Day 67 & 68- Lets Get Crazy

So I had had this crazy idea pictured in my head for my bathroom tile which I typically do all the time and then can never find what I am actually looking for. Well this time it actually came true and I LOVE it! My main bathroom (which is the only bathroom on the first floor...and I guess the "master bath" as well?) is off the main hallway on the first floor. I wanted it to be pretty stunning without spending a ton of money. Which meant that I was going to have to do it myself as much as possible. What I paid for: Wing wall built, Greenboard on all the walls (special drywall made for wet areas) and Hardyboard around the tub (special mold-proof board used for underneath tiles) and install of the tub itself. I actually had room for a 6'tub to go into this space but with the width being skinny it wasn't worth the $1600 price tag for the extra foot in length. So I decided to do a standard 5' tub and would spend the money on some really cool tile. I ordered a vanity online from Ebay and bought a toilet at Lowes which would get installed by my plumber...after I did all of the tile.

So I found a large 15x15 white porcelain tile at Lowes and an accent glass tile that had a mix of different nuetrals and also had some travertine pieces mixed in. I wasn't sure at first if you could really put glass tiles on the floor but after talking to some experts I found out it wasn't a problem (just don't put large pieces that you could slip on obviously).

The tile adhesive looked like vanilla ice cream...

note to self: don't tile when hungry.

Day 66- Hardest tile job EVER

So I have tiled twice before at my old house. I did the hallway bathroom floor and a small mosaic countertop to a built-in buffet. So I thought to myself- Hey this is definitely one place I can save myself a TON of money. And honestly just with the tile jobs I did I probably could go on that show "10 Grand in your Hand". (I should have gotten a quote first just so I would know how much I really did save). Anyways, needless to say I was once a novice and now I would call myself "experienced"...but still not an expert.

So the first room that was ready for Tile was the 2nd floor bathroom. I wanted to do something very simple so that the floor could go with any decor scheme because if I am living here for 13 years then I am not sure my 16 & 18 year old teenagers will want a bright blue and orange fish bathroom...but you never know! I was glad to be starting with this room too because it was small and there was nothing to work around except a shower basin.

Well all I can say is even though the tile is awesome (and I am awesome) this turned into the hardest tile job ever. Essentially I took what i think was suppose to be a backsplash wall tile and turned it into a floor tile and there were sooooo many grout lines and so many crooked walls and soooo many tile cuts that it took me 5 hours to lay it, 2 hours to grout it and 2 hours just to go back and wipe off the grout because it was drying too fast for me to catch up with it. Anyways I don't think I can describe the angony on my knees and the fact that I did all of this on a 2nd story at 85 degrees with no power except a fan that was blowing directly on me (and therefore drying the grout). BUT...it does look fabulous! (if you don't look too close)...

the things sticking up below are spacers if you haven't done tile before...

Day 65- Living in the Dark Ages

Ok, so I am going to go back a moment and tell you the real story on the siding...and how it put me in the dark. So the honestly the siding that I blogged about below was really only about 95% complete at the time. On Day #65 we had a HUGE issue which really could have killed a few sub-contractors. BUT, let me start with a back story to explain. So I had to get all new wiring for my entire house. There was some existing knob and tube wiring running through the house which is NOT safe. I was first going to pull out the knob and tube and re-wire as needed and because we could not see some areas in the ceilings we went ahead and re-wired the whole house. So for the first month while new wiring was being run I had one outlet that worked and it was down in the basement, so lots of extension cords and such were run all over from the basement. Then when we were actually ready for Indianapolis Power and Light to come out and power up my new meter they took their sweet old time of 2-1/2 weeks. They powered to the new meter but it looked horrible with the new whips going to the original porcelain anchor on the house which was 3-4 feet from my meter that had been moved over for my new back door location. I was told by my electrican that they would install a new anchor next to the next meter. Problem being that this was wrong- my electrician should have installed the new anchor because IPL doesn't do that anymore. So needless to say when my new back door got installed you could reach up and touch the electrical lines...awesome. So I called IPL and about a week later a guy showed up who then informed me about the anchor and that I would need to move my meter base over 1 foot, extend a pipe up to 13' above ground (which I would have to custom bent around my new gutters which hadn't been installed yet) and then attach it to my top dormer for support because my house does not have a soffit. OR...I could go underground for $500 and he would allow me to not have to move my meter base over. Well I thought about it for about 5 minutes while we stood in the rain discussing this and decided that once I paid my electrican and a custom pipe bender to re-work everything I would probably only be saving myself $300 to make something that was going to look hideous. So I decided to fork out the money and pay IPL $500 and a Trencher $400 to get my power underground and never think about it again. It was a good decision...just hit my budget kinda hard.
Soooo...while I am waiting on IPL to come and change it to underground (another 2 weeks) my siding guys are trying to finish my house. They were working around the new back door, standing on a metal ladder ledge strung between two other metal ladders they moved the nuetral line with their hand in order to get a siding dimension underneath it and the old porcelain knob on my house SNAPPED IN HALF! The 120' drop between the telephone pole and my meter was now hinged on the top of my meter base which was unscrewed from the house because they were putting siding up and therefore SNAPPED at the top of my meter and set fire and sparks flying and fried my new meter base. Needless to say as soon as the sparks started flying the two sub-contractors JUMPED off their metal ladder basin and hit the ground running. Now if only I had had a video tape there to capture the chaos...instead a get a phone call from a contractor who is kinda shaken up because he almost died and is not sure what to do. I called IPL emergency who came out right away and at least got rid of the live wire laying in my yard. So now the problem was I had NO power at all and decided I would just wait on the underground to be trenched and laid so that I didn't have to pay IPL to give me temporary power. Luckily my neighbor was nice enough to let me run an extension cord from his garage for what turned into two more weeks. THANKS NEW NEIGHBOR!!!! I definitely owe him some cookies or something!!