Wow. It's been an interesting month (and a half another month). So interesting that I just couldn't be bothered to share it with anyone?
No? Not buying it?
Well, maybe now that I'm old (like, FORTY) my memory is shot and I just forgot I even HAD a blog? Sure, let's go with that. What were we talking about again?
Right! Hawaii! Aloha and all that! Yes, we went to Hawaii (Maui, to be precise) and it was absolutely everything you might expect a tropical vacation in the middle of winter could be. Fantastic. And surprisingly renovation-free. Or maybe not surprisingly. Whatever. We're back, and it's cold and wet here, and totally not Maui. Boo.
But, and here's where I start to sound like a broken record, you don't come here to read about our vacations, do you?
"Shut yer yap," you say. "Get to the renos and the mistakes and the mayonnaise and the hurting yourself! Especially the hurtings!"
Well, tough. This is what Haleakala and the eastern side of Maui look like from above:
Soooooo many thanks to M & M for the helicopter tour, by the way. Absolutely a high-light of our trip, and an unforgettable experience.
Sigh. I miss Maui. Fish tacos every day. World's best pineapple. Snorkeling with sea turtles. Sigh.
Anyway, enough of that - okay, one more, looking across the street from our hotel at sunset the first night:
Okay, maybe two:
Sigh.
Anyway, we ARE back, hard at work on the sunroom renovation, and while I think I've missed photographing a few steps (especially on the inside), I think you'll agree that it's really coming along nicely. First, here's a few shots that I didn't post last time of the work our contractor Mike did to the outside:
You can see how the siding now tucks UNDER the flashing on the side of the roof instead of butting up against it. You know - like it's SUPPOSED to.
And to prove that we haven't exactly been neglecting the inside, either:
Probably a good time to mention that the War Department really has done the lion's share of the finishing work so far. I put the trim up, but she's done pretty much all the painting and caulking. I installed the floor tiles, but she was the one who cleaned it all up and put down the underlayment.
Man, I haven't even explained why we wound up using those vinyl planks again, have I? Sheesh - I really suck at this blogging thing.
To make a long story short, when we started ripping up the carpet and whatnot in the sunroom, we found what we thought (at the time) was something of an oversight on the builder's part. See, about a foot in from the wall, all around the outside perimeter of the sunroom was what looked like a two-by-four buried in the concrete. (You can see it in the original picture I took of the moldy corner here.)We thought (at the time) that the builders had been lazy and just left their forms in place when pouring the two portions of the slab. Especially seeing as how it looked like it had been sealed up (at the time) with mayonnaise. When we got around to demolishing the rest of the sunroom, I yanked out the old moldy strips of wood that turned out to just be two-by-twos and figured that (at the time) I was doing the right thing. We planned (at the time) to fill in the gap with hydraulic cement.
Well, as it turned out (at the time), those WEREN'T forms but an actual on-purpose, designed part of the sunroom slab - called an expansion joint. Meaning that hydraulic cement would probably be the absolute worst thing to use to fill in the gap. Who knew?
Okay, fine, so we needed to replace the wooden slats. No worries, right? Get some pressure-treated two-by-twos, cut 'em to fit and smack 'em down. Just as well, we thought (at the time) because man, that hydraulic cement is expensive, and we would have needed quite a lot of it.
Of course, the other thing that's expensive is Ditra. That's the orange rubbery stuff you see Mike Holmes putting down underneath his tiles. Of course, he's on TV, he can afford it. We can't - which is a problem because we really can't tile over an expansion joint without it, just in case the expansion joint, you know, EXPANDS. No Ditra means cracked grout at worst, and more likely cracked tiles.
Anyway, after a lot of back and forth and discussion, we settled on using the vinyl planks we had used in the laundry room at the old place. Worst-case scenario: we take them out in a few years and tile over. You know, once we've saved up a million dollars to spend on frakkin' Ditra.
Oh, and I believe I mentioned the shelf I was building when I nailed my finger? Yeah, it turned out pretty nice, too:
Can't even seen the blood from that angle, can you? (It was all on the inside anyway.)
Well, that's it for now; aside from a little more pointless moping about Maui, of course. Which reminds me; obligatory Mountain Don shot:
It's a thing, okay? Shut up.
Anyway, I'm really not lying when I say I've actually already written the next post. But I needed to finish this one first, and realized halfway through that I was missing a lot, and decided to go back and add it and then it started getting out of hand, so I split the post into two pieces. Really. I'll publish the next one as soon as I get the pictures figured out.
No, really. This one time, I'm not even lying.
Why doesn't anyone believe me?
Oh, right. All that other lying.
(Man, I wasn't raised very well at all, was I? My parents must be terrible people. I blame them.)
