home improvement avalanche

  It was a brutal winter.
During this time being stuck in the house I decided to do some home improvement updates. As anyone knows when you start one minor project an avalanche of other things pop up that need fixing.
When the house was built the nitwits building the house bypassed laying down tile in front of the fireplace. I found tile in the basement that fit perfectly (already pre-cut) in front of the fireplace so after reading "how to" books and talking to the home depot tile guys I decided to tackle the project myself. I thought it would be easy but there is a lot involved in tiling.
After I surgically cut the crappy buckling rug in front of the fireplace I knew that I had to be committed to the project. Luckily, the plywood underneath was sound. I had to mix up and lay down thin set mortar, then lay ditrex fiber board over that, then another layer of mortar. I had to "butter board" the backs of tile with thin set laying it down carefully in a framer separated by spacers. Two days later, I had to apply the grout.
What friggin' mess.
Grout (and mortar) was everywhere.
 After carefully cleaning that up two days later I had to apply the tile sealer.
As you can see I got ambitious I did the mantle tiling as well. I had to use a different type of mortar with a polymer base for the wall.This was much more challenging because after making a first attempt using sea glass and tiles they  were sliding off the wall making a mess. I had to frantically remove them and wash them before the mortar set and try again. I then had to use a framer to hold the tiles up plus I ditched the sea glass idea and used simple cut tiles on a mesh that helped hold and line the little tiles up. I had bought a custom tile on zazzle.com of a pigeon along with colorful Mexican tiles. The arduous results came out satisfactory. Since I shitted up the carpet it was a good excuse to get new carpets.

 Here is the end result.
 (The photo makes the tiles look distorted but I assure you the tiles were spot on level! I had to use math to make it right!)
As I said, one project led to another and then another.
The old rugs upstairs were of poor quality and poorly installed. After a year of moving in the rugs were buckling so bad I was tripping on them. My mother urged me to do hardwood flooring but I am cold all the time and I like soft warm carpeting on my feet. Since I planned and ordered new plush carpeting I figured this was a good time to repaint ALL the rooms.
 In the process of painting (and yet this led into another project) I had to plaster and repair gouges and cracks on the walls and door jams. Wood putty and spackle became my friend. I had to move, organize, fix and clean up furniture to make way for the painting and carpeting.
 All this painting and carpeting forced me to clean my house thoroughly. A lot of spiders are now homeless.Let me tell you how much shit you can accumulate in a period of just ten years. I then, had to clean out the attic, basement and garage to make room to move most of the furniture and stuff in for the carpet guys to lay down the carpet.
During all of this the toilet needed repairing, which I fixed by changing the ballcock unit. This had been now the fifth toilet I repaired! We also had a broken pipe in the basement in which we tried to fix but ultimately had to call professional plumbers because it involved  cutting of pipes.

I told the carpet guys to carpet all the rooms upstairs with a bright blue carpet (For downstairs I went with a speckled grey carpet. It's "bird poop friendly color". I had initially picked a pretty lime green color but realistically decided that color would be wrecked in less than an hour))
All the rooms were to be carpeted except my shoe closet. I didn't want to empty the closet and the carpet already in there was OK.
The rooms were empty of stuff and furniture except for the bed, empty bureaus and empty book cases. When I came home to check on the progression of the carpet being laid down, the guys "confessed" to emptying my shoe closet. (!)
To my amazement I found all my shoes lined up and arranged in perfect coordination filling all four book cases. I think the guys were in total amazement with the amount and assortment of shoes. I think they  had to take a photo to show their wives/girlfriends of my collection. The head guy confessed he had "never seen so many shoes in his life".
It's a good thing I had packed up my troll collection.....