Friday Five, DIY Tiling

My husband Calvin and I are redoing our kitchen. We have brand new quartz counters—so much better than the old Formica. And we have a new sink and faucet—which has a sprayer!! (The old kitchen to the left looks remarkably good in the photo. But it wasn't--the counter was coming apart, etc.)

When the old counters were removed, they left big gouges in the wall. So, we needed a new backsplash and decided to tile it ourselves.

 Here are five things I learned:

 1. Know your strengths and weakness. Let the artist (not me) pick the tile. He will absolutely know if it matches the counters. It will save time. And worry—or, at least it should…

Me: Are you sure it’s going to look good?

Artist husband: Yes.

Me tiling.

Me: Are you really, really sure it’s going to look good?

Him: Yes.

Me: Are you—

Him:  I’m really, really sure.

Me: (I’ll worry quietly now.)

 2. When you put adhesive on the wall, more is not more. It just means more clean-up. Lots more clean-up.

 3. Any DIY home project requires music. The best kind is 80s pop/rock. Nothing is better in the midst of a DIY than a dance break. Especially when “Sweet Dreams,” “Heartbreaker,” or “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” starts playing on Pandora. (I'm definitely not posting a photo of this. :)

Wet saw.

 4. A wet saw. If you’re using a glass/stone mosaic tile, you have to have a wet saw. And if you have a friend who you can borrow one from…woot! Although don’t forget to put towels on the floor (as your friend suggested, but you forgot) because the saw spits water and ground tile, and you end up with a nasty puddle of gray gritty gunk all over the floor.

 5. Junky clothes. It’s so, so worth it to take the time to put on work clothes. Otherwise, halfway through the project you to say to the artist, “Uh, please tell me you aren’t wearing your good jeans…” Silence ensues. Thankfully, I’ve got a big box of Oxi-clean.

Next, step: Grouting.

Here's a close-up of the tiles, sink, and counter. (BTW, the garbage disposal has a magnetic collar to prevent silverware from getting chewed up. How cool is that?!)

The Joys of Home Ownership?

A month or so ago, Cal and I noticed that bits of our porch were crumbling. And not in the place you’d expect, like the edges. Nope, these bits were at the threshold to the door. And if you bounced on it a little, it gave. Not good. Really not good.

I tried not to think about what it meant. When your cement porch behaves like a trampoline, it's a bad sign.

So Cal called a mason. He came and inspected. Then, he took Cal on an inspection. This is another bad sign. It means something is horrendous is wrong--it's bad enough that you won’t believe it without seeing it.

The mason showed Cal that not only did the porch support beams have dry rot, so did the beams supporting the front of the house. Gulp.

As you can imagine, I had immediate thoughts of the entire front of the house falling off. Not likely, but possible.

I had thoughts of the house on stilts. Also, not likely. Except they did put the front half on stilts during the repair.

About two weeks later, the porch and the front half house are safe. Thankfully, we have a home equity line of credit—a partial new foundation isn’t cheap. But, hey, the porch looks great. Except we need to paint it and repair some of the stucco. The joys of home ownership…

You can see some of the dry rot under the door.

See the red stilt helping hold up the house. And more dry rot.

From the door to the ground below is a good six foot drop.

New porch is drying.

Distressed-Leprous-Skin Rot

As you know from a previous blog post, we are overhauling the kitchen cabinets and giving them the “distressed look,” which is a step up from the “abused 60s look” that they had when we bought the house.

In pickling the cabinets, I’ve been spilling white stain on myself. Small splotches on my face, big drippy patches on my legs. I realize that I sound like the messiest painter ever, but have you ever tried painting the inside of cabinets that are mounted flush to the ceiling? Let’s just say it’s not easy task.

So I am covered in weird semi-transparent paint blobs. It’s been okay thus far because I haven’t really gone anywhere besides the hardware store. And that reminds me, why don’t other people buying one-more-thing at Home Depot for their DIY projects look as skanky as I do? Maybe I’m naïve, but do people do their hair, scrub their skin, and put on makeup before they go to the hardware store? They must because I’ve never seen anyone else in cutoffs, a sweat-stained t-shirt that says, “Ask me about my book,” and paint speckled skin.

“Paint speckled” is a euphemism for describing what I look like. The truth is that I appear to have leprosy. Or skin rot. So far, no one has shouted, “Unclean” at me. But I’m sure that’s right around the corner, especially since the next set of cabinets will necessitate me climbing inside to paint them.  But, hey, my cabinets will look good, inside and out. 

Home Improvement: The Photos

Last Friday, I promised photos of our latest house project.

Here's the before picture:

Here's the after picture, which I'm disappointed in because the lighting makes the finish look a little uneven and it's not--I haven't figured out the new camera. (Ignore the orange splotch--it's a light from another room reflecting): 

Here's the inside:

I've decided that I like the way the cabinet turned out. Of course, now we'll have to do all the rest of the cabinets. And the walls, which looked hideous before, now look worse. I know paint will help. But the problem is that previous owners took the easy way out. The kitchen walls were originally plaster and tile. The plaster remains. The tile doesn't. Only the grout lines are left. Then, an early owner--perhaps the one who put 70s contact paper everywhere--put cheap paneling over the ripped out tile. (We all know how attractive cheap paneling is.) The last owner (realizing that old paneling, put up with the wrong kind of nails--drywall nails, did not make for a quick sale) decided to paint the paneling. Without properly sealing it. Now the paint is yellowing as wood oil leaches through. And the paint is beginning to peel. I won't mention the kitchen flooring that wasn't properly glued down or the counters that were installed unevenly.

At any rate, I realize now that my Platonic disappointment wasn't so much a disappointment with what we did, but the realization that before the kitchen looks "good," we've got years of work ahead.

But that's okay--my "contractor/laborer/stripping associate/polyurethaning buddy" and I have been together for 24 years, so we're in it for the long haul. And he's already got plans for the walls.

Platonism and Home Improvement

Yesterday Cal and I started refinishing the kitchen cabinets. (I had no idea how ridiculously time consuming it would be. I hope I can finish by Christmas time.) At any rate, we stripped the blond stain and lacquer off the first set of double cupboards. Yes, they were blond. Our house is old, build in the 40s. And the last time the kitchen was updated was the seventies. Before we stripped, I had to pull off orange, green, and yellow contact paper off the shelves—it had become one with the wood. Ugh.

Given the cupboards age and slightly worn condition, the only finish that made sense was a distressed finish. So we decided to pickle/whitewash the cabinets and seal them with polyurethane. We purchased the required chemicals—no thanks to the completely ignorant salesman at Home Depot, who didn’t seem to know the difference between oil-based and water-based. (Next time, we’ll try Lowes.)

We distressed the cabinets. Basically, we painted the cabinets with white stain and then scrubbed off the excess before it dried. It sounds easy. It wasn’t. The wood didn’t absorb the stain equally. And it didn’t dry at an even rate. Imagine white blobs and peeling stain—I’m not sure how stain can peel. But then, I only had one semester of general chemistry in college.

After some experimentation, we discovered a way to make it work. And when we finished staining, it didn’t look bad. Cal says it will look good when it’s polyurethaned.

But I’m a little disappointed. Calvin says it’s because I’m a perfectionist. And maybe that’s the reason I don’t like it. I can pick out all the little flaws. After all, I haven’t liked most home improvement projects I’ve completed—like retiling the bathroom floor and refinishing the bathroom door—until later.

However, I’d prefer not to have my reactions categorized in pop psychology terms. So I’ve decided it’s not perfectionism at all. Instead, it’s Platonism. The ideal distressed cabinet door exists only in my mind (or in the shop of a really skilled craftsman whose services we can’t afford), the reality can only be an approximation of that ideal. Thus, the door is not the only one that is distressed. Eventually, I’ll come to terms with the lack of ideal cabinet-ness and appreciate it for what is it… Yeah, okay, maybe this isn’t exactly what Plato meant. But I’ve got to do something with that year of philosophy/critical theory I took in college. You should see what I can do with Kant.