Tiles and Toilets

Anyone who has even attempted even a simple remodeling job will tell you that rarely, if ever, does the job go as planned, and never does the job take as short a time as one would like.  That seems to be the truth of this laundry room floor, too.

We had hoped yesterday to get all of the perimeter tile cut and in place so that today we could grout the whole room. That was not to be.  We started early, and by 1:00 p.m. Rick had all of the tiles cut.  Our neighbor, Jim, who is a contractor, owns a tile saw that he let us borrow. We are eternally grateful for the loan since this is a job that did not quite meet Rick's expectations that we could have all of the tile cut and laid down in a weekend's time.  That was just not going to happen.

Those of you who know my husband know that he has an incredible talent to visualize a task from its inception to its termination. He can see each step in his mind, so as he mentally runs through the job, he is playing the task in fast-forward, thus leading to his drastic underestimation of how long a particular task will take to complete.

Since he had cut all of the tile to size by early afternoon, we proceeded to mix up a batch of thin-set to lay the tile.  I thought that we had put in enough powder to the mix, and unfortunately Rick listened to me.  I figured he would check the mix as he did the previous day, and he said that he did, but this time we miscalculated the mix.  After it cured for the required 15 minutes, we mixed it again and Rick put down the first tile.  That's when I head him say, "(Expletive deleted), we're going to have to throw out this whole batch of mix.  It's like whipped cream... way too weak.  If we use it, the tile will never stick."

We picked up and cleaned off the tile he had tried to put down; he then scraped up the mix, and we dumped it all into a large, heavy-duty, black, yard garbage bag.  At about the same time, I noticed that I was totally out of energy, which generally means that I should go check my blood.  For some reason, my blood sugar dropped to 35 (normal is 80 - 120), so I had to take a little break to get some sugar back into my system.  Thankfully, Lindsay and Christopher had sent me a box of Hughes Chocolates from Oshkosh (incidentally, the best chocolate in the world), and a couple of pieces of that was all I needed to get back to as normal as I ever can be.

Rick measures tiles for the cut.

The cut tile loosely fitted onto the floor.

The cut tile are stacked and ready to be installed.

By the time I came back to reality and we had cleaned up the bad mix, we were pushing 3:00 p.m.  We decided to call it a day since laying the tile would lead us into the dinner hour, and, truthfully, Rick was tired by that time.  So the new plan was to get up today, mix a new batch of thin-set, and have the tile down by the end of the day so we could grout tomorrow.  That would only push the schedule back by one day because then we could add door casing and put up the bull-nose baseboard on Sunday, grout the bull-nose on Monday, clean the room up and re-install the washer and dryer by Tuesday, and celebrate a long, long project done.  Dunedin is a very Scottish community, so I can almost hear the poet Robert Burns saying as he wrote, "The best laid schemes of mice and men/ go often awry..."

I got up this morning and dragged my tired self into the shower.  We live very near the Dunedin water tower, so our water pressure and drainage has always been excellent. I got into the shower and soon noticed that I was standing in about three inches of water!  Oh, oh.  Standing water in a house is never a good thing, no matter where it is.  I called Rick as I quickly rinsed off, and he did a double-check of the rest of the house.  We had water draining out of the bottom of both toilets, and a water back-up in the bathtub.  (Expletive deleted!)

Our leaking toilet in the master bathroom. Thank
heaven that we added legs to the bathroom
cabinet just to protect it from this kind of disaster!

We called Dunedin Plumbing who told us we had to call the City of Dunedin to check their right-of-way plumbing before they would come in.  Dunedin sent a very nice guy named Rich out who scoped our connection.  He told us that Gladys shares a double Y-connection drain pipe with the neighbors, and that the problem definitely was not in that part of the plumbing system. So Rick called Dunedin Plumbing back, and they said they can fit us into the schedule this afternoon.  Great!  I was able to use the toilet this morning, but why Rick has not watered a bush in the backyard yet is beyond me!

Our next stop this morning has to be a coin-operated laundromat both to wash all of our clothes and sheets and to find a public restroom! Hopefully, by the end of the day we will be back in business with the plumbing, and Gladys will have ALL of her pipes cleaned out.

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Post Script: Dunedin Plumbing just left.  The plumbing had drained and the toilets flushed fine by the time he got here.  This situation is sort of like the child who runs a 104 fever until minutes before the doctor enters the room and thinks you are a crazy, hysterical parent since the child's temperature is now normal. The plumber did say that the pipes from this house are now 53 years old, and that they may have started to badly corrode which would lead to paper flushed down the toilet clogging the drain.  After enough pressure builds up behind it, the clog clears and all is fine... for a while.

The result of this story is that Dunedin Plumbing will come back next Thursday morning to run a camera down the pipes to see what is going on.  Poor Gladys; just like people over the age of 50, she is due for her first colonoscopy.  We need to find out what is going on with the pipes and if there are any breaks or narrowing.  The scope will cost us $250 (on top of the $89 service call today), and if they have to dig up the yard and replace pipes, that could run anywhere from $3000 - $5000 dollars!  Worst-case scenario would be problems with pipes under the house which would mean even more money along with the destruction of our wonderful terrazzo floors.

For anyone who is charmed with the idea of owning an old house with character, think again.  Yes, dolling up Gladys with cosmetic changes like paint and tile floors is all fine and good, but all of the unseen infrastructure changes are the real budget suckers of home ownership. Gladys will survive, but I am not sure that our bank account will after this adventure.