Day 19 - 20: Bathroom Remodel

We waited all day yesterday for Sarah to call, but she never did.  She told us she might call us on late Friday, but probably not until Monday.  Since today is Tuesday, I think she is a bit late.  Whatever.  We really only need to talk to her to get some kind of an idea of how far out the valve for the shower needs to protrude from the wall.  Rick said that he will just make the pipes long enough to cover our bases.

Otherwise, we don't need to pick out the tile yet to somewhat get the bathroom back in order. Once the tub is in tomorrow, we can then put up the last of the drywall, mud, sand, and paint that, and then reinstall the toilet.  We also can move the vanity back into the room and call the granite people to come and measure for the vanity top.  We have the sink, so they can take that to install since it is an undermount sink.

But what about the floors?  Thankfully, the one call we did received late yesterday afternoon was from the man from Finish Line Floors.  He told us that he was in the area and wanted to make arrangements to come and work on the floors.  Rick explained to him about the tub being installed on Wednesday, so (bless his heart!) he came over last night to grind and bleach the "problem" areas of the floor.  He was here until almost 6:00 p.m.

The brown ridge line where the old tub ended is gone.

The area next to the wall no longer is stained.
New baseboard molding will finish the look.

He promised to come back at 7:00 this morning to take up the bleach and then to return in early afternoon after he finishes his other job in the city so he can polish the traffic patterns in the floors. He arrived right on time, so I expect he will be back this afternoon to finish the job. We will have everything completed before the tub is installed.  Hooray!

While we are waiting for him to come back, Rick ran some errands and I decided to do some yard work.  I took the blower and blew the leaves out of my back corner garden.  It looks much better.  Then I cleaned the leaves off the patio with no problem.  While I had the blower out, I decided to clean up some of the leaves in the back yard.  Yeah, right.

Midwesterners who come to Florida soon learn that raking leaves down here is a totally foreign experience.  We are used to our trimmed, obedient northern lawns that have blades of grass that stand up like rows upon rows of disciplined soldiers on parade.  The leaves fall on top and the rake easily picks them up.  Not so in Florida.

Here the grass must be kept fairly long to avoid draught burn-out.  This gives the small, leathery leaves of the live oak and camphor trees that fall in our backyard the chance to really dive down and nestle into the bottom area of the grass.  Also, grass down here generally is either St. Augustine, which is as dense as an expensive carpet, or Bahai, which grows by sending out surface runners so the entire lawn is an interconnected spider web of runners and blades.  Neither grass is great to rake, but Bahai is the worst because the grass web grabs the tines of the rake and hangs on like a corpse's hand reaching up from the grave to hold on to something in the living world.

Raking leaves is a sadly, frustratingly, heart-breaking job. To add to the Midwesterner's confusion, the timing of the leaves falling from the trees is all wrong.  Midwestern leaves live a very regimented life. They bud in April or May, grow in June, provide shade for the summer, gloriously change color in September and October, and fall to the ground in October and early November.  The leaves are so regimented that cities can schedule leaf pick-up from curbsides with predictable results.  Usually all of the leaves are down and collected by the second week in November so the yards and streets are clean before the snow flies in late November.

Not so in Florida.  Some of the leaves are turning brown and falling in the yard now.  Some will continue to fall at a lazy pace through November and into December -- just enough to mess up the yard -- but the true "fall" in Florida usually does not happen until early spring when the trees are ready to start a new budding cycle.  The other strange thing is that the trees never lose all of their leaves.  We never see bare trees in Florida.  They just lose some of their leaves to keep homeowners on constant alert, and then dump their leaves when the weather or whims of some evil tree elves decide to drop them.

At least the patio and back garden are free from leaves!

So today I went into the back yard and tried to entice into my yard bag the majority of leaves in the side yard and around the patio  slab.  I worked about eight feet out, and that was enough for me.  The lawn is long and the leaves were stubborn.  I know that I will never get every leaf out of the yard, but I wanted to keep some of them from blowing onto the patio.

Sometimes God tries to help.  If we have a really, really, really strong wind, some of the surface leaves will blow to one side of the yard and collect along the fence.  However, to get all of the leaves to blow up out of the grass and collect near the fence requires a certain kind of storm.  It's called a tropical storm or a hurricane, and in both cases homeowners usually have more to worry about than bagging the leaves in the yard.

Living in Florida means that a person can work in the yard year round, and with the stubborn leaves and unyielding grass, taking care of the yard is a year-round challenge. However, yard work gives me a reason to exercise, and occasionally we both need time out of the house and into the fresh air.

UPDATE:

The floor in in the Florida room shines.

The floor man returned as promised at 11:30; he spent a couple of hours polishing the floors.  My kitchen gleams, the light coming in the front door is blinding, and the traffic areas are not dull anymore.

We cans the light!

Rick was not feeling well today because he went in for his allergy shot today.  The shots don't make him feel that bad, but the antihistamine really knock him out.  He was feeling a bit better by this afternoon, so after the floors were finished, we spent about an hour putting down three layers of paper to protect the newly polished floors.

New shiny pipes await our new bathtub and shower
fixtures.

Then Rick cut off the old bathtub pipes which were spliced together in three places with two longer pipes.  We can cut them down to size once the bathtub is in, but for now Rick wanted to get the low soldering finished before the new tub goes in.

Tomorrow we get the new bathtub.  I cannot wait to see the bathroom get put back together again.