Weekend update

The DIY (DO-IT-YOURSELF) project has slowed down. I've gotten all the tiles in and the mortar has cured for several days. All that remains for the floor is the grouting and the caulking. I headed out to Home Depot this morning to pick up another box or two for the grouting mix.

After all that's done, we'll pick up a new toilet and install it. We're not looking for anything fancy, so no bidet's for us. It's all about tabo baby...or baby wipes baby. If all goes as planned, then we should have the carpet people here by this Friday and Saturday. It's gonna take two days to lay out the carpet because of carpetting those see-through steps on our stairs.

COOKING
Before Tina went back to work, she cooked during the week and I cooked during the weekends. Now that she's back to work, we split cooking up a little more.

It's all gravy cuz I like cooking. Whether it's from a recipe or from scratch, cooking is an expressive art. This Saturday, I tried messing around with teppanyaki grilling. I have one of those double burner grill plates, a rectangular plate you put over two burners on your stove. I picked up some teriyaki marinade and soaked two steaks, with some salt, pepper, and onions, for about an hour. Then I slapped 'em on the grill along with some EVOO and seared and cooked 'em. Along with the steaks, I grilled up a sliced yellow squash and whole rings from an oso onion.

(The onions were 10 for $10 at Albertson's this week. IF you've never had an oso onion, then you're missing out on a super sweet, huge onion. These onions are great in giant onion rings! I only picked up two, so I going back today to pick up a few more)

We had also picked up a big carton of mushrooms from Costco. So I melted some butter, poured in a half cup of merlot and let it simmer for awhile. Then I sauteed about 30 quartered and sliced mushrooms in the sauce (with a little more butter of course).

My inspiration for the night was fond memories with my family at Benihana in Japantown. If you've eaten there before, then you might remember that they had this killer ginger soy sauce for dipping ANYTHING. So using this recipe, I whipped up a few cups of a great ginger sauce for the grilled steak and vegetables.

All in all, I think it was good meal. Tina said it was my best yet...which believe me, isn't much considering some of the dishes I've put toegether!

Oh yeah, I learned something new in the process. Our blender has two attachments: the food processor part and the blender part. If you put too much liquid in the food processor part, the liquid starts seeping out through the sides and down the middle. So now I know, FOOD PROCESSOR = chop and puree solids (ie vegetables, food etc). BLENDER = mix in fluids (especially any fluids more than two cups)

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DIY entry #3

Day 4 Finishing the subfloor
Thursday night, I took a few hours to mortar and tape together those backerboards I screwed into the plywood. In this phase, I mixed up some mortar in an old plastic garbage pail by slowly adding water to the mortar mix. You want to get a good consistency with the mortar, adding enough water or mix as necessary to get a toothpaste or sour cream thickness. Once you get the right combination, you let your mortar sit for 5-10 minutes to allow the adhesion to develop in the mix. I think this part is similar to letting dough rise before baking it. In the meanwhile, I precut all my tape for the backerboard seams. While I was at Home Depot earlier in the week, I asked the flooring guy why I needed to join the boards together when I already screwed them into the plywood. He told me screwing in the boards doesn't limit movement. Screws prevent major movement, but there can still be minor movement between the boards. Mortaring and taping the boards together helps to make them one unit. This is important so that you don't have boards moving in opposite directions, which would crack the grout. I said, "Oh yeah, that makes sense."

With everything all set, I took my triagular trowel, scooped up some cement and ploppled it down like a scoop of sour cream onto the seams between the backerboards. I spread out the mortar, filling in the seams, and laid the tape onto the wet cement. Then I splatted another layer of mortar onto the tape to fix it in the mix.

I liked this phase cuz i got my hands dirty. Working with the mix was like working with wet clay and sculpting.


Day 5 Laying out the tile.

There are two general ways that people tile. Some people like to use little plastic spaces that keep the tiles a consistent distance apart. Other people like to first grid out the entire floor, making sure that the lines are at right angles. You can then use these grids as reference lines to lay out your tile. The first method takes a little less prework, but if you're not careful with your spacers, you'll find that your lines are no longer straight. You might end up with curving lanes and weird cuts. The second method takes a little more work. Guess which method I took?

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DIY continued

Day 3
My pops came over as I was laying out the backerboard onto the plywood. You want to lay out the backerboard perpendicular to the plywood, staggering them in a brick pattern, while making sure that the backerboard joints don't lie on top of the plywood joints. Cutting the boards to size wasn't too bad. Using a straight edge, you score it several times with your scoring tool, then bend the board towards the score. If your groove is deep enough, the board rips at the groove. You have to make sure to wear a mask when cutting because the boards containg dangerous silica dust. While I continued on with the cutting, my dad began drilling pilot holes on the board. Because we weren't putting any thinset(concrete) between the plywood and backerboard, we wanted to make sure we thoroughly screwed the board onto the plywood. My dad was making pilot holes (small preholes) to make drilling the screws easier. After awhile, we noticed that our cordless drill wasn't going to cut it for this job. We needed corded electric drill for all the drilling. So, my pops left to go borrow a drill from my uncle. I continued cutting away, eventually finishing up with cutting out a square in the backerboard to fit around the toilet flange.

My dad came back just in time withn a power drill and Vietnamese sandwiches.

After lunch, my dad continued with the drilling while I went back to Home Depot to return the toilet flange and a masonry blade that I had bought. The flange I returned because replacing it would mean a MAJOR plumbing job. We would have to knock a hole in the floor to get access to the pipe, saw off the old flange and replace it with the new flange.

Once again, I spent just over an hour in Home Depot. I picked up a rubber grout float, grout, tile chalk, and a square notched trowel to spread the quick set. I also picked up type of flange that you can stack on top of your old flange.

Oh, and before Home Depot, I went to our floor guy to pick up 6 boxes of 13"x13" tile and a sample of the carpet that we're gonna pick up.

When I got back, I spent some time making sure that the screws were flush with the backerboard. If they weren't, then I gave them a couple more turns with the drill. Meanwhile, my dad went back to Home Depot to pick up more screws. While I was away, he knew that he was running out and started spacing them out farther. Unfortunately, with less screws, you could feel the backerboard wasn't secured to the plywood. We needed more screws.

He came back and we finished the job. This phase took us 5 hours. Next up, seaming together the backerboards with mortar and nylon tape.

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DIY

After a little encouragement from Tina, I recently picked up again on my "remodel the master bathroom" project. In this phase of the project, I'll be installing ceramic tile.

DAY 1
I started by ripping out the carpet, rolling it up and placing it aside. Under the carpet was a multicolored foam underlayment stapled to plywood. I carefully ripped that out too, rolled it up, and placed it aside. Next, I pried out the carpet tack strips with my trusty crow bar and hammer. These wood strips are about an inch wide and are covered with a bed of nails pointing up. Carpet layers use them to hold and stretch carpet over the floor. The strips are usually nailed down to the plywood right next to any walls. Finally, I cleared the plywood subfloor of the staples that held the foam underlayment. I also nailed down a few protruding nails, trying to make them flush with the plywood subfloor. You want to do this to prevent any of your tiles from sticking up later on.

Then my dad and I proceeded to remove the toilet from the upstairs bathroom. After turning off the water supply, I gave teh toliet it's last flush, used a plunger to push more water out of the bowl, and sponged out the remaining water from the tank. I then tried to remove the bolts from the base, but found them to free spinning on the flange. This means the nuts have rusted to the bolt. So I went to the garage and got myself a hacksaw blade. I didn't have the handle part, just a spare blade. But it would do. I took that blade, got on my hands and knees and sawed away.

There's something calming about hovering over a toilet but while sawing at a nut and bolt with your bare hands. First, I started thinking, "hmmm, I wish I had one of those rotary tools to make this go quicker. Then I started thinking about jailbirds who can cut bars with a single nail file, so I stopped complaining and imagined I was trying to escape from a jail cell. really, i did.

I eventually cut through both bolts. They looked like miniature golden mushrooms with their heads sliced off. My pops and I heaved up the bowl and tank, carried it downstairs, outside and in queue for disposal, alongside the water heater I took replaced last year.

All of this took about two and a half hours on Saturday morning. I didn't work on anything else the rest of the day cuz Tina, Isaac, and I spent a family afternoon, hanging out in the 4th street area of Berkeley.

Day 2

I woke up early to pick up the second layer for the floor. Unless your plywood floor is really thick, you traditionally don't want to put tile on plywood alone. So, I went to Home Depot to pick up a few square feet of Hardiboard. This is one brand of backerboard - a fiber cement board used to add thickness to the subfloor before tiling. Why do you want a thick floor? Well your tiling and grout will be as flexible as your floor. If it's too flexible, like if you tile over plywood alone, then your tiles and grout will flex when you walk on them, eventually stressing the grid enough to crack your grout and loosen your tiles.

Luckily, these 3'X5' boards were on sale, so I picked up 7 sheets. I also picked up a special cutter for these boards.

I also picked up a new flange for the toilet bowl. This the metal disc that holds the bolts that holds your toilet. The flange is glued or welded to the soil pipe (your waste pipe). Our flange was rusted through and looked like it needed replacement.

Home Depot is dangerous! You can spend hours looking at cool gadgets and materials. I even checked out some wood planks to build our coffee table for the living room (a summer project). I got the idea from a table that we saw while in Berkeley on Saturday.

My Home Depot trip took about two hours. I had to rush home to get ready for practice!

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Minorly Metro

I am 28% Metrosexual.

I may own more than two pair of dress shoes, and maybe a designer suit, but I don’t mind going to the grocery store in sweats. And I may even go a day or two without a shower.

Take the
Metrosexual Test
@ FualiDotCom

Got this from Manok blog. I'm happy with 28%.

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