We Can Rebuild It...

When we moved into this house, there was a workbench in the basement. It was big, but that's about all the good you could say about. It was flimsy and poorly constructed; in fact, it was too big.

Halfway through the basement tiling project I took a day to tear apart the workbench and rebuild it. It came out great, smaller and stronger, designed to fit specifically into one corner of the basement. But I wanted to add a bottom shelf, too, which is so useful for storing stuff and keeping the floor clear.

I finally got around to doing that last weekend, and last night I more or less cleaned up my chaos of tools and supplies and distributed it across both workbenches and various storage. Is all done. Is very nice.

Little Girl Is Back Home

Our doggie houseguest, who we mostly took to calling "Little Girl", is back home. We were out walking her and Loki yesterday when a car pulled over and her owners popped out and recognized her. Turns out her name was "Maddie" and she slipped her collar and wandered over from just the next street. And just like that, she was gone!

The house is quieter and calmer again. I'm sure Loki misses her, though he will probably enjoy being undisputed top dog once more. And Morgan is happy to be out of the basement, I'm sure.

Maybe we'll get to see Maddie when we walk down Lyon St. in the future. Until then, take care, little girl. We hope you liked your stay!

Double Dog Dare

Yes, it's been awhile. We've been busy! More on that later...

Breaking news is that, for the moment, we have a second dog. A beautiful beagle with no collar, tags, or ID wandered up our driveway this past Saturday. We took her in despite the fact that we were rushing to meet up with friends at the Buffalo Zoo. What else can you do?

Since then, we've put a call in to Batavia no-emergency dispatch (no callbacks yet), had her checked for a chip at the Genesee County shelter (nope), got her a proper collar and leash, and listed her info at a few local pet stores, plus Craigslist. And given her a bath. And decided to name her "Lia", which beats "she", or "that other dog".

Lia and Loki are getting along... well, rambunctiously. Lia's probably also around two years old, no puppy but plenty of energy. They do pretty well walking together (none of the neighbors recognize her or have heard of a missing beagle, and no lucky distraught owner has spotted her with us yet). She's obviously an escapee and not a stray, because she's housebroken and in good condition and minds her so-called-owners at least as well as Loki does! But the two of them have gotten pretty scrappy at times indoors as they try to sort out dominance, which'd be just great if it wasn't for a five month old baby in the mix. Oh, and Lia's not crate trained, so we close her in the downstairs bathroom at night, and crate Loki, to restrict the Cirque du Doggy to daylight hours only. Morgan, the cat, has been relegated to basement life for the time being. At least she's loving the new tiles.

In the space of two days we've been charmed by Lia, but still, we have got to find her real owners and return her. If not, well, at least two of our neighbors have expressed interest in her already. For a brief while we thought, hey, maybe we can have a second dog ourselves. That delirious moment is long since passed!

I don't think there's any Batavia readers of this blog, but if so, pass word along if you know of a family who's missing their beagle. Thanks!

Missing Mommy and Charlie

Kathleen got to stay out with her family for the week while I came back to work and take care of Loki. The family gets re-united today at last - hooray! Meanwhile, here's a few recent pictures of Charlie from early April. He hit his three-month birthday at the end of March and was over 20 lbs! But he's finally stopped gaining so much weight and now is stretching out. He's started enjoying simple toys like rattles and spinners and mirrors. Very curious, very happy!

Basement Tiling, Days VI and VII

All the tiles are down! I can feel your excitement - it means not many more of these boring posts! Day Six was the week before Easter, and then Day Seven was unfortunately not one of rest, but in fact two short days before and after Easter of just me laying the last 40 tiles. This, because it was the only way to work into the final corner without getting stuck there!

The drama unfolds in pictures...

The last big stretch:



Finishing up under the furnace:



And the water heater - this turned out to be a tight squeeze!



Under the stationary tub in the corner. I cut slots into the tiles to be able to re-bolt the sink's legs to the floor:



The final corner:



Detail around the last post:



Last night I grouted all the "hard" parts left: under the furnace and water heater, and the corner under the sink. Everything that's left is pretty easy, probably two evenings' of work. Oh, and I have to take down the root cellar door and shave off the bottom half inch of it so it has clearance over the tiles! That whole thing should really juts be replaced by something nicer, though.

Lessons learned: overall, I'm extremely pleased. It looks great, is so much nicer to walk on, and it wasn't really hard to do, just a lot of labor. Our only issue was that we probably "stuck to the walls" a bit more than we should have across the middle section of the basement, as necessitated by having to move "stuff" from one part of the basement to the other to clear out the next working area. This meant that things got a little tight when we filled in the middle, but I don't think anyone else will notice or care that we got squeezed down to 1/8" spacing for a few rows over in the laundry area. If we were in a higher-precision situation (say a kitchen, not a basement), it would have been critical to stick to rows and recheck the grid on the way. But for a basement, well, my dad says it's probably the nicest one on the street now, and I might even agree to that!

Basement Tiling, Day V

(More baby pictures coming soon to break up this tiling monotony!)

Day five of the basement tiling project is in the books, and we're still on track to get done in just two more days. The big thing on this day is that we tiled under where the washer and dryer go, and we're also more than half done going under the furnace and hot water heater. I made a lot of nice cuts for pipes and holes, and mostly what's left to go now is a huge swath of full tiles right down the middle.

Down the wall to the laundry area:



Detail work on the drain pipe there:



Under the furnace:



Oh! And between tiling days four and five, I tore apart and rebuilt the crappy workbench that came with the basement into something solid and useful. Of course it's covered with random tiling debris, so it might not look like much... but its been re-sized down to fit right in that corner, it's way stronger than before, and the inexplicable half-inch gaps between the top boards are a thing of the past. Still to build the lower shelf out of remaining scrap wood, once I get a few longer wood screws on hand:



This is the hole with the emergency drain, currently sealed off to prevent backflow from the storm sewers in case of flood. I wanted to tile in as much as I could and still leave the useful depression in the floor - opposing goals. Since the hole is roughly circular, I devised this hexagon-shaped pattern. Years from now, when we're long gone, they'll know that a gamer lived here:



The washer and dryer cleaned up, back in place, and reconnected. Now once we get the tile down in front of them, you know, where people and laundry go, then we'll be in business:

Basement Tiling, Ongoing

After the third and fourth days of laying tile, we're more than half done. At our present rate we have six-and-a-half days' total work, which means we have two-and-a-half left to go, which means, really, three. But the last day should be a bit quicker.

On the third day, we got under the stairs. No cuts needed there, we just raised the stair landing and slid the tiles underneath.



On the fourth day, we did the whole far corner. Excepting three wall tiles we left open because it looks like we still have water coming in there. We'll need to do still more exploring and filling...



We also went behind the furnace. It's on two cinder blocks, front and back, plus shims. We moved the back one to the middle and tiled there. Next, we'll move it back and tile under the middle, and finally we'll tile under the front. We'll have to reduce the shims' height by about 3/16", but that should be no problem. Same basic routine for the water heater, too.



A couple nice cuts for one of the beam supports.



And there's still a leaky bit further under the stairs. Not as bad as the other wall, but they both need to be dealt with.



It'll be a few weeks before we get on to tiling day number five. I have to grout the latest tiles and do some sealing; we need to work on the leaks. And then day five will be crazy because we're going to disconnect and pull out the washer and dryer and we'll be on the clock to get that spot done, and the appliances returned, ASAP. And there's still the last section of old icky vinyl sheet tile underneath the where the washer and dryer are sitting that needs to get scraped off. Oh, and hey, the stationary tub is bolted into the floor, too, and it's gonna have to come loose for a while. Fun, fun, fun.

But before any of that happens, I'm taking a time-out for a side project, which is tearing down the crappy (but big) workbench that came with the house, and rebuilding it into something stronger and better.

Latest Baby Pix

A few recent pix of the boy, who's growing fast. Unofficially he's pushing 2x birth weight. He gets to go to the doctor's next week and we'll see what the official word is. Happy and healthy and getting more alert and inquisitive, too.

Horrors! Taking to the non-organic-rubber binky!



Getting ready for a grand day out with mommy...



Starting to work on holding his head up, too:



And Szinger Nagymama get her chance to hold and feed him...

Basement Tiling, Day III (Grouting)

Grouting is nice because it generally goes a lot faster than laying tile, and it's a bit magical how "done" the floor suddenly looks after it's been grouted. I got all the tile we've laid so far grouted in one knee-hurting five-hour session, and then only another hour after that to seal the grout. (The tile itself, I wondered how porous the surface was, with regards to sealing, and the answer is: not at all. So it's really just the grout that got sealed!)



Material-wise, we're going through mortar faster than estimated, but slower on the grout and sealer. Good news is that the mortar is $5 a bag (Home Depot actually raised the price from $4.99 to $5.23 in the last two weeks, the nasty buggers!) and grout is $13 a bag, so we're saving in the right place. Might end up with extra sealer but it'll last forever, and it comes in gallon jugs, not 50-lb bags!



After these pix, I did another round of Tetris with the contents of the basement to clear up the middle area, and my dad came over to bust up the floor/wall seam in the leaky spots to redo with hydraulic cement, so we're just about ready to start the next round of tile.