July 4 -- ready to tile

Jason has his work cut out for him next door -- rearanging some of the kitchen, moving walls, rewiring, installing and reinstalling bathrooms ... he has that underway at this point. One of the first things that he wanted to do was replace his old toilet with a low volume flush version to reduce the flow into his septic system -- sounds easy, right ? He and I had discussed same, puzzling over what could go wrong (it's awkward not having a bathroom) ... potential issues with the connection to the flange or issues with the flooring under the toilet ... but instead he found that he had the wrong connection on the supply line. So ... that little project was over before it had begun -- luckily he had checked before removing the toilet !

Sandy started getting organized to stain -- first priority being the bench for the laundry room -- so I moved that up to the barn and she started into the wood conditioner. It's vile stuff -- awful smell -- I'm happy that it's in the barn and not in here. We won't be so lucky with the basement stairs though since that work needs to take place in the house. The stairs are fixed in place. Udo may be here next week to do that work.

As planned, I first cut the Ditra, laying all the strips on the floor and doing any cutouts required for the closet and doorway. I then pulled all those strips out of the room. Next I cut the 1/8" spaces between the plywood sheets. That turned out to be relatively simple. With dust mask, glasses and hearing protection muffs all in place I must look like the creature from the black lagoon though. It was not as dusty as I had expected because you're running along the edges of the plywood where there is already a small space so the material being removed is minimal. When Udo is here sanding the stairs I'll tackle the rest of the area, save the games room of course because it is full of boxes etc. He will create a lot of fine dust with the orbital sander.

While rain threatened in the a.m. it never hit us and turned out to be a glorious day but once I started laying the Ditra there was no logical place to stop. It is really a two man (person) job so I had to hustle to keep working the thinset mortar so that it didn't start setting. Ideally one person would be mixing mortar and helping "float" the already-laid Ditra while the other person is spreading mortar and rolling out the Ditra.

I mixed four batches of mortar with the first and last being small 1/2 pail batches while the middle two were almost full five gallon pails. The mortar must be worked back and forth on the floor to get the plywood wet so that it adheres, then combed with the notched side of the trowel to put down a consistent amount of mortar. Section by section of the Ditra is then rolled out.

I use the grout float and an 8' 2x4 to float it -- ensuring that the fleece side has been firmly pressed into the mortar, working the air bubles out to the edges and leveling it. It takes two hands leaning into the float with all your strength working on your knees to float the Ditra. Then, as I got to the end of a batch of mortar I had to mix some more, which takes time -- then it has to sit for ten minutes and be mixed some more -- time which I then used to do more floating. I finished up around 4pm -- done and done in.

It's too late to start something else and I'm too tired to go for a bike ride. I went over to Jason's and kibitzed for a while but he is working. It's just after 5pm at this point so I sat on the deck and had a beer ... then went inside and watched CNN for a few minutes ... somewhere in there my eyes closed for about 5 minutes and Sandy got home at 5:25 and the door closing woke me up.

After her staining work she had gone into North Bay to pick up the varathane for the stair treads. This stuff is oil-based and a special product only available from the guy who did our pine floors, produced in North Bay. The little bit left over from last year was not useable -- conditioner, yes; stain, yes; varathane, no. I'm calling it varathane, but it's actually called Crystal and has its own "thinner" that is referred to as "reducer". It makes the aforementioned vile wood conditioner that Sandy uses smell like a rose garden in comparison. The smell from this Crystal product actually penetrates food in the refrigerator ... we want a) the windows all to be open and b) this to be over well before anyone arrives late July.

With it being such a great day Jason and Lorraine decided to delay their exit until the morning -- their original plan was to go home after dinner. They came over and we sat on the deck, enjoying the weather, the bug-less evening and the company until well after 8pm then headed into our respectve kitchens to make dinner. It is so pleasant this time of year with daylight lasting until around 9:30 pm.

Today ... we have to pick up tile and mortar from Sudbury. It has been raining out and is supposed to continue, so there is no possibility of using an open trailer. It's a weighty matter though -- I need at least eight, probably ten bags of mortar at 50 pounds per bag, plus the tiles. The tiles weigh about 50-60 pounds per 7-tile box and there are 15 boxes ... so this is approximately 1900 pounds of material.

This, however, is the easy part -- the bedroom needs about 230 square feet of tile. The balance of the floor is another 1000 square feet -- and those tiles weigh much more. I had weighed the one sample tile and it was around 16 pounds. Those tiles are 20x20 and are much thicker than the 18x18 tiles for the bedroom. Assuming that the cardboard to which it was attached etc. was two pounds, that still puts those tiles at 5 pounds per square foot vs the 18x18 tiles at 3 pounds per square foot. Multiplying all this out and assuming that I can do the bedroom area with 8 bags of mortar (it took 2 bags to do the darkroom) -- I will need 1700 pounds of mortar and 5000 pounds of tile. That's close to 8000 pounds for the next order ... 4 tons. I can load about 200 pounds of material in the little ATC trailer to move this from the driveway to the basement ... so that means 40 loads ... but hey, it's all downhill ! Of course there is also the grout ... I guess that I'll be building up some upper body strength.

As I was typing this I took a diversion and started looking at the possibility of a rental truck for the day in Sudbury -- that might make more sense. I had originally been thinking that two car-loads would carry today's delivery but at 1900 pounds it is probably more like 3-4 -- if you overload the car and damage it this becomes very expensive. I'll get on the phone shortly and see what's available.

Our work is cut out for us.