Day 23, Sunday- The “smart” end of the tape

Some people send smart-assed statues mocking my efforts, but you know what? I can lay tile- well. So slap another layer of linoleum down, Pop, because I’ve now got a tile entryway.

After a rousing breakfast of bad coffee and cold hotdogs, I spent the better part of a day carefully leveling the floor, mixing thinset by hand, elevating the mosaic, then cutting each tile by hand. So, after many hours of work, and after letting the tile set overnight, I gathered up the debris and went to open the front door.

It stuck. I tried again. It still stuck.

Shit.

It took a little bit of work to get the door out. Actually, it took ripping out part of the door jams, chiseling out the threshold, cutting out and repairing the dry rot I found under the threshold, beating the hinge pins out of position with a hammer and screwdriver, and the removing four floor tiles with the aid of a sledgehammer.

No big deal. I got the door down and moved it outside. Do know how much a 100 year old solid fir door weighs? A lot. The damn thing is hernia heavy.

I carefully measured the height of the new threshold and calculated the difference from the old threshold (5/8”). I measured the thickness of the new tile and thinset (3/8”). Then I looked at the figures on the paper and decided to cut the door off by 3/4”.

Do you know what the difference between 3/4” and 7/8” is? It is three things:

1. 1/8”
2. The difference between good measuring and bad
3. A whole bunch on an exterior door

At any rate, after only four short hours, I put everything back together. It turned out fine in the end.
I went home for a dinner of crunchy roast and green beans (I was late). It was a lovely meal were Abby’s brain fell out of her head. She took a bite of the crunchy roast and spit it out back onto the platter. She spent the rest of the meal on top of the fridge- or as we call it “Abby’s chair.”

Went back to the house and spent some quiet time doing one of my favorite chores in household remodeling- scraping popcorn crap of the ceiling. To say this sucks does not begin to describe how bad this job is. It did, however, beat the hell out of dealing with Abby on low-blood-sugar night.

Total costs: $1,500