Put A Fork In It

I got home pretty late today. Csaba was still here at 7:30 putting in the last few tiles around the tub faucet. Tomorrow is "clean up and grout". Wo hoo!

Hocus Focus

Daily progress continues in the bathroom. I couldn't be pleaseder. Today Csaba finished the shower except for the cubby for the shampoo shelf thingy. And he started putting the ledge on the wall for the tub surround where, truly there should be bullnosed edge, but that's just not how the chips have fallen.

So time was of the essence for me to make a needed fix to the tub fixtures. Can you see what I did? I fixed the "fix" that my first tile-setting contractor did.

There's No Progress Like Daily Progress

The tile setter returned. I didn't see him at all today, but he did like he said he would and set up the wet saw in the bathroom where he was working. It cut out several runs of stairs to the front porch for each cut, but it made for tight quarters in the workspace. It looks to me like my bathroom was fairly well covered, well enough anyway for surfaces that should be able to tolerate getting a little wet sometime. Plus, it also looks like he got a good deal done.



The shower walls are nearly done just a few more cut tiles on adjacent to the floor on the south pony wall, tile in the inset shelf and we're golden, just the tub surround to finish. Awesome.

Tilesetting Resumes

Whew! I arrived home today to find a van at the curb. I didn't really panic, but I also arrived home to an open front door. Luckily by the time I got to the porch I saw my dog Henri inside. According to Csaba, the tile-setter, H got out twice today. It's tough to keep track of that dog. He never goes very far (lately anyway), but he doesn't tend to come back until he feels like it.

It feels a little like two steps forward, one step back as he took out one row of 3 tiles tile along floor on the back wall of the shower so that he can replace them with a set that matches what he's putting in. The new stuff will be more like two rows of half-tiles so that he can make up the difference between the one-tile-high row that was there and the > one-tile-high area that needs to be filled in the same line where the floor line drops for the shower drainage.

When he pulled the "old" tiles off they took some of the waterproof seal with them, so he had to re-apply that. That's the red goo on the wall there.

Anyway, Csaba will be back tomorrow and back at the shower walls. Yippie for that!

That Was Weird

I noticed the lock box was moved, but it was just a little, in fact, maybe I was just remembered it wrong (wrongly, incorrectly, dismembered it, er...). Anyway, MAYBE that means the contractor showed up today!

So I went inside and upstairs to the bathroom. Nope, no change.

Oh well. Note to self, call contractor in the morning. I'm frantically cleaning house--okay, not even that, I'm just picking up jetsam, mostly laundry and hucking it down the stairs to the basement where the W/D are, but other stuff too. I even managed to sweep before my friend arrived to walk the lake.

We walked the lake and had a little food and drink. My point here is that hours later I got back to the house and went to the bathroom, the other bathroom, and I noticed that the toilet seat was up. Now, I may leave the lid up on occasion, but the actual toilet seat, I'm pretty reliable when it comes to that, since I don't put that up in the first place unless I'm cleaning or puking and I would have remembered either one of those.

So someone has been here.

I wasn't totally freaked out or anything. But it's a little creepy when someone has been in your house, but their stated purpose has not been tended to at all. So that begs the question, is THAT the person who was here? I did change my combination on my lock box again just that morning, so presumably no one else would know it. I notice the back door is unlocked, but wait I did that myself after I got home...

No biggie. Later that evening I went down in the basement, getting back to some other cleaning up I was doing (just starting really, tip o the iceberg kinda' thing) over the weekend, plus starting that laundry I'd thrown down the stairs. As I got down there I noticed a lot of lights were on. Not typical me to leave them on, but then I did sort of stop in the middle of my crap sorting adventure last Sunday, went up for air and never went back down. So I don't think the contractor dude was down there. It's just that the creep factor/aura sort of thing has a lingering imprint on my mood. It's like what having ghosts would be like, if there were actual physical evidence.

So once again, I'm up 'til 1 A.M. doing nothing particularly useful. (Well there was that laundry and cleaning, whoopie for me!) I can blame the creep factor, or the coke I had at dinner, or really just the same old same old. Old habits die hard. And I had and 8 A.M. meeting to look forward to in the morning!

Tomorrow Noon

I received email from my new contractor for the bathroom tile-setting. They plan to start tomorrow noon. It still didn't sound CERTAIN, but at least they called me proactively. That's a (giant) step in the right direction.

Now I need a vanity! O crap, and a plumber.

Plumber: vanity and toilet, and finish shower and tub
Electrician: move vanity lighting, wire the switch for the radiant heat

tick tock..

I've hired a new tile setter. Curious that there are no new pictures though, eh? Well, that's because nothing's changed yet. I signed the new contract, I dunno, Tuesday or Wednesday last week and they said "It's possible we could start tomorrow". But when tomorrow came they were not ready to start.

The difference? I haven't paid them anything yet, and I won't until they're done... Maybe that's not a difference until they're done, come to think of it. But I expect to hear from them this week. (Does that go without saying?)