Never get the DP a key element of a renovation project for Christmas.
Will this bathroom never be done? 
Seriously, if you wonder why I’ve not been posting, it’s simple: I have no words. I’ve always had a problem with nouns…but they’ve all gone away. Case in point: I went in Monday to make an appointment for a mammogram…and I couldn’t remember a last name to save my soul. Had to ask Carolyn for everything…Even OSG’s last name! I’m not sure I remembered my own.
So…in a desperate attempt to get us up to date:
The carousel arrived in beautiful shape except for the little top piece that covers the key screw to taking it apart had come off! Hmmmm….might be the key for accessing my old one. Not sure it’s worth the trouble. It’s really well glued on.
For all the NY res…I’m glad I got Carolyn the medicine cabinet. We’ve been putting off this bathroom thing for a year now (really since we moved into the house, but we had all the key pieces a year ago.) and it’s been a breeding ground for “well, we could do this” ideas all of which took creative brain cells to consider exactly HOW we’d do “this”. The medicine cabinet forced us to tear out the tile backsplash, which forced us to mud and paint which forced us to really concentrate on the bathroom, settle on tile and all the rest. It was a good thing, for all it has once again disrupted the Closed Circle stuff. Case in point…once we settled on the tile and NOT redoing floors…Carolyn’s writing got back on track overnight. Mine…well, that’s going to require a more concentrated effort…but that’s another post altogether.
c) Tearing out the tile forced me to actually examine the leak/soft spot in the floor next to the tub. Oi…such a mess. Fortunately, it’s confined to the area of about two tiles, but the subfloor 3/4″ plywood was hosed. Trying to cut out this smallish section right next to wall and tub…and involving the heat/AC duct…has proven (predictably) adventuresome.
Trying to chisel the bad section out knocked one of our stemware glasses that we have hanging downstairs off its little rail, so we brought all the stemware upstairs to protect it. While it was up there, I decided, gee, they could use washing. Bad idea. They’d been resonating down there. That’s why they were wiggling off the metal rail. They were a bit cold. The water was a bit hot. I was a bit stupid.
I washed a few, but got to one particularly fragile one, swept the dishcloth around the bowl and snap! the side snapped out and my middle finger of my right hand was sliced…right between the knuckle and the nail bed, a good 1/2 to 3/4 inch slash. Blood spewed everywhere. and my first thought? “Just what I need in the middle of mudding!”
I got it good. But it was a very clean cut…in every sense, having been done in the dishwater! 
I let it bleed a bit, then applied pressure till the bleeding slowed up enough to get a bandaid on. I put another around the knuckle to keep it from bending easily and another on the tip to keep the blood from pooling in the tip. (This isn’t the first cut of this sort I’ve given myself. I’m a pro! ) Put on a latex glove and started drying the stemware! Other than one small scare with some discoloration which epson salt soaks seem to have solved, it’s healing nicely…despite ongoing renovation.
We did get a small saw to cut out the section of floor, however. And in order to cut the replacement board, we’re actually putting together the little table saw we got ourselves for Christmas (did anyone else take advantage of the Lowe’s Seriously Cheap Saw sale on Black Friday? This is a lot of saw for $50 and one that will come in really handy) Anyway, putting it together was yesterday’s adventure. It involved a whole new vocabulary and illustrations which only made sense after you figure out what they were talking about! And metric bolts. What ever happened to the cheap little flat wrenches they used to put into something like this? I thought I had a metric set, but no…and my adjustable wrench disappeared in the last move…so we made do with a small vicegrip and channel lock. Toy tools…like they sell at hardware counters? But we got it together and today we’ll cut the replacement piece.
Oh…I got really clever. This piece has to fit into the curve at the front of the tub and accommodate a corner as well…so I took a piece of aluminum foil and smooshed it into the exact shape. No measuring needed! (Now we’ll see if my bright idea worked…)
What else…oh, yeah…the pipe. Way back when we replaced the faucets in the tub as they were one source of the leak. Problem was, the set we got didn’t work really well with the piping/holes in the tile. The redirect handle for tub/shower ran into the tub spigot. Well, with the tile being redone I figured “perfect time to fix that. Just replace the nipple running between the main housing and the elbow that attaches to the spigot with a longer one. HAH! I couldn’t budge that sucker…I blamed it on the wounded finger until OSGuy came to the rescue and it took his bulging muscles and killer wrenches to move that sucker! (Of course, Sooper Shu’s energy rays helped him. He couldn’t possibly have managed without the Shuster’s help.)
Off topic note: I’ve come to the conclusion that Shu loves guys…or maybe just guys who work with power tools. He’s inclined to hisspit a bit at visiting females and guys in suits, but Nick, the tiling guy, was just too cool as far as Shu was concerned and he was all over OSGuy.
We won’t talk about what he does to Seishi…tho one of these days when I’m back at the computer you’ll get a slide show. Talk about inseparable…
Anyway…I’m sure there’s lots more i should tell you about, but I’ve got to put the computer away and go cut the piece for the floor.
Happy New Year, everybody!
