May 28

Yesterday was a super-productive day. We didn’t necessarily hit all the bullets on the list for the day, but after working on things, we didn’t necessarily have to, for it to still be productive. Homewrecker was feeling pretty good yesterday, so even though he was on Percocet, he was able to operate light machinery and still keep his digits.

He started with caulking the studs for the closet. We found evidence online that putting a continuous thick bead of caulk on each stud before mounting sheetrock can add some audio insular value to a room, so we’re testing it in our closet (adjacent to the family room) before we try to employ it with our shower when we finally build that. The only trick is that until the bead of caulk dries, it's like playing the game Operation squeezing between the studs to go anywhere. You could choose to just stay inside your stud and caulk prison until the caulk dries, or you can try to escape.

Meanwhile, I pulled out the rest of the tar-paper to see what was underneath, and shocker! One of the boards surrounding the toilet flange had rotted through. So I traded places with Homewrecker and starting caulking, while he brought out one of his (truly) myriad of saws, a drill, screws, a screwdriver, tape measure and some wood. Magically, within 20 minutes, he had a new solution and fixed the floor. Now, when you jump up and down on the floor next to the flange (because we all do that when using the toilet—admit it), your foot won’t go through the floor. And neither will the tile above it.

After he fixed the floor, I put down new tar paper and then we started focusing on the actual size of the poo room and shower hallway to frame in sill plates so we know how far I have to tile. Man, it's gonna be tight. We're not saying that the bathroom is going to be super large or luxurious. It will just be better than what we have currently. Hobbits would feel right at home there, and probably feel that the bathroom was immense. For us to save as much space as we can in the dance hall, we had to sacrifice other space in the bathroom. It's frustrating to see, especially after it looks so big on paper, but overall, we have to keep reminding ourselves that it's all better than what we have now, and it's still working within the constraints of what we have. We just have to adopt the Hobbit mindset.

Once we knew the exact size of the poo room, then we started on the cement board for the tile underlayment. Unfortunately, the toilet flange is a full 1 1/2" above the subfloor, and breaking the iron stack to lower the flange is VERY expensive, so instead we had to choose how to raise the floor again to get to the stack. We've decided that we would only have an elevated floor in the poo room, and the rest of the bathroom should be the same level as all the other hardwood floors in the house. That's the theory, anyway. So now we'll have an elevated throne room.

And God forbid any walls in the house are at exactly 90 degrees from each other. That would make things way too easy.

Homewrecker and I had to go out to the garage and excavate our cement board from behind a plethora of other stuff--sheetrock, spare plywood, spare other wood, and mahogany. Luckily we had the perfect amount, so we set about cutting them down to the correct size and cutting the toilet flange hole. When I say we, I mostly mean he, because he has more arm strength than I to score all those boards and snap them. I don't have beefy hands just yet. And we went through jigsaw blades in a hot minute when cutting cement. So as he cut them, I would carry them into the house and lay them down to ensure a good fit. Three boards = 1.25". Then came the fun part.

We brought in the gorgeous honed and filled travertine tile and started laying out a pattern. It took us a while to decide on the pattern and how it would work out and if it was going to be symmetric. And I was clever enough to discover how fragile travertine tile is by stepping on it. Snap! Okay, we'll use that one in a mosaic or something.

Once we laid out the pattern, HW started cutting the tile and I started placing it. Man, did I mention this stuff was fragile? If you even look at it longways, it can snap, so now the challenge is to not only get the layout right, and perfect, and level, but also, not to have it touch anything except feathers and cottonballs until it gets set on the floor. I'm super paranoid that once it's set, and once we're ready to walk on them, they'll all just snap under any weight. Whose bright idea was it to use this stuff for flooring? Oh yeah, mine. Sigh. So today, before we bother setting the toilet again, we'll have to test it and make sure that it bears weight as we walk on it. If it doesn't then this whole adventure had been a disaster. We hope not!

I finished up around 9 pm with almost all the tile-setting in mortar. We discovered that using a Sharpie doesn't work on porous travertine limestone. When using a Sharpie to mark porcelain tile, the mark just comes off with water. Not so with travertine. Not water, not alcohol, not nail polish remover. So we do have a couple more pieces we'll have to recut, now that we know we can't get the Sharpie off. Hooray! More tile for the mosaic I wasn't planning on making! HW found a grease pencil for the next round.

My lower back hurts, my hamstrings are killing me, and I think I'm dehydrated. But a VERY good day. If all we do today is get the toilet set without cracking tiles, we're in a decent stopping point. We'll just have to see.

Hobbit mindset . . .