Could Your Relationship Make it through a Home Remodeling?

I have actually been married to my husband for 31 years, but didn't realize up until we retiled our restroom that I didn't really understand him. It looked like a simple, life verifying act. Our home of 26 years required a new restroom given that the 1994 Northridge quake.

We gave it lots of idea and then discovered a neighbor who concurred to do the extremely knowledgeable stuff, like the "tiling" for an extremely charitable cost, prior to we commited to the act. Congress moves faster than my husband when it comes to appropriating funds for home enhancement.

Now you have to understand, we have seen neighbors up and down the street install pools, second stories, room additions, new driveways, and all seemed to go well. We were merely retiling a very small shower ... not even the restroom walls ... just the shower.

next page Obviously, retiling a restroom requires some "prep" work. One need to eliminate the old tile. Okay, that seems direct enough. It appeared like a rather cathartic operation, popping off the old tiles and clearing away the debris. We had actually waited 13 years, a few days of preparation seemed reasonable. Well, obviously in 1958 when this tile was installed they used steel mortar.

It took a sledge hammer, a miner's choice and a number of extremely colorful adjectives to really get the tile off the shower walls. The dust and tile pieces were difficult to haul away and when you run an inexpensive home improvement procedure like my cheap ... I suggest frugal life partner does, you fill the cans of neighbors up and down the street, so you do not in fact have to pay to have somebody bring tile particles off.

We were able to go into the garage and haul out the tiles purchased on sale at Lowe's a number of years previously (do not ask ... there was this wild minute when we thought we would do the tiling ourselves ... before we came to our senses and recognized you apparently had to "know" what you were doing to actually make it take place). We transported out the tile, and realized we did not have enough of the "sale" tile to do the room. Quickly sobered, if you've seen one white inexpensive four-inch tile you've seen them all.


We bought the tile, in addition to thousands of little plus indications (spacers) and goopy stuff to stick the tile down with. Frank, our neighbor, was a genius. He made the four-inch white, low-cost tiles look like a million bucks. Now, due to the fact that Frank has a real job, and only does charity tiling during the night, the real process of tiling took a week. Then there was the procedure of grouting, and cleaning up the grout, then letting everything set till you "sealed" the grout. It took a number of weeks to accomplish "tiling important mass".

Now at this point, you are believing ... ahh, shower time ... nope ... not even close. It was a routine of epic proportion to actually select the "shower curtain" that would match the sherbet orange paint the bathroom now enjoyed.

Yes, Virginia, there is now a shower in real use in my bathroom. Naturally, when the earth moves at my house now, we don't run for the entrance, we race to the restroom and throw our bodies against the tile walls, due to the fact that the last we heard from Frank as he left shaking his head and murmuring that last day was something about donkeys and their ability to fly.

Posted November 25, 2017 04:09