Keeping my family out of it,
Someone has a hard time making decisions and I have been sick and tired of being sick and tired of having to go upstairs to negotiate an obstacle course to use a jury rigged toilet waiting for the decision on which whatever tile to use.
After dark in clement weather the back door got used a sometimes for 0300 whiz calls.
As of now most tile setters are booked up solid for months.
Enough is enough. The fire was 13 months ago and the whole thing should have been wrapped up by last Thanksgiving under ideal circumstances, or maybe even Christmas. Still, with subs being snowed under Tax Day would have been reasonably acceptable.
The last hurdle was the downstairs bathroom and that's where everything seemed to stall. It took months to get the tub enclosed and the instant it was completed I installed the shower head, grabbed a curtain bar and started using it because I was sick and tired of showering in the basement with a lawn sprinkler over the floor drain hooked to the laundry tub.
The job stalled yet again and it was for flooring tile. The year marker past and I finally snapped.
In one single 6 or 7 hour day I threw down the underlayment, floated a piece of sheet vinyl on top of it, and threw in the toilet and the sink. The next day I hooked up the sink.
I'm waiting for the inevitable conniption fit to be thrown as I type. I have not shown it off yet. I will use both ears for that one. I will let it go in one and out the other.
It looks finished and civilized and works.
For the past year it's been primitive and not it's civilized.
When the tile decision is made I can easily undo everything in less time than it took to install it and with any luck the tile floor will get back burnered into the next decade for all I care.
I'll let you in an a little secret. When the choice for the tub surround was made I commented that the tile looked familiar and forgot about it. After it was installed I started using the shower and had a weird feeling when I did and after about a week I was thunderstruck. The tile was an exact duplicate of the tile used in the barracks latrine at Camp Perry.
The color chosen for the downstairs walls is pretty close to the color they use in the barracks.
It kind of frosted my ass because I realized that instead of having to go to fancy tile places and listen to decorators (to be fair that wasn't my department but I did make a few trips to those places) and spent a lot of money I could have simply gone to Uncle Larry's Army/Navy store and bought enough tile to tile the entire bathroom and enough paint to paint the entire interior for about $75.
It was embarrassing having to steer my guests to the upstairs water closet and jury rigged toilet and one time I apologized to one of my distinguished guests and he played it down.
"Don't worry about it," he said. "I've used a lot worse. It's a damned sight better than the broad's can at Zucker's Shell station in Snakebite, New Mexico!"
When you think about it, some of my guests have been downright gracious. What a kind thing to say!
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