To Tile Or Not To Tile

That is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the bath's walls to suffer the slings and splashes of outrageous showers, or take tiles against a sea of moisture, and by grouting protect them. 

Butchered Bard aside, this is what you can do with the help of a friend:

Quite superior than what you can do by yourself:

Yes, it looks really crooked but the sad thing is it's actually level. The walls are just that messed up. 

Now all that's left is spending a fortune on tile, buying mortar, grout, thinset, and hardie board for the floors. That shouldn't be too hard in the next 6 days right?

Come Sail Away

Come sail away, come sail away...

With my house.

I've heard of living on the water but this is ridiculous! Fortunately sump pumps are readily available for purchase!

So now my crawl space is water free-ish. 

Tub Humor

Question: How many people does it take to take off a tub faucet?

Answer: Two. One to get frustrated and give up, the second to look it up.

Thank G-d for friends!!!

Tub trouble

At a certain point you have to admit defeat. Well maybe you don't have to, but I certainly do. I called in the professionals to haul the rest of the stuff out of the bathroom. 

Before hauling:

After hauling:

Then there's the issue of putting everything back in. I could not fathom putting a bathtub in myself. I am not embarrassed to admit that it is well beyond what I can do. I hired someone to put a new subfloor (ready for me to tile), a tub, and cement board on the walls (again ready for me to tile). 

This was the result of 10 hours of their work:

Notice anything missing from the walls and floor? Thus my next job seems to be learning how to put cement board on the walls and floors. The only issue may be that I can barely lift the cement board and don't own a saw. We shall see if professionals will again be required. 

I suppose the lesson in all if this is: 1) Know when to call the pros, 2) Make sure the pros are going to do what you want. 

Got Wood?

The floors in the living and dining room are oak, much of them in tact and in need of a little refinishing. Then there's the matter of the plywood. 

That discolored stuff in the lower right section is plywood. This was something I knew about before I bought the house. Clearly the people that owned this house previously didn't care about it at all. With all the pest problems I should have expected that they wouldn't feel it necessary to fix what had been ripped out. 

The bedroom is another story. Covered in scary looking linoleum tiles over particleboard that extends all the way down the hallway towards the bathroom. Why anyone would cover wood floors with a 70's nightmare I couldn't say. 

I mean, really? Who on earth would do that? So I've been slowly ripping the screws out after I ripped the tiles off (also a slow process) the sticky mess of a floor. Underneath it all I discovered this...

Got wood? Yes! I have wood! It was only after ripping up two additional sections that I found more plywood patching the areas of the floor they'd ripped out. 

Once again, house, my joy has turned to frustration. At least now I'll learn a lot about wood. And for all who thought this entry would concern anything else, get outta here!

Let This Be Called

A cruddy bathroom gets what's coming!

And this is, 'Cruddy Bathroom fights back'.

Bouncy Castle Blowout

This is not your typical giant bouncy castle. It is, in fact, a house dressed up for Halloween to look like a bouncy castle. The bug-killing going on underneath the costume is, I'm guessing, just a bonus.

My house, the Giant Bouncy Castle

These are dead bugs. I am happy the bugs are dead. I have no moral objections to killing creepy crawly things that are slowly eating my house. I have no moral objections to killing creepy crawly things that aren't eating my house. I just really don't like creepy crawly things.

All in all, I like that the bug men killed the creepy crawlers. I like that my house no longer looks like a giant bouncy castle (although I'd like to consider building my own bouncy castle some day). I DO NOT LIKE!!! that the bug men killed my window! The man said there was a little crack in the window. Did he think I wouldn't notice when I went to the house that there's not a little crack in the window, there's a little window that's not cracked? So now I need a window person. Soon, like now. Magic window elves if you could do me a solid tonight so I don't have to worry about this that'd be awesome.

I'm not even going to talk about the tree branch they broke towards the top of a 15 foot tree that's over 10 feet from the house and is now resting on my neighbors fence/garage...