Second Hurtle

If the first hurtle for getting a new shower was to make sure the kiln worked, then the second was to get a waterproof floor in the sunroom to be able to have a studio space for extruding tiles. We're almost there. The grout needs to be put on, but that is really easy compared to all the bits that come before.




Peter put down ditra underlay on Monday with thinset. (It's the orange stuff.) While he did that, I selected tiles and laid them out out in the next room, then set them in place for a perfect fit.

Then Peter cut the edge tiles to fit. Notice how the tile cutter is set up in front of the oven, because where else would you put it? That was pretty much a full day.








Then we went to Mahone Bay for lunch with friends on Tuesday, and it was a good thing too. I could barely walk for two days after squatting and lifting 3/8th inch slate tiles for several hours on Monday. It was like I'd spent the weekend on a horse. (And before anyone asks, yes I HAVE spent a weekend on a horse) Even my glutimus maximus hurt and I had to walk bowlegged.
Wednesday it turns out, we had to make a trip to Burnside to pick up the bed we shipped from Newfoundland, so I was given an extra day to recover from Monday.
Today we mortared the floor in place. Beautiful.

Holistic Renovations

Peter says he wants to write a sequel of sorts to the Douglas Adams novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Here's why.
Peter would like our first house project of 2009 to be the shower. We have most of the stuff we need, we bought the tile and cement backer board years ago (literally, years ago) but I've decided it would be fun to make a border tile to trim the subway tile we bought. With my new ceramic skills I can do this, but it makes the process of installing a shower a little more time consuming. Yesterday, Peter researched and bought the required plugs and breakers for wiring up the kiln. Today we are firing the kiln empty to see what temperature it will achieve and whether it will set the garage on fire. So far so good. It reached 900 F, after 3 hours on low. Then I thought I set it up to medium, but I set it to off so it cooled down for an hour until we noticed. (I have the same problem with my slow cooker, it must be a left handed thing.)
To make ceramics you need a place to do it 'cause it can be messy. At the moment, in lieu of building a whole new studio, my best temporary place is the sun room; it's warm, close to water and has lots of natural light, but it still needs a waterproof floor which was on the house 'to do' list already. We have all the tile for that too (longer than we have had the shower tile actually) but we did need to buy underlay and thinset to put it in. That's looking like tomorrow's project.
Once that is complete, we will need to make a clay extruder from some old plumbing supplies and a motorized plunger. Peter has some ideas for that already. Then we will have to test the shrinkage of the clay during firing so it will end up the same size as the manufactured tiles we have already.
And then we can make the border tiles and install the shower.
Holistic renovations, you see?
And before anyone points out the obvious:
Yes, I know you can buy preformed plastic showers.
Yes, I know you can buy ready made border tiles.
Yes, I know you can just shower in the tub with curtains. But where is the fun in life if you take the easy route?
And you all wonder why it takes so long for us to renovate the house. Oh yeah, and somewhere in there Peter needs to finish his PhD.
If you think we're mad, you should meet my friend Guild.

Hitting is Allowed

After a too long absence of physical activity, I started back to curling last night. It was meant to be the night before but a storm of freezing rain made the roads too slippery to attempt on Wednesday. Last night the roads were snow covered but not too bad and so I ventured out to Wolfville to resume that most Canadian of winter activities. (More Canadian than Hockey because you can do it with a beer in your hand.)
I didn't curl in St. John's because the dues were very expensive and everyone at the St. John's curling club seemed to be a retired banker or insurance salesman. It would not be an exaggeration to say that their post game conversation was as interesting as you would expect it to be.
Surprisingly I don't hurt much today, a little stiff in the neck and shoulders from sweeping I think. How did I do? A team mate said I wasn't totally awful. And another noted that I didn't fall over as sometimes I am want to do. Personally I don't think I was any worse than before. I was tired though. I hit the wall after throwing my second rock of the second end, and worried that I wasn't going to be able to make it another 6 ends. Happily the game was mostly hitting (or in my case - attempted hitting) which didn't require a lot of sweeping and made the time go by fast. We lost, but it wasn't completely my fault, and the upside to losing is that you win a free drink.
Here's to losing.

House Improvement

So if this is a Home show blog, what are we doing on the home?
Not much, as our pocketbook and previous educational commitments allow. Though he reads less, Study boy still has school work to attend to. I am still enjoying Christmas holidays, even though Twelfth Night came and went.
It has not all been leisure though since we arrived home. Our first week was spent getting a new hot water tank because the old one was leaking onto the basement floor. That took one day to settle on a quote for the work, and another whole day to have the work done, plus a day in between waiting for the workmen to come do the work, and a half day after to finish up some tedious something or other.
Understand that we do not take house improvement lightly, and in that respect I can assure you that we bought the most fashionable (read expensive) hot water tank we could find. We justified the expense the way we always justify our expenses; that is to say by congratulating ourselves that it is a quality hot water tank, and we (hopefully) won't have to replace it ever again. Plus, it is an extremely energy efficient model, so much so that we anticipate getting a $500 rebate from the provincial government for it, so that was our one big act of green for 2008.
We took advantage of the Energuide Audit a few years ago, getting our application in just before the Federal Tories axed the program. We raised the rating of the house from a 42 to a 70, and timed it well enough to also qualify for some money from the Nova Scotia provincial government, who created their own provincial Energuide program through Conserve Nova Scotia. It pays to be green. If you live in NS and don't know about the grants you may be eligible for, check out the link above.
Our other home improvement efforts since we arrived back have not been so laudable.
Just before we left, we moved the kitchen to it's new location, but like everything else in the house it is not finished, so we arrived home to wonder where our tenants had been storing their dishes all this time. In very short order, we decided that two shelving units that were bought in St. John's for the bathroom, would go very nicely in the kitchen as a temporary cupboard. Peter had his doubts as to whether they were attached to the wall well enough, but so far they have not fallen off. Keeping the fingers crossed.
We found the septic pump alarm went off soon after we got back, but we were fairly lucky on that account. Lucky because the weather had been warm and the ground was not yet frozen when we had to dig it up. (Unlucky though that we had to dig it up at all.) Also lucky because even though we didn't know exactly where the pump was buried, and the marker had disappeared, we hit the chamber dead on with our first try. There was some debate as to where it was located before we started the hole. Peter thought it was in line with the corner of the garden shed, I felt it was 45 degrees more toward the driveway. In the end we both compromised to keep the other happy and were rewarded for our felicity with a bulls eye. We did a little septic dance to celebrate. (I took a picture, but unfortunately blogger seems unable to read it.) Continuing lucky, we found the pump actually was still working, but it was tripping out the GFI. The temporary Red Green fix was to bypass the GFI until the weather is warmer and we can replace the pump before it really, truly stops working. Keeping fingers crossed.