Plumbing and Painting

This weekend was stressful. We billed it as a painting weekend, but when you've got plumbers working it's hard to focus on other tasks. Plus there was this low-level feeling of anxiety- is the well going to work? are they drilling holes in the right place?- you can't help but hover and hope they do a good job. Here are our plumbers:

Here's one of the holes they made- straight through the house! It's for the dryer exhaust. It would be pretty hard to correct if it was in the wrong place. But it's in the right place, so not to worry.

This is our little on-demand Takagi water heater. Takes up no space and heats water as you need it, so no need for a boiler. It's quite efficient as well.

But wait! What's this! BROWN water coming from the well! Nasty silty dirty water! Apparently the well digger should have flushed it out for a day or 2 before hooking it up to the house, though this is something we didn't know (the perils of doing-it-yourself) and now it's already hooked up. We can only hope that flushing it for awhile through the pipes will eventually make it clean.

The plumber hooks up the toilet...

...and there it is. The excitement is tempered by the fact that the water running through is that nasty brown stuff, which clings to the toilet bowl and makes it look as if no one ever cleans, or even flushes, for that matter. On top of that our pressure tank is probably filled with the silty stuff.

By the way, we did get to painting. As you can see, we painted the bathroom first, before the plumbers arrived. The paint color is named "newborn". Is that the color of a newborn? Maybe one with jaundice.

And here is ben painting the kitchen wall "asparagus". The rest of the house is "mountain mist", a very calm pale pale green which reads mostly white.

On a more upbeat note, it was beautiful and blue all weekend. This is our house as seen from our campsite. We had a heartwarming experiences to counter the traumatic nest disruption of a few weeks back. As we sat eating dinner at dusk a Doe came creeping around the pond very tentatively. We stayed very still and after awhile of sussing out if it was safe, a baby deer emerged and came hopping toward her. They grazed and played a bit and I think the baby nursed. Apparently Doe's leave there young in a safe spot all day, curled up and hidden, and come to retrieve them at the end of the day. This one's hiding spot is in the tall grasses next to our pond.

Grouting

After the tile has set comes the grouting, a much more satisfying job in my opinion. Less room for messing up. Again we had to play with the consistency but we already felt more comfortable with it having messed with the mixing of the adhesive. The grouting went without a hitch, and we were able to finish in a day.

Arial view of Megan grouting.

Close up view of Megan grouting.

And the beautiful finished grout. I just love that step.

Hardcore pregnant worker chick after grouting.

The finished grout in the shower.

The next day our friend Sibylle came up to help out. She's a hardcore worker too. Here she and Ben caulk and clean seams. We are getting ready to paint.

Sibylle Primes the Bathroom.
She and I had fun having a slumber party in her tent that night.

Thank you Sibylle!

Tiling

We thought we could do all the tiling in one weekend, but being complete novices it quickly became obvious it wouldn't happen. Mixing the adhesive was a challenge because the consistency is something that one learns from experience. As much as people tell you "it's like peanut butter" or "it's pasty, and doesn't fall off the trowel" or whatever, it's the actual using of the adhesive that gives you that feel. So the first batch was too liquid and the tiles slowly slid down the walls (some tape took care of that) and the second batch was too dry and kept crumbling as we slathered it on. But the end result was success, as you shall see:

Here's Ben, tiling the floor. The tiles continue over the step, which looks really nice. We got lucky with these tiles. We had decided on some cheap (but nice, simple) tiles from Home Depot for the whole job, but the day we went up we stopped at our local East Village tile store. These were left overs from another job, so we snapped them up for a steal. They're super cute.

Megan, tiling the floor (kneepads essential!)

Megan, gouging out the adhesive that smooshed into the cracks. Here you can see the tape we used to keep them from sliding down the wall.

This is where the woodburning stove will eventually go. The tiles are left-overs from Margaret's big house up the hill.

Ben, posing with the tile. These tiles are home depot. Ben had mirror and glass cutting stuff from an art project, so he cut a bunch of mirror the same size as the tiles and we interspersed them amongst the Home Depot ones. It's a great effect- you can see bits and pieces of yourself as well as the walls outside the shower, which will be painted a pretty color.

Megan, posing with the tiles.

Grouting is next...

Prime and Some Heat

The walls were smooth, all holes and seams filled and sanded, and were ready for priming. First we cleaned. How satisfying to get rid of the fine dust everywhere. For the previous few weekends Ben would finish the day looking like he'd had a light sprinkling of powdered sugar. No more! Here he's vacuuming up the last of it...

And beginning to prime.

It's such a different feel to have white walls! Very open and airy and much more finished looking.

We also intalled under the floor heat pads in the bathroom. It's electric wire embedded in mesh which will be attached to a thermostat on the wall. We can program it to turn on at 5am so on those cold winter mornings the tile will be all toasty warm when we get up. It only uses as much electricity as a 100 watt lightbulb.

After laying out the mat you pour cement over it, which is a good heat conductor. It was a challenge to keep it flat, but ben did a great job.

Next we tile...

Final spackle

We finished up the last coat of spackle a few weekends back, with the much appreciated help of Mr. Art Domantay, master spackler (or "mudder"). Art and Marie both came up and camped out on the property with us. Marie helped plant a bunch of little ivy plants with me while the menfolk labored in the house.

Here's the fabulous crew

Art brought his mansion of a tent, putting ours to shame.

Spackling away. Aren't they cute?

Art is meticulous and experienced and smears on a nice, smooth stripe.

It was sunny but chilly, so we built the first fire of the season. It was a traumatic experience for me because while cleaning out the fire pit I uncovered a nest of something- vole? mouse? and upset these tiny hairless creatures that couldn't walk or see yet, their little teeny feet pumping uselessly in fear as their warm dark home was disturbed. I tried to gather them up and relocate them to where I saw the mama run away and can only hope she found them again. My mothering instincts must be charged, I felt horrible. Actually I would have felt horrible anyway.

We did have a lovely fire that night and enjoyed the hundreds of fireflies signaling to eachother.

The next day ben rented a major power sander and did the final sanding.

My job was to hold the lamp up as he sanded to better see the small imperfections that needed sanding out.

Next we prime...