The door to nowhere

I went home on Saturday and grouted the small area of the floor we had done so we would be able to move the refrigerator back eventually.  It is getting to the point where to get things back in order we can't just do this on our days off.  It truly invades every single day.  I feel like I am always going, always moving, always trying to keep my head above water.  

The worst part of this is just having the whole house in constant turmoil.  I keep thinking "well if I can just get 'this' done then it will be better" but it really isn't.  I now have a DOOR in my livingroom (yes a DOOR.  Just a door off its hinges from the laundry room) just sitting there like the door to nowhere. I also have all the laundry room stuff in there. You would not think that would be a lot but it is.  I also have the new pantry cabinet in my livingroom awaiting its new place in the kitchen.  

I got up early today and tried to get going.  Jym remembered he had a concert to attend in the evening and so his time was limited.  We can never find our tools at this point.  Part of that is because Jym refuses to put anything back where he found it.  Part of it is because the table we are using as a staging area is a complete mess now and we have buried it behind piles of stuff and can't get to most of the things.  

I originally thought that we would be able to just move the stove and lay all the rest of the tile today and then grout tomorrow but that did not work out when I looked at the logistics of it.  Moving the stove (which is ridiculously heavy) onto the tile means that to get at the pantry area and the doorway to the livingroom the stove would be in our way.  So the only way we can do it is to move the stove onto one side of the kitchen and do the tile on the other and finish the pantry and cut areas and THEN move it onto the tile.  This again is a set back to the plans.  I feel like we are always having to rethink the plans.  

I also never accommodate for the 900 things that you have to do to get ready to actually lay the tile.  I realized that we might have extra mortar and might move into the laundry room area so I decided to just pull everything out of there.  Since Jym only did half the painting of the kitchen and nothing else the day before we were already behind and scrambling to make up time then I lost the evening due to the concert he forgot about.  

Then came the frustration when he tried to remove the baseboards from the closet.  I don't even care about the closet but he got all worked up again.  It is like he just loses his mind and gets nasty and mean.  The bipolar is something I have learned to live with but this project has really brought out the best and worst of the roller coaster.  One minute he is joking and laughing and dancing with me and the next he is flipping out.  He was yelling like he was in pain in the laundry room and I just ignored him and then I realized that if he WAS actually INJURED I would IGNORE him because I would assume he was just being a whiny baby again.  I have 6 pins and titanium rods in my spine and I am in constant pain but I just suck it up and shut up and don't expend my energy on it.  He is opposite of that and if he has a hangnail its like someone sawed his arm off.  But then finally decided to point out that if he did INDEED saw his arm off I wouldn't even react because I would assume it was just melodrama. 

Since our time was limited Jym decided that we should not get ambitious and should just try to lay the tiles and cut as we go starting by the counter.  This ended up not being a great plan because every single tile along that edge was a cut and as he was cutting and recutting tile the mortar was drying in the bucket.  By the time we got to the end we literally were scraping the mortar out onto the tile.  It was so thick and almost unworkable.  We started at 11:30 and in an hour we had literally laid 6 tiles.  We managed to get the side of the kitchen done (so a third more) and the area where the stove goes. 

At one point as the mortar was drying he said "You should think about making me a sandwich" I pointed out that we should finish the bucket before its hard as a rock and he said "I didn't say make me a sandwich...I said THINK about it." (see there's the funny joke-ster husband I love)

His funny of the day was when we were discussing something that happened in the news and he said "I was as shocked as Susan Sarandon when Marisa Tomei won the Oscar" or when I was reiterating something/NAGGING him about something and he held up the mortar stir stick and said "Do me a favor, put your face in there"

We finished everything at 4 and Jym went to his concert and I went alone to Floor & Decor. Jym decided that he wants to use the leftover tiles to do a mosaic on the back patio.  I was fine with that and there are some not so fabulous tiles in there so I decided that I wanted to get some fabulous ones for the kitchen.  I was not thrilled with the ones we laid today.  Some were good but we are running low.  I literally spent hours alone digging through the crates for the ones I wanted.  The small squares were awful and I saw one I wanted but it was way down so I painstakingly moved every tile on the piles on top and pulled out the wood shim holding the tiles in place and as I pulled out the tiles from way down there I found all the great ones.  I actually made a sound like angels singing when I pulled one of them out! LOL.  This just goes to show that sometimes you need to dig down deep to get to the amazing stuff but all your hard work will pay off in the end.