Ides of March

Today, the 20th of March, I threw down the tiling trowel... not in frustration, although I think I was pretty close to totally freaking out... Carol says I have been grumpy as hell lately, but anyway, today I completed the tile floors in the main part of the house.  See the smile on my face above!!!

This afternoon, about 1:00 pm, I complete grouting the floor in the east bedroom.

I started this project four weeks ago, thinking I was going to complete it in 2 weeks... boy, was I off.

Anyway today I completed the east bedroom.

Last week I discovered that I laid out the lines through the bedrooms incorrectly, they should have been parallel through the bedrooms, I measured 3 or 4 times and I was 2 inches off.  The only solution that looked correct required me to tear out 3 rows of tile in the east bedroom... if you have a keen eye you might see it.

The tile floors turned out beautifully. 

I have a new respect for tile layers... it is a LOT of work and extremely hard on the knees. 

 

It has been colder here for the past few days; while I have been working on the tile floors, Luke has been hanging doors and installing trim. 

 

We started framing up the masterbedroom suite last week during a short warm up - we had temperatures in the high 50s and low 60s.  I had Luke work on framing up the master bedroom suite.  I worked inside for the whole week setting tile but occasionally I got to go outside to help.  Here Luke and I set up the west wall in the den.

All the walls have been set up at this point.  In the picture below we are setting the ridge beam.

This is Luke's office...

This is my office... minus the water buckets.

The ubiquitous 5 gallon buckets, not pictured here, as noted above are missing from this picture.  I have three buckets that have been filled with water and used to mix thinset and grout, most every day for the past 4 weeks.  As of today they have been reassigned to new duties.

This week I started to stain the trim with a neutral stain.  It doesn't add much but it brings up the color of the light wood and looks very rich.  I stained both bathrooms yesterday and varnished them today.

Tomorrow I am going to learn how to plaster a plywood wall, I have never done it before, it will be an adventure for sure.  I am hoping to complete two sections tomorrow.