Agile Tortoise
Greg Pierce’s blog
« Chase Cringley Mozilla under XDarwin »
The big plan
It’s time to work on the house again. Kt and I are steadfastly refusing to be overwhelmed by parenting twins, as everyone seems to expect of us, and are diving into more household projects. I’m taking next week off and by the time it’s over, we should have new carpet in the family room, a new built-in shelf and slate tile around the fireplace, new paint on the walls in the living room, and a number of other little things — with the pros coming in thereafter to install wood floor in the family and down the hall.
It’s not going to be easy, but Kt’s folk are going to come out a couple of days to help with the boys, so we should be able to get at least most of it done.
I’m excited, particularly about the wood floors…it should really warm up the ambience of the house. Plus, it’s fun to watch the dogs slide around on it.
April 30th, 2002 at 2:21 pm
> I’m excited, particularly about the wood floors…it should really warm
> up the ambience of the house. Plus, it’s fun to watch the dogs slide
> around on it.
Oooo, and thing how well the toy cars will roll!!! Wanna race?!
May 6th, 2002 at 6:30 am
Not much time to write ( Keegan’s in my lap )…but so far, with two days work in, the household renovations are going well. Old carpet all removed ( family room, living room, hall, breakfast nook ). New carpet installed ( family room ). Family room put back together. Walls prepped for paint in the living room ( sanding, patching… lots of patching ). Today, the slate goes up on the fireplace.
I already ache…but we’ll make it.
May 6th, 2002 at 9:52 pm
Today’s project, slate tile on the fireplace. We got about 2/3’s done…most of the hard part’s done. We should be able to cruise through the rest in the morning and seal the slate for grouting — and possibly get the first coat of paint on the walls tomorrow.
My body aches. Not really specific parts…pretty much the whole thing.
May 7th, 2002 at 8:30 pm
The slate is all up. Have a look. We still have to grout it, but it’s up and looks great. The picture doesn’t capture the color and variation of the stone at all.
Tomorrow, painting and working on the built-in shelf that goes to the right of the slate.
May 8th, 2002 at 9:46 pm
We got off to a late start on the actual work today. We had to make a trip out to the flooring store to finish arrangements for the wood floor and schedule the install of that next week ( yes, we’re letting the pros do a little )…and we also had to make a quick stop at Babies ‘R’ Us. Asher and Keegan have outgrown their infant car seats, so we needed new ones for them.
The work that did get done today — sealer on the slate, all prepped for grout tomorrow. Two coats of “millstone” textured paint on the walls. One this afternoon, and the other we literally just finished ( 10:30pm ). We got the second coat in after the babies went to sleep.
PS– Special thanks to the in-laws, who are really the ones making all this possible. They’ve been out everyday this week to watch the babies while we get work done. Awesome. Family is great.
PpS– Special thanks to the inventors of Ibuprofen.
May 9th, 2002 at 5:22 am
Okay, I’m jealous!! I really wish I had the know-how to do that sort of work, but unfortunately any attempts at it look like that broken-down birdhouse you see emerging from shop class. Fireplace looked great in the photo though - color notwithstanding. More pics!!
May 9th, 2002 at 1:19 pm
It sounds likeyou are working hard and moving along at a great pace. Greg, you will have to go back to work next week to rest up! It all sounds great, and we look forward to more photos as well.
Mom
ps- This set of grandparents is jealous of those inlaws. Wish we could be watching Asher and Kegan part of the time too!
May 10th, 2002 at 9:41 am
For you young people out there considering tile laying as a profession, I’d highly recommend you pursue other options. The tile laying itself ain’t so bad — but, oigh, grouting sucks…especially on natural stone, which is porous and difficult to clean.
I ended up doing all the grouting yesterday, not because Kt didn’t want to help, but because the babies were having a bit of a fussy day and needed her. I started at around 9:30am, and finished around 10:30pm…with several hours off in the middle for breaks.
It’s done though…I think today is mostly a day off, although I’ll try to get a few things done.
May 11th, 2002 at 7:40 pm
I hope you were wearing face filters for the purpose of breathing clean air while doing that work.
I had a Chicago friend who was a tile setter for his entire adult life until he contracted lung cancer in April 1985 from the accumulated dust in his lungs. He died in July 1986 at the age of 52 leaving a wife and several kids (one in college at the time).
Ceramic dust is nasty…
By the way, your new efforts looked good to me.
Don
May 11th, 2002 at 9:21 pm
On Sat, 11 May 2002 20:46:22 -0500, Donald W. Larson wrote:
>
>I hope you were wearing face filters for the purpose of breathing clean air while doing that work.
..
>Ceramic dust is nasty…
No doubt. All dust is really pretty nasty. The worst stuff in this task is the silica sand in the mastic and grout. Not a problem once it’s mixed up, but dry you definitely need the mask. We used a diamond-tipped wet saw to cut the stone, which avoids dust, luckily.
>By the way, your new efforts looked good to me.
Thanks
g.
May 21st, 2002 at 9:05 pm
We’ve been slow to post pictures of the ongoing housework, sorry about that…here’s one of the Slate fireplace and built-in shelf. I did the facing on the shelf this weekend…it now needs a door ( bottom cabinet ), and paint. The slate still needs a couple of coats of sealer…but it’s moving along.
Note the new wood floors, also…looking nice. They may well end up being free, too, but that another story I’ll get to in the coming days.
March 9th, 2004 at 7:06 pm
Greg- Your slate fireplace looks really nice…we are just about to order our slate to do our fireplace as well…could you help me out?? I was wondering what color that slate is that you chose…also, do you have any recommendations/anything your would have done differently, etc that you could offer up?? Any help is much appreciated! Thanks. Lisa