Flashbacks and pipedreams

Howdy hi, there friends and neighbors!

Sorry, a flashback there. Betcha you can’t guess where that comes from without an internet search.

Big News!! Friend of a friend heard that I was renovating getting ready to sell. He and his wife show up and LOVE the place and want it as is. Formal offer probably in the next day or two and they want to move in immediately!

Yeah, I wish.....

That was a daydream while I was waiting for some paint to dry. Yeah, I really did have to wait for some paint to dry. Insert joke here....

So on to the updates:

House Renovation

Over the long weekend I decided I was going to get back to it in full force and knock out as much as I could in that bathroom. That was the plan. That really was the plan. Actually, it wasn’t that bad. I did make good progress, it was just painfully slow. Tile craftsmen have absolutely nothing to worry about if I ever lose my job. I can do it, but I would be no competition to them and I would starve to death.

Started out on Friday morning all pepped up and ready to go. I got all the materials assembled and then the worst possible thing that could happen, happened. I started thinking about it…again. Are my layout lines correct? Did I pick the right tile? Should I do a straight line pattern or a brick pattern? Did I have the top & bottom cutoff measurements equal? Many, many more….

After about 20-30 minutes of this second guessing game, I just picked up a tile, buttered it, and slapped it on the wall. There! Committed now! No more sitting and festering about it. So off to the tile races I go. Of course by the end of Friday I stepped back and holy crap! I worked all day long and hadn’t even finished three courses. This is going to take me a month! Now, of course I sat and fussed around with each individual tile until it was perfectly set (the engineer in me). I had those little spacers all over the place. Pretty dejected on the lack of progress, granted they were perfectly set, but way too few of them. Here’s the first days progress.

Saturday morning I decided I was going to pick up the pace and get moving along, and for some reason it did go faster. I think one of the biggest time wasters (besides my OCD) was that I didn’t know how to handle that trowel. I got adhesive all over the place on Friday, but on Saturday I started to get a rhythm going and didn’t slop the adhesive all over and have to stop and clean it up. I also got better at eyeballing the side gaps and only put the clips on the horizontal gaps. The weight of the tile made it slide down so the clips were necessary there. Here’s the progress when I broke for lunch on Saturday.

So Sunday was a new challenge with the accent strip. I did slow way down and spend some time on that strip and I’m glad I did. The strip pieces aren’t exactly the same thickness as the tile so it took a little finagling to get it set right.

After that it was the race to the top! The bullnose came after that and they were surprisingly difficult, but it was time to power through and get it finished. I even got the first coat of paint on the ceiling as I was dying to get an idea of what the finished product is going to look like. That's why the lights are just hanging by the wires.

Sorry, you're going to have to tilt your head or rotate the picture. For some reason Google won't let me do it here. Note to self, don't do this again.

This weekend was floor tile. I decided to hold off on the wall grout as the floor grout will be exactly the same, so I may as well do one big grout party. Here's where I am as of Sunday (7/12) evening.

Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention that I went ahead and did the final painting on the walls. Hard to make out in the above picture, but it's a very light sea foam green that picks up the green in the tile accent in the tub surround. No, that cutout for the toilet was not fun.

Next up will be to grout and then put the water valve on the stub for the toilet and install the toilet itself! After that will be vanity!

House Un-stuff

Started work on emptying out some of the kitchen cabinets in anticipation of the big kitchen explosion. I’ve been getting into the habit of only buying groceries that I will actually use during the next week and not having so much ‘extraneous stuff’ that doesn’t get used.

Seriously, go open a cabinet or the fridge and take out all the things that literally haven’t been touched in 2 or 3 months. Those are the things that you will never use and is just taking up space. Not to mention the money wasted on it.

Another thing to try is to not buy groceries for a week and see how many days you can go using just the stuff that you already have on hand. I went more than 2 weeks and still have a couple of things that could get used up. It’s scary amazing how empty the pantry and fridge get when only groceries that will actually be used are purchased AND my grocery budget has dropped dramatically.

Sorry got a little off-topic there.

RV Search

Was going to go out to Lazy Days over the 4^th weekend and it was just too damn hot and the storms move in pretty thick and fast over there. So I’ll try again in a couple of weeks. Otherwise not a whole lot happening on this front right now.

Other

Starting to think about what make/model of car I’ll be trading in the truck to get. It’s getting pretty close to the point where I just don’t need a truck anymore and I just can’t justify the horrible gas mileage in trade for the towing/hauling capability. So I’ve started browsing used car websites and seeing what I like versus repair costs/gas mileage/etc.

Yes, it will be a used car. I’m of the opinion right now that I probably won’t ever buy a new car ever again. In fact, the big truck that I’ll buy for the fifth wheel will be used. I’m finding that a car/truck about a year old can be purchased for a WHOLE lot less money than new. I mean we’re talking thousands of dollars of difference. Will I miss that feeling of driving off the lot with that brand new car or truck? Yeah, some, but it’s an unbelievably expensive feeling.

Just for fun, let’s say that the new car feeling lasts a week, and let’s say that I’m awake for 14 hours a day. That’s 98 hours. Let’s also say that I save $20k buying used rather than new. That works out to more than $200/hour. Is that even in the realm of justifiable? Not in my mind.

Wow, I got long-winded on this one. So until next time, onward, or is it upward? Sideways? No, it's exponential. I got it, it's, it's, no wait, what was I saying?