Rehabber’s Rehab

The house is busy with plumbers, electricians, and me an amateur tiler.

The plumbers finished with the rough in last week, which allowed us to set the new tub, take out the old one, and finish the final walls to gut. No more plaster and lathe! All that they have left to do is set the toilet when we’ve tiled the bathroom floor and set the sinks when the cabinets and countertops arrive.

The electrician also started working when we tore off the roof. He basically had three projects: Replace the old electrical panel that was a cobbled together set of fuses with a new bigger service; set all the new electrical lights, recepts etc. in the kitchen, bathroom and backroom; and three, update other parts of the house like lights in the livingroom (where there were none) and smoke detectors in every single sleeping room of a 1000 sq ft house (Oak Park overkill?). The electrician took a mini break to tend to his birthing wife, but was back on the job the NEXT DAY much to Liz’s shock and dismay.

With the tub set, we could start tiling with our recently chosen slate tile. This was only mildly aggravating because our tile was actually a lot of little pieces glued to a vinyl mesh that was a foot by foot piece. Every other tile I picked up would loose half of its little pieces. But it made for relatively easy work around the fixtures because you could get away with cutting the mesh more than tile.