Recovering Baptist

Thirty three tiles; seventy four and a quarter square feet. That’s how much tile my dad and I managed to lay today. We’ve now laid a total of 59 tiles and covered a total of just over 132 sq ft (for you keeping score at home, my calculations earlier this week were wrong). The wild thing is that for most of this week the tile work didn’t start until just after 9:00; I’m sitting on the couch and feeling like I ought to be laying tile despite having spent all day finishing the uncut tiles in the kitchen and breakfast area.

All in all it’s gone pretty well. I’m pretty proud with how the tile is looking so far. I think there are maybe three tiles that I wish I could redo, but I’m too picky about my work.

So we’ve still got the entryway and all of the cutting (which I actually like), but at least we’re more than half-way through with the floor.

As if reporting on the status of my floors isn’t boring enough, I’m going to write a little bit about tips on tiling. This is for me to refer back to and not really for my three or four readers, but you’re welcome to keep reading if you’d like. Laying tile consists of spreading mortar, placing the tile on the mortar, and then ensuring the tile is properly oriented and level. Spreading the mortar requires the right trowels. Orienting the tiles is best done by first snapping a chalk line so your initial tiles are straight and then using spacers to keep thing square and properly spaced. Leveling the tiles is the difficult part, and that’s where the right tools come in handy. When the mortar is spread too thick the best tool is body weight. You can simply push down on the tile and watch the mortar ooze out, but when you push down on one corner the opposite one will rise up, so proper balance is important. But when you need to raise a corner there are only two tools to do the trick. You can use a pry bar, but there are times you can’t get the bar in there, and that’s when the secret tiling weapon is used - a paint can key. You know, the one they give you for free at Lowe’s when you buy a can of paint. It takes a lot of strength, but you can use the lip of the key to grab the edge of the tile and lift it straight up without pushing the other corner down. If you ever lay tile, especially on an unlevel floor, you will thank me for this tip.

The other banal detail is how I’m spreading the motar. Since we’re using 18″ x 18″ tiles, we’re taking extra steps. To spread the thin set, fist spread a very thin layer over the backerboard. Then back butter the tile by spreading a thin layer on the back of the tile so all of the little squares are filled. Then trowel the thinset in the place where the tile will be placed. If leveling is an issue, then it is better to spread the thinset too thick so you can push the tile down than trying to place additional mortar under the tile once you put it into place.

So, for the one reader who managed to get through all of this, thank you for reading. Maybe it will help you some time in the future. If it does, please let me know. Heck , if you’re a personal friend of mine and you read this whole post, let me know and I’ll buy you a beer. You’re obviously in need of something interesting in your day!

The good news is that we laid about 20 square feet of tile last night. It took a while to get our technique back; heck, it took us a while to remember which end faces up. But after a few tiles we were able to pick up the pace.

The bad news is that 20 sq ft represents about 10% of our 200 plus sq ft of tile to lay. And we didn’t even make any cuts! By my math we’ve got another 45 hours of tile laying to go.

Anyone who hasn’t done this sort of work probably doesn’t realize just how physical it is. The next time you hire someone to remodel your house, just remember that the pain of writing the check probably pales in comparison to the pain you would have in every part of your body if you were the one carrying 75 lb buckets of mortar up a flight of stairs so you could then bend over for what feels like an hour to get a single tile to sit in the stuff just right.

OK, so only my project manager friends who happen to enjoy music will really get the headline joke. The point is that our kitchen project keeps growing. It all started with some floor tile and laminate countertops. Then it grew bit by bit. Now it looks like the plan to have the cabinets painted may change; instead, we’re thinking about stripping the paint off the cabinets and staining them ourselves.

So the bad news is that we’ve got more work to do. The good news is that this is going to be one hell of a kitchen when all is said and done.

The better news is that I’ve got some friends lined up to help out tonight. My dream of having a tiled kitchen by Sunday morning may become a reality.

Right now you’re not allowed to walk in our entryway; our refrigerator is in the living room; and we’re actually eating in our dining room, right next to the stove. Yep, that’s right, the RB family is back at one of our favorite hobbies - home renovation. Wow, we really are white, aren’t we?

Here’s the to do list:

• Tear out the shelves and brick “planter” in the entryway
• Remove the ugly wallpaper
• Remove the uglier wallpaper underneath the ugly stuff
• Remove the peninsula, complete with the counter top, dish washer, and cabinets
• Tile the kitchen and ugly granite/concrete foyer
• Move dish washer to another part of the cabinets
• Replace counter tops with granite (hopefully we’ll find an inexpensive piece) or new laminate
• Build new cabinet doors and hang with new, hidden hinges - yes, we’ll build the doors ourselves
• Install new lighting
• Paint ceiling and walls
• Hire professional painters to sand and paint cabinets white (a change from their current beige)

So far, all of the demo work is complete, thanks in part to my kids who can swing a small sledge pretty well. The backerboard and underlayment are down for the tile. All of the wallpaper has been removed. The peninsula has been removed. It’s time to start cutting tile and painting. If we’re lucky then we might have tile in place by this weekend. Of course, that means more nights like last night when I stayed up until 4:00. I don’t know how much of that I’ll be able to handle.

I hope you’re a noisy boy. I love noisy children. It makes it so much easier to tell where they are and what they’re up to.

I’ve always like that quote, but now that my second child manages to slink out of the house and up the street every time we turn around, it really hits home. If you find a lost, small, blond child walking down the street, please return him to us. Thank you.

Thanks to ATLmalcontent for this one.

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a blog which better describes my friends, family, and me. It’s funny because it’s true. And now my non-white friend can understand why white people love Apple, indie music, home rennovation, and microbrews thanks to Stuff White People Like.

My weekend went pretty much as expected. The only problem was Saturday night. What should have been a few hours of drinking beer turned into many. Seven to be exact. I didn’t get the hangover one of my friends did, but my body decided it had had enough. Between the long hours and crazy stress of last week and the late Saturday night, it decided to make me spend Monday in bed by giving in to a cold.

I’m mostly better now. At least I don’t have bronchitis like one of our boys or an ear infection like the other. My wife’s the healthiest person in the house right now; all she has is a fractured leg…

After pulling nearly a 60 hours week, here are my weekend plans:

• Friday night - sleep
• Saturday - play with the family
• Saturday night - drink massive quantities of good, high gravity beer with friends
• Sunday - stumble into church (it’s good to be Pesbyterian!)
• Sunday night - sleep

Have a great weekend everyone. Here’s hoping your week wasn’t as stressful as mine.

There are some times when you’re glad to find out your doctor was wrong. Like when he tell you that your wife tore her ACL. We’ve now seen two doctors here in Atlanta, and they both agree that her ACL is fine. She does, however, have a compression fracture in her tibia. She needs to rest and stay off her feet (good luck with that), but right now there’s no reason to believe that she’ll need surgery.

Yeah!

We woke up very early Saturday morning and caught the 6:15 flight to Minneapolis. As best as we can tell, we got out just in time, since the snow had not started falling in Atlanta yet. Our Minneapolis to Salt Lake City was a little late, but we were able to avoid the Sundance traffic in Park City and hit the slopes at Deer Valley by 2:30. This was my wife’s first time skiing in six years, and she skied great. She was moving down the slopes with good form and a nice pattern to her turns. And then she fell.

I saw her fall and didn’t think that much of it, but then I saw her face. I wanted to believe that it wasn’t that bad. And for a little while none of us thought it was. She managed to get back on her skis and finish the run. She even got back on the lift and skied a short way over to the gondola. But she couldn’t walk up to the hill to the car. A few bags of snow and a night of icing her knee didn’t help, and we started our day at Alta in the medic’s office. And that’s when we heard it.

A. C. L.

After only four runs her ski trip was over. Worse, rather than preparing for a day on the slopes she had to begin thinking about how we were going to take care of the boys while she spends five days in bed recovering from knee surgery. This is not how our happy trip to Utah was supposed to turn out. If anyone was supposed to get hurt, it was me, and it was to happen while I was doing something stupid. The best wife in the world wasn’t supposed to get hurt on a fluke fall on an easy slope. The rest of the day was spent with her sitting in the pub while I half-heartedly made a few runs on the perfectly groomed slopes and muttered obscenities under my breath.

I might talk about the good parts of our trip later, but for now, really what else matters?

Update - it could have been much worse. As we were flying out a professional skier was making videos on the backside of the mountains we were skiing when he also fell. My friend and I were watching Warren Miller videos during our layover on the trip up. They’re cool as hell, but you never heard about the guys who die making them. I think we’ll stick to the beginner side of the mountain.