Bathroom Completed

I took this week off to renovate our master bathroom. It is a small bathroom, about five feet square plus shower. The goals were to upgrade the materials, echo the look of our kitchen (without being an exact duplicate), add color to the walls without making my wife pine for beige walls again, and to learn new skills.

What I started with were white melamine cabinets that were merely stapled together (not even glued) and vinyl sheet flooring that ended at the cabinet edges, and were thus curling despite a generous bead of silicone. Walls the same beige as we have throughout our house. A crappy $35 builder's quality toilet that would clog and overflow if you looked at it crossways. But what really precipitated this remodel was the sink and faucet, both of which were corroding into dust. There was also a gold chrome light fixture sporting bare bulbs, a plastic medicine cabinet surface mounted to the wall above the vanity, etc.

As with most things in the house, you don't notice. You just live with how things are, until one day you do notice. I had gotten to the point with this room soon after we finished our kitchen remodeling. I need a new sink and faucet. Well, if I'm doing that I may as well replace this ugly vanity with something nicer. Oh, while I have that out I can replace this worn flooring. And we could use a better toilet. Gee, while everything is out of the room I may as well paint the walls.

You see how it goes.

Eventually, I had a plan to replace everything except the shower. It was functional, if utilitarian. I settled on a nice, dark gray tile with hints of rust and Tuscan blue. The rust would blend with the natural cherry I wanted for my wood and the blue I would use for the wall color. The metal color we picked was nickel. Since my shower pieces were chrome, I invested in a $7 can of nickel paint and now they match the rest of the room.

The other early design consideration was the wonky way this room was built. The wall stud gap was not centered on the vanity. The electrical box was not centered on the stud gap. In other words, nothing lined up and I wasn't going to rip the drywall off and fix it, so I had to design around that. So I elected to make a narrow wall box to fill the awkward gap left by an uncentered medicine cabinet. And we chose a solid light bar fixture rather than sconces so it would look more like a general room light (which it is) rather than something specifically for the mirror. The results were not unpleasing.

The demolition went surprisingly well. In one day, the vanity, toilet, base trim, and fixtures were all out of the room. It took the bulk of the following day, however, to rip up the quarter-inch plywood off the floor. It, too, was spotty under the vanity and I had enough subflooring under it to not need its bulk. Also, by removing it I was not adding any significant height to the finished floor. That meant no door jamb cutting, not whacking off the bottom of the door, no using oversized wax rings on the toilet...lots of things became simpler.

I had never tiled a floor before. I did take a tiling class at Polaris, and people assured me that tiling was simple, but this was my first attempt. It was a lot of messy work, but I kept my tools clean and mixing thinset with a half-inch corded drill was fun. Even more fun was cleaning the mixer by placing it in a five-gallon bucket of water and cranking it.

I elected to go with a Schluter Ditra underlayment rather than cement board. Sure, that meant two different thinsets and, on top, lots of thinset to fill the waffles but it worked out fine. I noticed that my second tile didn't have good coverage on its back, so I ended up buttering them. What a mess, but in the middle of it all my wife said, "you're doing a great job." That simple praise meant a lot to me at that point, when I felt my most incompetent.

I used a borrowed wet saw and laid the whole floor out dry, so when I was setting tile it was just grab'n'go. The wet saw had a fence, but that was more of a hindrance than a help. I just used a white crayon to mark my cut lines (few, if any, were parallel to the tile edge, anyway) and free-handed the cuts. I used piano cuts to cut big notches out of the tile (for the air vent and toilet, for example). The saw I was using had some blade wobble, so I used that to my advantage. If I made my piano cuts close together, they'd self-splinter. The finest cut I made you'll not see. For a water line, I made a one-inch notch a quarter-inch from a tile edge without losing that quarter-inch finger on my first try! I found it easier to clean up my cuts on the wet saw than it was for me to use a nipper.

When I put my vanity in, I encountered my only real problem. The floor was sloped wall-to-center. With the vanity level and tight to the walls, there was a quarter-inch gap at its front edge. Dammit! It wasn't hard to shim, but how to cover that gap?

I resigned myself to using some quarter round. Gah, that would be terrible, but perhaps I could paint it black and it won't catch the eye. Then, in my shop I noticed a long piece of nickel tile edging that I had left over (I used all of two feet of the eight-foot piece at the threshold). Perfect. It fits the color scheme, it's unobtrusive, and I already had it going to waste.

Mounting the wall boxes wasn't too bad. I made a cherry cleat for the small shelves out of a missized stile I had already finished. The large box is screwed into the studs behind the shelves. If you jumped directly to this post, I have a few entries on my blog that describes what I went through to make those cherry pieces.

Toilets are easy, as is plumbing a sink. I just took my time and everything worked - which is actually a first for me when it comes to sinks. I always have a leak somewhere. Always. When that occurs, it is common for my language to sterilize small animals within one hundred feet. So this time I was prepared. I had a flashlight, I turned on each component one at a time and hunted for leaks. I shooed the kids out of yelling range and warned the wife. Nothing leaked. Everything works. Life was golden. Critters were safe.

The end result impressed me. For a small bathroom, it has a lot of storage (no more cluttering the floor around the toilet) and the materials have a nice, solid feel to them. Not unlike the bathroom of a nice hotel. Just like in my kitchen, the granite and cherry look goes well. The white accents really bring out the colors in the other elements. It was certainly worth it.

Oh, I did keep track of every dollar spend on this project. The grand total was $1734. Given the average bathroom remodel job is ten thousand dollars, I think we did very well. For that amount, we got custom made cabinetry made from real cherry, porcelain tile flooring, granite counter tops, all new fixtures, etc. There is also the intangible benefit from having done the work myself. All that pales in comparison to the thing about this project that matters most to me. My wife likes it.

Beautiful Weekend

What a beautiful, busy weekend for me. It started Friday night, with an Indians game with my family and my cousin, whom I hadn't seen in many years. My daughter was shy, since Bill was a stranger to her. My son was pretty typical, for him. He became a handful once the game was in the latter innings and finally broke down by game's end. We were able to catch most of the fireworks from just outside the field, between the Jake and the Gund (now Progressive Field and Quicken Loans Arena). His bawling turned to leaps of joy when he saw my car. He can be such a silly boy.

Saturday began with French toast for my wife - her favorite. It had been awhile since I had made French toast, so I made a bit of a hash of it. I allowed the egg to soak too much into the bread. My second attempt on Sunday morning was much better.

As usual, I made a to-do list for myself over my morning coffee and paper. Mow the lawn, wash the cars, take the family on a walk, etc. If I don't do this, I piss away the weekend in front of my computer then wonder what I did come Monday morning. We did the walk Saturday afternoon. From the spillway to the boathouse on Hinkley Lake, and back. It was enough to get the legs stretched and the blood pumping. Hope, I fear, had the hardest time. We will have to do more of this if we are to do any significant sight seeing at Yellowstone and Grand Teton in comfort.

I washed and waxed both cars. They are both showing their age with dings, scratches, and rust. But at least they are clean. The lawn looks great, which was my contribution this weekend. My wife's were a pair of delicious dinners - crusted pork chops on Saturday and an antipasto salad for Sunday's supper. Granted, "antipasto" means "before the meal," but for us it made a nice meal in itself. It featured basil grown on our back porch and went well with a small glass of sangria.

On Sunday, I wiped the dust from my bicycle. It hung on the wall, a garage decoration, for the past two years. The temptation proved to be too much for me. I took her down, wiped her up, and rode my bike around the neighborhood. It worked fine. Surprisingly, so did I.

I needed weed killer. My wife needed more Lysol wipes. I decided to take my bike to the store a few miles away. After all, it's almost entirely downhill. Easy. I made sure I was well-hydrated and brought water with me. Nothing to note on the trip down, other than the lack of a bike rack in front of the Giant Eagle (there was one before they remodeled), so I locked up at the racks in the center between the grocery store and the Home Depot (which was my destination, anyway). I ended up buying a gallon of weedkiller, so my folding panniers came in handy. I was more than halfway back home, facing a hill that I didn't remember, when I received a call from my wife. She had bought the wrong thing to go in her antipasto, so could I be a doll and go to the grocery store for her? She needed mozzarella pearls.

Meanwhile, behind me, a skunk almost made it across the road.

I don't know why the skunk was out during the day. I don't know why it decided to cross Center Road. I do know that it was run over at the curb on my side of the road. Fur, guts, blood and stink.

On my way back to the grocery store I got to experience the sight and smell of a freshly-killed skunk. I found it notable how quickly flies were drawn to it. Shit has nothing on a freshly-killed skunk for attracting flies. Worse, I got to renew this experience on my way back home.

So today I am sore. Mostly muscle aches in my legs, but nothing feels unaffected. But it also feels good, if that makes any sense. Good enough for me to do again, if only for pleasure.

Being a Man

So I was reading on the Art of Manliness about men who still felt like children. As much as I am a "fun dad," I don't relate to this problem. I guess I've felt like a man since my early teens.

It's not as if I didn't understand that I would be more mature and knowledgeable tomorrow than I am today. On the contrary - I was very aware of my growth as a man. I still am. I just view that natural, positive change as, well, something that you should expect to happen. It doesn't make you something less than a man today. There is no magical threshold you cross, despite our attempts to ritualize one into being.

The way I look at it, I am a man today. I was a man yesterday. I will be a man tomorrow.

Perhaps what those man-children are feeling is the desire to play. Perhaps they believe that, when they finally feel like men, the desire to play won't be felt. If so, they're being silly. Maybe they view their hobbies and pastimes as something less-than-manly. They may simply not grasp what a man is.

There are plenty of articles that purport to tell you what a real man is. Each of them lists what the author values, and thus present many points on which to differ and discuss. I'll not add more noise to that channel aside from this: being a man is possessing and developing those traits that one thinks a man should exhibit.

If that leaves you flat, then contrast manliness with childishness. A child is self-centered and dependent. The opposite would be empathetic and a provider. Such a definition applies to being a woman, as well, without resorting to stereotypical gender roles that may or may not apply to anyone in particular.

So, did I care about my fellow human beings and provide the world something of value yesterday? Today? Tomorrow? That is definition enough.

Bad Dad on Mothers' Day

I have a running joke with my wife and officemate. I am the ultimate Bad Husband when it comes to gift giving. I will give my wife something ridiculously practical on occasions that require sentiment, such as birthdays and, well, Mothers' Day.

My wife happens to love practical gifts, and it's not that I don't have a sense of romance. Like I said, it's a running joke. This year I bought my wife a set of cookie sheets for Mothers' Day. Goes with the spatulas I gave her for her birthday.

Granted, they're somewhat pricey Caphlon non-stick baking trays in three different styles, but they're cookie sheets. No roses. No candy. A "card" that was a picture I downloaded, with a couple sentences printed on the opposite side. I played it to the hilt.

My wife, who truly loves me, plays along.

Our daughter did make a lobster dinner for us, with baked potatoes, steamed peas, garlic bread, strawberry margaritas and a lovely dessert of raspberries and lime yogurt in parfait cups. I helped (a bit). The only mishap was that I dropped Louie Number Three (all lobsters in our house get named Louie) when he made for the rocks by flipping his tail vigorously.

Since it was Mothers' Day, I took care of cracking open the lobsters for my children. Steve always needs help and Sarah hasn't quite figured out the techniques to disassembling a lobster. She will, though.

Despite it all, my wife insists that she had a lovely Mothers' Day. That's all that counts.

Cabinet and Shelf Done

Done.

Or nearly so. Now I'm going to find myself anxious to move this project forward in some other way. Oh, I'm still making a thin shelf box and finishing the shelf that goes in the vanity, but those are trifles. Just like the cabinet pulls, which I will mount last, or the cabinet floor holes for the water pipes. That can come later.

Leave it to my wife to keep me humbled. She looked at that cherry shelf box, then looked at a nearby $25 Walmart bookshelf - particle board covered with a wood pattern laminate. To her, they looked the same.

Yes. I imagine they do. The desk I am sitting at is covered particle board held together with quarter-turn fittings. The laminate has worn off the front edge and is permanently loose. The top is cracked and bowed along the edges. Perhaps one day I will make a desk for myself.

This has been an interesting "winter" project. That I am overly self-reliant has often been pointed out as a weakness of mine. In that light, I find it fascinating that I react to my want of cherry woodwork in my master bathroom by learning woodworking and making the items myself. My reaction to wanting a tiled bathroom floor is to take a Polaris class in tiling.

I have a hundred dollars worth of floor tile sitting in my front room, waiting for me to tear up my bathroom and install it.

Is this me, or is this me rebelling against a label by living it in spades?

My midlife crisis continues unabated. I showed my daughter a video of a shuttle launch and explained that I saw one a couple years ago. She told me that she would like to see one, too. She was not happy when I explained that we had retired the shuttle and had nothing to replace it. I had gone back to NASA to make an impact - to put some poor sot's butt back on the moon or sling a hunk of iron to Jupiter.

Perhaps Jimmy Buffet put it best in A Pirate Looks at Forty.

Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late
The cannons don't thunder, there's nothin' to plunder
I'm an over-forty victim of fate
Arriving too late, arriving too late

Maybe I'm not two hundred years too late, but fifty. Arriving too late, indeed.