Tile Conundrum

I don't think the master bathroom's shower was installed properly. Now, I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the shower floor is supposed to gently slope towards the drain to discourage puddling. We don't have that.

The tiles aren't one hundred percent even, either. One of them, right next to the drain was sorta off-kilter, and it cracked.

"Simple," you say. "Take it out and replace it!" After all, that's what bobvila.com and diynetwork.com told me to do.

So we pry this tile out - not easy, in fact we chipped one of the adjacent tiles - and we've got a confusing sight before us.

There's a thick layer of wet, sandy, crumbling gray stuff under the tile - obviously water had gotten in. But why is it so thick? Tiles are, at most, 3/8" thick, and the length between the black plastic pan and the top of the tile has got to be twice that. Is there supposed to be 1/2" of adhesive under the tile?

And there are more questions. Why does the "pan" have holes in it? Why isn't it sloping towards the drain?

I'm afraid if we just slap a crazy-thick layer of whatever adhesive down, pop a tile on top of it, grout and seal the whole thing, that we're putting a band-aid over a larger problem.

lightning at sunset

lightning at sunset, originally uploaded by wvs.

The blog Pilgrimsteps alerted me to this photo. I'm a sucker for outdoor photography, especially storms and sunsets. This is amazing!

Okay, let's try this one more time ....

Last night, a coworker of Kyle's called. She had been talking about our wedding with her husband, who is a professor at the community college here. When he heard the date, he pointed out that May 2 is also graduation for both the college and the university. There wouldn't be a hotel room left in the city on that weekend.

"Don't you work at the university?" This is what you're thinking, aren't you?

Well, technically. But I work for the Extension service, which has almost nothing to do with students. My "customers" are Florida gardeners and college students don't tend to fall within that demographic. So we don't pay much attention to that sort of thing over here.

"Well, doesn't the university own the building in which you're planning to be married?" You could be thinking that too. "Why didn't the staff mention that?"

I don't have a good answer for that one.

Luckily, it all worked out. I called back this morning, and the next Saturday was available. And with graduation out of the way, it will be a little quieter in town as well.

Kyle and his friend got most of the baseboards up last night - it's amazing the difference it makes.

No baseboards:

Baseboards!

It's on! Oh, and we got a fooseball table.

The wedding date is set!

We're getting married on Saturday, May 2, 2009. Most likely at 7 p.m. Yay! This is a huge step forward for us - we have our site and date. We had originally wanted April, and the only reason we didn't consider May is that so much is already going on that month (lots of birthday, anniversaries, Memorial Day weekend). But the reason we picked April was because the weather is consistently nice at that time of year. But a week or two later isn't going to hurt anything.

Yay!

Kyle picked up his fooseball table last night:

He bought it from some kid. For sitting around in a bachelor pad for a couple of years, it's in shockingly good condition, and it's well-made. It's not a Tornado, but it's solid. And Kyle got it for such a great price (he saved hundreds versus buying a new one), I can overlook the fact that it doesn't exactly go with our interior design plan of natural colors. Chrome doesn't really show up in the "naturals" palette too often.

Right now it's in the dining room. I'm sure that's where it will stay until we get around to purchasing an actual dining set. However, there are many, many expenses standing in between now and that time. Like getting married.

Well, we had a date...

I got a bad-news e-mail this morning: apparently the date I thought I had reserved at the lovely meditation center/chapel here on campus for our wedding was given to someone else. We had wanted a sunset time as the Baughman Center is on Lake Alice and has an amazing sunset view.

But our choices are now either smack-dab middle of the day (1-3) or at night (7-9). Obviously, not the end of the world, but I had a whole week to get used to having an actual wedding date and now I'm back to g-ddamn square one.

And it's done . . .

. . . almost. But the gray nasty is gone!



My knights in . . . sweaty workclothes:



On the left is my fiance, and to his left is our friend who had the know-how to do this project. We (see how I'm part of this!) couldn't have done it without him.

We're lucky - we do have great friends. Projects like this usually bring the best (or the worst) out in people. Some friends surprise you, offering so much of themselves - and others disappoint. But that's enough said about that.

We still have buy floorboards and transition pieces, but the guys are estatic - no more glue!

The floor - so close!

It's actually further along than this - I just haven't taken a photo of it yet. We may finish tonight!

Of course, "finish" is a relative term. Because once all the flooring's down, we still have to buy baseboards, "quarter-round" whatever that is, and transition pieces to put between the wood and the tile and the carpet. But the scary elastomeric stuff will be covered, safely within the doomsday deadline of 14 days.

" CURE TIME
Humidity affects cure to a greater degree than temperature;
the higher the humidity, the faster the cure. Keep off
membrane until material cures; usually 12 to 16 hours. To
help protect the cured membrane form scuffing, tears,
scratches, dust, dirt, or other jobsite contamination, install
hardwood flooring as soon as possible. If the membrane is
exposed for more than 14 days, do not install hardwood
flooring until you contact Bostik’s Flooring Technical Service
Department. "

(Italics mine.)

Yesterday morning I looked out the bathroom window and could see, from quite a distance, a spider moving around in its web on a tree in our back yard.

We have some impressive spiders:



They're mostly what I've always called banana spiders - I think the bug folks call them Golden Orb spiders - and dang, are they big. Big enough to see across the yard.

This particular morning, I could see the spider working with something in its web. I thought (or more likely, actually said out loud, because I talk to myself), "Ooh, it caught something!"

Careful observation revealed that it was actually a leaf. It had most likely fallen out of the tree, and now the spider was neatly clipping it out of the web, as easily as we might trim a hedge. I wondered at it; the dexterity, the accuracy.