll probably never notice.

So... Wow. Another year past-- amazing. And just like last January, we just received the renewal notice for our server contract for this site for another year. Hmmm, what to do... what to do?

Well, no need to create unnecessary suspense on that particular issue... of course we renewed our server contract. After all, what's the point of going through the challenges, trials, and utter indignities of old house renovation if we can't post it all for you to see and laugh at us?

January 18, 2005: *Mmmmmmmhhhhuuufffffff!* I looooove the smell of joint compound in the morning!

Well, actually, I don't really, but there's no denying the appeal of joint compound, no matter what it smells like.

Now gather 'round, young grasshoppers, because once again, and much against our better judgment, we're going to let you in on one of the deepest secrets of the venerable Brotherhood of Old House Renovators Society... otherwise affectionately known as the "Aww Fu$%, What Now?!" Club.

Are you ready?

Joint Compound. Is. Crack.

It's true-- it's whitish, it's powdery (at least when it dries), and it gives you the biggest rush when you snor... er, apply it. Because once you start putting on the drywall tape and joint compound, your sorry, ragged edged, sheetrock with the mis-cut outlet boxes and the inevitable bumps and valleys that come with applying it to 160 year-old studs... suddenly and miraculously starts looking like an actual wall.

Duuuude. What a trip... We have walls!

We think it might possibly be the coolest thing that has happened to us in months.

Which, upon reflection, probably indicates that we are either: (a) losers, (b) boring as hell, or (c) obsessed with getting this #$%&* bathroom done after so long.

But hey, what the uninitiated call "obsession," the enlightened call, "dedication." So-- On with the Show!

Oh, and, ohbytheway... no. We have no rationalizations for either choice (a) or (b), ok? Thank you for politely glossing over that small fact. Moving right along...

The drywall finishing, much as we were dreading it at the end of last month, actually went amazingly well. Dare we say, it was actually easy? Three coats of mud in a day and a half, an hour of light sanding to take off a few ridges and patching for a few minor gouges, and we were done-- hah! Hah hah, I say!

Considering that I, your faithful author, web mistress, and all-around very cool chick, am the designated drywall finisher in this relationship, and considering that I've spent ten years of renovations covered in drywall mud, tape, and little bits of backing paper, sanding and patching furiously, practicing with each room to actually get decent at it, and considering that it appears that, after all these years, I finally have gotten decent at it...

I now officially take a moment to Gloat.

gloatinggloatinggloatinggloating....

Okay. All done.

Once the walls were nice and smooth, our next step was to prime and paint. Gah! Life is so, so, terribly cruel! Truly, it giveth with one hand, and taketh with another.

Because, you see, priming and painting entails a trip to the p-p-paint store. An innocuous location to most people to be sure, but those of you who were around last July will surely recognize, with much empathy and compassion, that the paint store is a difficult place for me to be right now, you know... so early in my Recovery.

I'm working on my Pigment Issues, I swear I am, but just now I'm taking baby steps, you know, like the therapists say you should. I gathered a few paint chips, and taped them to the drywall:

A couple of them looked really good, and I wandered off for a peanut butter sandwich, rather pleased with myself for handling, with much aplomb, my first foray into choosing paint color since the exterior color fiasco. I returned ten minutes later to find the Kilted One, in his spiffy painter's kilt, taping more paint chips on the wall. "All the ones you chose are too gray," he said.

Fine. Fine. Just fine. Talk about a confidence killer. But off we went to the paint store, with one of the chips he'd chosen, and came back with a couple gallons of paint. An hour later, we were done:

And whaddaya know, it looked terrific. It's a Martha Stewart color for her Sherwin Williams line called Bone China, # 8007. Gotta love Martha. Convicted felon or not, woman knows her colors. And apparently, so does the Kilted One. It has not escaped my attention that he's 2 for 2 in picking winning paint colors, with little drama or disaster. Hmmm... this particular job might just have to end up in his "To Do" column from now on.

January 24, 2005: Exciting stuff at Brickman House this weekend-- Snow and Tile!

The local meteorologists had been breathlessly informing us that a Yoooge! Winter! Storm! was coming our way this weekend. So we did what all responsible citizens should do when faced with such a situation. We went to the market the day before to stock up groceries, hit the video store for some brain candy, and then went and grabbed some 150 lbs. of mortar mix and some grout. Let 'er rip-- we were ready for whatever Mother Nature was ready to throw at us.

And throw at us, she did. Over a foot of snow in half a day, but we didn't care. We settled in, lit a fire, put on the kettle for hot chocolate, and started tiling.

Finish materials are always so exciting to install. We spend hours thinking about the way we want a room to look, days shopping for the right materials, weeks waiting for them to be delivered, and months waiting to actually get them installed. By then, we've completely forgotten what they looked like, so when we finally do get around to installing them, it's like seeing them for the first time.

As a bonus, I absolutely love tiling. It's one of my favorite remodeling jobs-- figuring out the right look for the room, designing the layout, and watching it all come together, piece by piece. Of course, I say that until it comes time to actually do the tiling, at which point I realize that I hate tiling. It's backbreaking, monotonous work. Hauling tile, working bent over, twisting into all kinds of bizarre angles to check level lines and fit tiles exactly against them, feeling the skin on my hands slowly turn into chalky hamburger from spending the day in mortar. Ugh. I'm tired.

The good news is, the tiling's going well-- no drama, no problems. Just slow. We're about half done at the moment, and will likely finish up next weekend:

We went with a fairly classic combination of white carrera marble for the tub deck and 3" x 6" white subway tile for the walls. The combination's at least appropriate for the period and style of the house, even if it does surround a humongous, modern whirlpool tub. Yeah, we could have gone more authentic and put in a quaint clawfoot, but there was no way we'd ever find one big enough. See, we've always work hard on our houses (especially this one!) and there is just nothing like sinking a tired, sore, filthy body into a huge, hot, bubbly tub at the end of the day. What's the point of arguing over who gets to soak first, when you can just get a tub big enough for two?

The other reason we chose the white carrera/white subway tile combination is that we didn't want it to detract from our real splurge in this bathroom... the marble floor:

We chose a checkerboard pattern of white carrera marble and black nero marble, laid on the diagonal, with a 6" border of black nero framing it.

We thought it would work when we came up with the idea, we thought the tile was beautiful when it was delivered, and man, do we think it is breathtaking now that it is finally going down.

Unfortunately, as much as we wanted to keep laying the floor tile, it was getting late, and we had to stop. Between hauling tile, mixing mortar, and shoveling snow, we were exhausted, and ultimately we had to quit before we risked actually doing a face plant in the marble. Ouch. Holy concussion, Batman.

An evening spent at our local emergency room would bring our admittedly limited progress to an utter, screeching halt. Eesh, how Sad. So we just quit while we were ahead, and we'll start slinging tile again next weekend.

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