No matter how many times you repeat to yourself "Do not try to flush the toilet when the water for the whole house is turned off," when you finish taking care of business you will immediately reach for the handle and attempt to flush the toilet. It cannot be avoided; just accept it and move on.
After much hurried late-night sketching and rearranging of little paper tiles on a sheet of graph paper, I managed to come up with this:
Don't say you hate it, because it's now cemented to my wall, and I think it looks pretty good. I liked the other design, but it looked a little "My, aren't we so hip and modern? We're in the 1980s now!" The short spans of counter actually worked out with the regular design, just tweaked a little, and the second inside corner only looks a little wonky. I'll just stick a crock full of spatulas in front if it if it bothers me.
The glass tiles are in place, too, as are all the little fiddly bits used to finish off all the edges of the backsplash around the window and doors. One of the tile guys spent an alarming amount of time stapling down some reinforcing screen so that our entryway tile won't shift or crack (you can only see the double layer he put down in one area - trust me, the whole thing is like a stationary tetanus depot).
He had a nifty staple gun - basically like a hammer, only when you slam it into the wood it drives in a staple. Not exactly a precision instrument, but it looked like a lot of fun ... for the first 10 minutes. You'd think all that banging would have phased the cats and freaked out the kid, but ... not so much. Here they are, literally less than 10 feet away from the banging:
Meanwhile the plumber arrived to move the hot water heater to a location that wasn't guaranteed to electrocute anyone attempting to reach the circuit breaker panel.
This house is a lot more "normal" than most of our previous ones (no knob-and-tube wiring, no rotten floor joists, no renovations by Larry, Darrel and Darryl), but I think the original plumber's attitude was basically, "Code Schmode. I wanna put the water heater here, so it's going here, even if it is 18" in front of the electrical panel." Here's the spot in question, centered between those two black vertical pipes:
The plumbers will be back tomorrow to hook up the sink, dishwasher, icemaker, garbage disposal, etc. And tomorrow is the perfect time to ask them why our bathwater is now on the dingy side when it never was before today.
And the tile guys are supposed to be adding grout to the backsplash and setting the tile in the entryway, while the electrician is finishing all the stuff he refused to do while the water heater was in its former location, like wiring in the new outlets and hooking up my stove.
It's gonna be a little busy around here tomorrow, huh?
1 comment:
The tile looks smashing! The parts around the 'fridge also look great. Good choice.
- MLF
Post a Comment