Our re-tiling project

For memorial day weekend, we decided that we would re-tile our bathroom floor ourselves. What fun! a do it yourself project. We gathered all the necessary supplies: tile, grout, trowel, etc. I spent the week making jokes to friends about whether our marriage would survive the project. On Saturday morning, when I was crawling around on the floor getting ready to begin the project, I noticed some water around the base of the toilet. Hmm. never noticed that before. Of course, I don't spend much time on all fours on the bathroom floor. I decided it seemed like the wax ring might be leaking. Maybe we should take up the toilet and replace that first. I started unscrewing the bolts for the toilet. Just as I unscrewed the bolt on the tank (we were taking it off in two parts to make it lighter) I heard water start shooting against the other side of the drywall. The side that was in the wall. The side that I could not reach. Panic was in order. I ran downstairs to see water cascading out of our recessed lighting onto the floor. Good times. Raced out of the house to turn of water the our entire condo complex (luckily, I know how to do that). Of course, I had to enlist Laura's help to turn off the water and she got a nasty cut on her leg going into the water-shut off closet/dungeon.

When the plumber arrived to fix the pipe, he had to take up the toilet to reach it. When he did that, he discovered that the toilet flange was not bolted to the floor. WTF. Number one, that is a serious code violation. Number two, the developer who converted our complex to condos put in all new low water use toilets. It is impossible to put down a new toilet and not notice that. We set up an appointment to have the flange replaced.

Then, the remediation people arrive. They cut out several sections of drywall, and ripped up the floors. They discovered that last year when the developer tried to fix our known threshold defect (and laid new floors for us) he failed. Water was still getting in and there was a GIANT patch of mold in our downstairs.

Here's a photo collage of the past week. Looks fun huh???

notice the cat enjoying sitting beside the fans and de-humidifier downstairs. Of course, she did end up getting a little irritated by this home restoration project. Mostly because one of the restoration technicians told us that we couldnt turn on the AC and had to leave all the windows closed. Doing this made it feel like it was the Mojave desert in our house. My orchid wilted, we were all hot and miserable, and to make herself feel better, Lucy punished the dog by peeing on her bed. What a delightful addition to the rest of our home restoration project--cleaning up cat pee. We decided the dog's bed was a total loss and tossed it. We've spent the past couple days scrubbing the floor, saturating it with simple solution and drying it with a fan. Good times. Luckily, we have mostly dried everything (except the bathroom floor) and the house is back to an acceptable temperature for Lucy. Oh, and we purchased feliway and feliway spray. Part of yesterday was spent with the dog in various dog stores trying out beds.

On the upside, marriage has survived, we got the drywall patched on friday, we picked out some new flooring today, and we are leaving for vegas on Monday. We'll let our pet sitter enjoy our construction zone!!