Thank God it's Monday...:)
We spent a grueling and fun weekend remodeling Michael's work office. It's a tiny 60 squ ft room, so it's a good place for newbie, budget-restricted remodelers to start!
Michael has been working out of a cluttered, disorganized space for the past year, but he'd finally managed to remove a lot of the owners' stuff from the office (like he had extra room to store their things!), and the opportunity was finally at hand to make the office more pleasant and operable. It was sorely needed, especially as the office has had flooding a couple of times over the past year.
The operation was carefully planned--or as carefully planned as I get when I don't know what I'm doing! On Friday evening, we moved out furniture, tore out the old carpet, and painted the office a golden yellow with eco-friendly low-VOC paint. It was especially eco-friendly because we were reusing a color we'd painted Alex's room, so no new waste! I was really glad about it, too, because he has no windows, so it was a relief not to deal with fumes.
On Saturday morning, we embarked on our hazy tiling adventure. Neither of us had ever tiled, and we'd been warned about the difficulty and trouble of it. I fretted at the warnings, of course, but in my typical style, I did what I wanted to do anyhow!
We visited a locally-owned flooring store that sold eco-friendly, water resistant, gorgeous cork tiles, but we were blown away by the $12.50 per sq ft cost! Instead, we opted for some Italian glazed porcelain tiles that the salesperson assured us were first-class and were surplus there, so we wouldn't have to pay freight. Our eco-friendly tiles were thus theoretically about half-price, and we cleared out the surplus for them (thus again reducing waste).
We shopped for tools and bought a wet saw for cutting the tiles, and then we went by Home Depot for a couple of smaller tool items. We fortuitously arrived during a free do-it-yourself tiling class and received some personalized attention, as we were the only participants! Seems ordained by the heavens...especially as the nice worker helped us with some great tips and demonstrated actually laying down about four tiles--the mortaring and grouting steps. We'd been fairly clueless.
So, we finally started on the actual laying of tile in the early afternoon on Saturday. We put down the mortar, placed tiles and spacers, and were home by 6 o'clock. We had to wait 24 hours for the mortar to dry. It was fun to see how quickly it fell into place, although we did end up with a couple of uneven points that we hope are unnoticeable to the casual observer!
On Sunday, we went back to the office around 6 p.m. and grouted. Believe it or not, I really enjoyed the grouting and Michael graciously allowed me to do all the grouting while he did the thankless cleaning and fetching tasks. Pushing the clayish grout around and between the impervious, enduring tiles is unexpectedly therapeutic, and I couldn't help but feel that I was enjoying a peace reminiscent of a potter creating vessels in a quiet studio or, perhaps more aptly, of a child playing with mud!
We finished shortly after 10 p.m. Michael then woke extra early this morning to move everything back into his own office, out of the exam rooms and such. Talk about taking advantage of every weekend moment! I'm relieved to have Monday off, but Michael's just beginning his work week!
Of course, that's just the beginning...next weekend we need to seal the tile and put up shelving and new fixtures and such. We anticipate that the whole remodel will land us at a few hundred dollars, which sounds fairly manageable!
Now that we've laid tile, I am eager to tile my bathrooms, kitchen, patio...and maybe even some wall or counter areas! We've got a lot of other priorities first, though, so we'll see if it happens. No immediate plans for tiling at home...especially since we've got an impending need to build a chicken coop!
It's so rewarding to do something so durable and lasting. I like to cook and bake, but food is gone fairly quickly while I'll be able to admire this job for years.
It's also just plain ole fun to do something completely new. My skin was uncharacteristically dry last night from all the clay, and it was novel for me to slather on a ton of moisturizer and enjoy the effects. I used to give mud wraps at the spa for purifying effects, and I felt like I'd just received a cleansing mud wrap as an incidental benefit of the job!
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