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.