Allow Me to Recap

Tuesday night I began to work on my upstairs bathroom. I was working by myself, so I opted not to remove the toilet yet, but to begin tiling the floor and put all the solid pieces down that wouldn’t need to be cut. I also left the sink in place sink it is fixed to the wall and doesn’t actually touch the floor. I can’t even begin to tell you what a big mistake that was. The removal of the sink and toilet in the downstairs bathroom was so easy that I had a very skewed idea of how easy removing these should be. Those do-it-yourslef shows that tell you to do all demo first… weren’t kidding.

Last night, I lured my good friend, Q, over with pizza for dinner in exchange for his help. While I had somebody to help, I figured the first thing we should do is remove the toilet since I didn’t think I could carry them out of there by myself. I had no idea what I was getting us into. The tank came off the toilet with minimal water on the floor, but the bowl was a different ballgame. For whatever reason, the bolt that hold the toilet down will not come out, so I am going to have to get a metal saw or something and just cut them off. So, we moved to the sink next. Very quickly, he realized that I didn’t have a pipe wrench or any sort of tool to disconnect the pipes in order to get the sink out. Before leaving to fetch the tools from my brother’s house, we notice that the water supply for the toilet is dripping on the floor, so we put it in a bucket to keep the water from getting on my freshly laid tiles.

We trek across town (in a small Honda with a large daisy painted on the hood I might add) to get the tools and end up running a friend of Q’s to get his truck and taking a little longer to get back then we expected. We get back with the tool and go upstairs. Q sits on the floor under the sink to disconnect the sink and suddenly his butt is completely soaked. Apparently that little drip had overflowed the bucket and had made its way over most of the bathroom floor. There was water everywhere! We dried up what we could but I knew that getting all the adhesive wet meant that I was going to have to take up all those tiles and start all over again.

The sink came out without too much work but the mounting plate that was screwed into the wall was a different story. I get out the power screw driver and Q starts to take the plate off. On the first try, the screwdriver spins out of his hand whirling to the ground, bouncing off his foot and then breaking one of the tiles. (And, yes I laughed at him). After what seemed like an hour of drilling and wrenching the stupid plate, we finally got it off.

Next project was to knock off the tile toothbrush holder, soap dish and towel racks which are mounted into the wall. After the other frustrations, we were both ready to swing the sledgehammer a little bit. I knock them all off, managing to break yet another new floor tile. Then, trying to make the leftover broken pieces smooth, Q uses a coal chisel and the sledgehammer. His hand slips off scraping against the broken tile and suddenly, there is blood. And do I have band-aids in my house?? Of course, not! So, what do we use? That’s right… duck tape!

So, after we get him all patched up, we start removing the newly laid tile from the floor. Might I remind you, that I had decided to tile over the existing tile on the floor rather than demo it up. Yet, another bad idea. The old tile was coming up with the new tile. Now, I have to demo up all that tile before I can begin laying the new tile. So, basically… last night we undid any progress that I had made. And yes, the drip is still going. I managed to rig up some larger buckets to catch the water and I only hope its large enough to hold it all until I get home for lunch today to empty it.

Luckily for me, Q has agreed to come back tonight for round two. I’m surprised since every time he comes over he seems to get hurt. This past summer, he worked in my yard and got stung by wasps. I think he even tripped on my stairs once. My house is a Q-danger zone. Maybe I should buy him something better than pizza? So, wish us luck that tonight goes a little better… or at least that there is no blood involved this time!

Q's pimp-mobile!