Love it...Hate it.

LOVE the paint colors!  Whew, I was pretty worried after seeing what Donna went through at her house.  You just never know until the paint is on the walls!  I love the contrast with the ceiling white and wall a soft gray.  Then those dark stained beams against the white, vaulted ceiling....heart be still.


 The painter is still doing a little touch up here and there, he painted the garage white and he's staining the library pocket doors and stair handrail.  Then he'll be done.  


HATE is a strong word and my mom always told me I should say "strongly dislike" instead, so let me start over.  I strongly dislike our whole amateur tiling experience.  After a full day of scraping, washing, measuring, cutting, mixing thinset, and trying to smoothly install the newest type of underlayment for the tile, I am strongly wishing we had given up something else in order to afford to have the professionals do this.  

Even with knee pads...tiling is not for sissies.

We were warned, but we forged ahead and I'm sad to say, we failed in our first in attempt and the professional is coming to the rescue tomorrow to hopefully save the day. 

Mike was convinced he should use Ditra for the underlayment versus the more old style concrete board.  It's been around in Canada for several years and is being used more and more here in the states.  It's a roll of plastic waffle material with a porous fabric type backing.  You first apply a layer of mortar or thinset, which needs to be fairly wet, but thick enough to hold a trowel groove. Okay, we can do that.

 Batch number one: spread out pretty nicely, then we placed the Ditra on top and used a float to press it down.  It seemed to have a few places where the thinset  didn't flatten as well as it did in other places.  

Batch number two: A little thinner, spread out nicely, then we placed the next piece of Ditra on and used the float again...same problem, only this time when we smoothed the Ditra, the thinset just oozed out the edges..ugh.  

Batch number three: A little thicker, spread out pretty well, placed the Ditra mat and went to smooth it with the float and horrors...big areas where the thinset didn't want to flatten.  Lumps and Bumps. 

 By this time the 15x15 room was covered with Ditra and we decided to go home and maybe things would look better the next day.  Wrong.   One look and we could see it looked the same only now the soft, squishy, lumpy, bumpy areas were now hard as rock.  Time to call for help!

It sounds like we will to have to remove it all, sand the thinset down to an even layer and then redo it.  Did I say "we", I meant "we" will watch and learn while a professional does it.

It was a pretty discouraging set back.  Time is of the essence right now and we have so much to do.  It's a little overwhelming.  
We can do this.  
We CAN do THIS!   
It's not all peaches and cream, sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes we bite off more than we can chew.  It's part of the process, it's part of our dream to build this little river house and we are so grateful we are able to do it, even when it's been a hard day.

The sunrise at the rental house...another day to be grateful for.