Archeology

"This excellent curved wall custom built by TM, Cala, & MP Nov '87 Dec '87"

This is the quote I found when I pulled the drywall off of the back of our shower. I am glad that these people left their mark for me to find almost exactly 20 years later. I think I'll leave a note and maybe a picture when we close the walls in. I also noticed a full pink wall on the inside of the shower enclosure so now we know the pink bathroom was in 1987.
One of these workers also left a level and small screwdriver in the wall which are now going to go in my tool box. When I took out the medicine cabinet I found these cool old razors. The packages are marker at $0.15, so they have to be pretty old. I think today was the last day of demolition so I won't be finding any more cool artifacts from the past.
In other news my worst nightmare came true today and I messed up the toilet and it started to leak. Before too much water ended up on the floor, I managed to figure out how to get the leak to stop and we can even still use the toilet, but tomorrows project will be getting the toilet back in working order. I was hoping to get at least one iece of sheet rock up today but that didn't happen withteh toilet incedent. Hopefully tomorrow...

No Turning Back

After talking it over we decided that the old plaster walls and wainscot where too far gone nd not worth saving, so we're taking it down to the studs. I took down two trashcans full of plaster today in about 5 hours of work. I'm completely exhausted, and a little bit nervous. I know in the end the bathroom is going to look so much better, but after taking all the plaster off, there is no turning back. I also discovered that the tile we hate was layed over the original tile that all the other units have. If they had just stuck with this tile we might not have wanted to redo the bathroom since the terrible grout job is really what got this whole thing started.

So it begins...

One of the main goals of my unemployment is to get our bathroom remodeled. We have always hated our floors because of the terrible grout job and the fact that no matter what we do it never looks clean. The first order of business is to take out the existing Wainscot cap, which proved to be a bit more difficult that I had anticipated. 80 years of paint had welded the cap to the wainscot so as I pulled the cap off, the wainscot wanted to come with it.
I finally did manage to get it all off revealing the many colors our bathroom once was including but not limited to green, yellow, beige, and pink along with numerous coats and shades of white. I had intended on plastering today as well but my trowel did not match the existing swirls so I had to abandon that project. Next up will be plastering, primer, paint, new lights, then the floor and a new vanity. It sounds like a lot, and it is, but I'm just going to take this project one step at a time.

Art

Kellie and I have been making art in books for a few weeks now. I usually work on mine while she is on the computer and end up just doodling and trying out different media and what not. It's a thick encyclopedia volume that I can't wait to fill up so I have been working in it a lot. The bird above I did last night in crayon. I think I must have been inspired by Todd Francis who did some of the best Anti-Hero graphics ever. I had the board with the two pigeons and the gun.

Rice Bath

On Friday my digital camera went for a little swim in a mud puddle. I figured all was lost but remembered reading in a flickr comment that you could put your water logged electronic device in a container full of rice and that would suck all the moisture out. With nothing to loose I wiped the camera dry then submerged it in a pyrex container full of short grain rice. I left it on the porch all day to heat it up slightly. This morning, I pulled it out, put the battery back in, and hit the button. The green light came one and everything seems to be working. So next time you drop your phone or camera in the water, give it a rice bath and it might come back to life. Some people say you should submerge the device in rubbing alcohol first to get rid of the water, but I didn't read about that until after I had the camera in the rice. You also should not try to turn the device on until it has been dried in the rice.