We finally really absolutely definitely finish the tile

Monday morning bright and early two tile guys arrived to pop off the glass tiles, clean them and then put them back in their own special place on the walls. It was supposed to be completed within approximately eight hours but when I came home nine hours later my heart sunk a bit when I saw the huge tile trailer still parked outside the house.

They were very close to finishing but they both had quizzical looks on their faces and were walking around the kitchen holding up pieces of glass tile against the wall, turning the tile 45 degrees and holding it up again. I asked them how it was going and they said,"great but we can't quite figure out why we've used more tiles than you had up there to begin with, plus the three extra tiles you had and we're still one short. We had to break one tile to make a space to pop out the rest, and one tile broke as we were cutting it but there should still be one extra tile since you had three extra to begin with." Turns out they had pulled them all off and then put them in a bucket of water to soak off the mastik. I had wondered to myself ahead of time how they were going to keep track of which cut tiles went where but apparently that concern hadn't been part of their thought process. Consequently manys tile probably found a new home on the wall.

There were a couple of phone calls out on the front porch with I can only assume to be the boss and then they told me there were extra tiles at their store. That was good because I thought I was going to have to order one tile and wait two weeks to get it. They came back the next morning to put up that final tile and grout. When I came home last night everything looked awesome-------except for the fact that the switch plate for the light switch had about a 3/8 inch gap between the wall and the back of the switch plate. The plate is half in tile and half flat against the wall and they hadn't cut the tile to fit around the bottom of the switch plate.

That meant instead of being finished yesterday, I had to call with my concern and they showed up again bright and early this morning. To make a long story short, instead of repairing the light switch tile problem, I/we decided to take all those extra ceramic tiles we had too many of when our initial decorating plan didn't work and tile up to the base of the cabinets and a couple of rows up on the other walls. And believe it or not, even though I changed my whole "repair" plan in mid-stream, they had time to do it today AND were finished by the time I got home tonight.

Here's a slide show of the final really absolutely definitely finished kitchen tile.

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We finally really absolutely definitely finish the tile

Diggin' for mittens

Last Friday we hiked the trail on the mountain in shorts and long-sleeved shirts. One week later we hiked through snow to get to the car in the driveway. The good thing is cross country skiing may be possible in the not-too-distant future. The bad thing is I really wanted to hike more. The worst thing is cloudy skies, freezing temperatures and snow-covered hiking trails made it pretty much impossible for me to talk myself out of painting the trim on the new guest room window with the window well big enough to live in.






I hate painting and if the weekend weather would have been nice I'm sure I would have found another reason to postpone it. But since it wasn't, I painted. I am proud to announce that I did not spill paint or get paint on the carpet or the bottom of my feet. I did however, lose control of the brush just as I was mentally congratulating myself on avoiding those things. Fortunately it went flying into the glass on the window and dropped onto the window sill. The big splotch it left on the glass was easy to wipe off and I was painting the sill anyway so no damage was done.




My initial plan was to paint not only the window frame but also the walls in the kitchen. Our excuse for not painting all these long months has been that we didn't want to paint until it was nice outside so we could have the windows open. I realized if we didn't do something quick, that same excuse was going to add another year to the project. Wait a minute, I just realized I keep saying "we" but it's "me" that does the painting.... Hmmmm......anyway....I spent last weekend at the paint store collecting paint chips and taping them around the kitchen. That meant I had to really look at the tile again, not just glance quickly and pretend I didn't really see it. The more I looked, the worse I felt about it. The worse I felt about it the more I didn't want to paint the walls that touched it. Finally I thought, "what the hell, I'll see if there's a snowball's chance in hell somebody can fix it." Guess what? They can! And it won't even cost half what I estimated or was willing to pay. Two weeks from today we will have glass tiles that will look the way they were supposed to. And, even better Tilechick/Groutbabe---the tile guy said we did a really nice job with our spacing, grouting and overall tiling so you can be proud of your tiling skills. When you decide you've had enough of the political life I think you have a new career as a tile project manager. Wonder how long I'll be able to put off painting.......another year???

As an aside, Shadow had some "lumps" removed today. It's a good thing she doesn't know what she looks like.

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Diggin' for mittens

Feather Explosion

Yesterday I decided to wash and dry my down pillow so it would be free of all those disgusting drool spots. Yes, I admit it. My pillow had drool spots and don't any of you tell me yours doesn't now or hasn't in the past (even with a cover) because I wouldn't believe you. So, I washed the pillow, put it in the dryer with a tennis ball and it came out nice and clean and fluffy.

Good wife that I am, this morning I thought, "my laundry's pretty light this weekend, I'll wash Dean's down pillow so his is nice and clean and fluffy too." I put the pillow in the wash, came back later to throw it in the dryer and instead of a squashed lump of wet down nicely contained in pillow ticking, I found lots of squashed and wet down outside of that pillow ticking. I used to think wiping out the dog fur after washing Shadow's pillows was bad but I'm here to tell you removing wet, stinky down from your washing machine is worse. I got as much out as I could and now I'm running a rinse through. Hopefully it won't take too many until it's safe to wash clothes. I just hope Dean doesn't steal my nice clean, fluffy down pillow until I get around to getting him another. So much for good deeds.


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Feather Explosion