Nine Weeks Later …

Time has many forms, measurable in different ways.

When we started work on the master bath, we moved our toothbrushes and shampoos over to the guest bath. We thought it would be temporary; only a few weeks. We transferred only a few things and placed them on the countertop. As we needed more stuff, the countertop got cluttered and we started filling drawers.

Now, I have lost count of the number of toilet paper rolls we have used up, I am ready for my third bar of soap, and my large bottle of shampoo is getting empty — all consumed in the guest bath. The rate of consumption of such items is relatively constant. They measure time. We use toilet paper only for our own routines and we typically shower once a day. If the daily routine gets more frequent, that increased rate of use is also relevant to an accurate measure of time's passage.

Yesterday we cut and laid the last tiles: itty, bitty one-inch pieces of marble fed in cumbersome, mesh-backed sheets through the wet saw, or individually to cut a special one-third or triangle shape. The glass-block wall is now framed with small and contrasting marble tiles, each delicately cut and laid with Shari's and my joint consensus. The shower tiling is complete, the wet saw has been hosed off and put away in storage, and my two sets of work clothes — regularly drenched in front (that's why they call it a wet saw) and laid out to dry on the bedroom floor — are put away in the garage where they belong.

Shari still has grouting ("Grout expectations," I keep murmuring), caulking and painting to finish. She has already worked her fingers bloody pushing grout into the many spaces between sharp marble edges. Trouble is, she likes to grout and she is good at it. I like cutting and laying tiles. As for grouting, my grout lines reflect my dislike for that job.

I have a one-gang electrical outlet to replace with a two-gang, and plumbing to restore. Using the master bath is still only a fervent hope. Maybe by year-end. Meanwhile, I need to get a new bar of soap.

Six Weeks Later . .

. . . and we are still working on it. About nine hundred square feet of floor tiling in master bedroom, walk-in closet, meditation room, bathroom floor and bullnose wall-edging are pretty much done, but that leaves shower walls, restoration of bath wall and ceiling, figuring out how to caulk and grout glass blocks, and restoring the shower and toilet plumbing. My new tile saw is wearing out and I need to cut about twenty feet of quarter inch wide strips along the shower floor, plus the usual "dutchmen" (contractor-ese for cut tiles) on five shower walls.

Then there was an increase in the scope of work when we had two bedroom windows replaced. Windows need scraping, caulking and painting on the inside, then sealing and painting on the outside.

Each work component is several days. It took days of planning, pondering and mega-hardware store shopping, and a long day of work each to relocate light switch wiring, hand saw and level two-by-six studs, and replace an exterior threshold. Friday I spent telephoning Delta to figure out how to re-install the two-decades old shower faucet. There was this plastic part that didn't make sense. Just cleaning up the mess in back — our staging area, tool depository, and factory for producing heaps of dust, both porcelain and wood —will take a couple of days.

Shower floor.

The dumpster was pretty much full when it got hauled away. There was room to dump mustard prickly pear cactus and large pieces of dead acacia and palo verde trees from the yard. We hired a crew to rough-in the shower stall and lay its one-inch marble tile floor. That was a couple of weeks ago. We hired happy-go-lucky, wham-bam Jesus to replace the windows. His scheduled afternoon for the job turned into three. And the home-security guy came to install the new sensors in the new windows. I think we are done with strangers wandering about the house.

As I began to appreciate the structural ramifications of Shari's desire for a glass block shower wall, I began to worry. I worried about relocating the light switch wiring, severing three vertical two-by-fours, rebuilding the half wall, measuring thirty-nine and seven-eighths inches of vertical space between level two-by-sixes screwed to the bottom and ceiling stud stumps, and trying to figure out Pittsburgh Corning glass block installation instructions.

The glass block wall turned into a nice way to spend a Thanksgiving weekend — all four days of it. Yesterday we began the first courses of shower wall tile.

I miss my shower and toilet. I look at the toilet hole in the floor, a rag stuffed into it to keep debris out, and I have urges to urinate in it.

We've learned to appreciate the guest bath. Like its door that rubbed against the wood floor transition. I had been meaning to trim that door bottom for years. Finally, in a late afternoon of deliberate construction confidence, I took the door off its hinges. Trimming door bottoms was something I knew how to do. Heck, I'd done it several times before. Late afternoon should have been the clue.

The two saw horses were already set up in back. Carry the door outside and lay it down. Measure how much to cut. Draw a line. Clamp down a straight piece of wood to guide the circular saw. Adjust the depth setting on the saw. Check measurement again. Plug in the saw and cut smoothly. Like a hunter returning home with his catch, I proudly carried that door inside to the guest bath, placed the hinge side towards the hinge side, then realized I had trimmed the top of the door.

 Maybe we'll be done by Christmas.