More Tiling and Docapella

This week has been pretty hectic for us. First of all my parents came to visit on their way up to see my aunt in Detroit. So that stopped any of my projects and gave me a good reason to clean up the house a little! They also brought us a kitty!! The cat that I had growing up is still around and my parents aren't that interested in her so we decided to take her (with their financial backing!) so that she would get more attention [She was previously just locked up in the basement, though Maria's dad would pet her on occasion when he went down to exercise in the mornings]. She has quickly adjusted and we have a happy little critter roaming our house now : ) She is hungry for attention and has taken to following us around and her favorite spot is at the bottom of our bed. She's very furry so it's imperative that I now make the bed everyday to protect our pillows from hair attacks! [As you can see below, she sometimes thinks that she IS a lion, and acts like it. She's also a noisy cat. She snores. I'll let you imagine what a cat snore sounds like. And she groans when she stretches.]

My parents were amazing to me and when I took them to the Habitat for Humanity Restore (because they'd never been in one) they got excited about my projects and bought more tile for me and some wood! They contributed to some good ideas and bought me a framing square as well and most useful to us immediately... my dad tightened the bolts on our table!! It is no longer extremely wobbly and I don't have to worry about it falling down anymore!

After they left it was back to the tiling project for me. Unfortunately I have ignored Weston way too much this week. So I need to learn to not be so one track minded. I will prolong the project for the sake of our marriage and only work on it a little at a time so I can do other non-time sensitive things when he is at home (mortaring tiles requires you to completely finish that section before it dries which takes me over 3 1/2 hours with no break). So hopefully our house won't be utterly utterly a mess like it is at the moment and we might actually have nourishing meals. Oh, so this picture (above) is the layout of where I'll put the tile. I had to dry lay the tiles to get them where I wanted them to have it be the most visually pleasing and then I traced around them. I have learned that having a design when you're tiling makes the whole thing A LOT HARDER and more TIME INTENSIVE! You have a LOT (LOT) more tiles to cut and you have to have them on hand ready to go in the right direction, etc. etc. while you're tiling.

This is one batch of thin-set mortar that I mixed. It takes a lot of work by hand (this plus all the bending over can count as my work out for the day) and it's really goopy and messy and dries your skin out a lot. Technically I shouldn't touch it, I'll now probably die from cancer like all the other cancers I'll get from breathing things in, but there just wasn't any way I could avoid it, and it was much cheaper this way. [But it's still better than tanning booths]

The first set laid down. There is definitely a learning curve with every project! The second time is always easier! (not much less time intensive though).

The break I took the first day to rest my back and let snowy (the cat) get a taste of the outdoors. Plus I wanted to be outside, it was a nice day. I raked one tarp full of leaves to put in the front yard. (supposedly the city will come around to get them some time)

The first and second batches (after it had dried so I could take the spacers out).

This is the process. That's me spreading the mortar (concrete) on Saturday and ignoring Weston all day. [Which is why I came down to say hi. And consequently take pictures. There's no room in the living room right now to study, so i have to study up in our bedroom]

Oh yeah, and THANK YOU all for your comments on the design. With my parents additional tiles though I had to redo my designs because I didn't want the same thing for both rooms and they had to match since they connect. I am using the square design in the kitchen though, with a little modification to make it more aesthetic for the rectangular room and in the dining room I'm using an interlocking square design which I'm way excited about. The designs are complicated though. It's taking forever to do it all. The Delaps are so great to let me borrow their wet saw! I decided I didn't want to use up their saw blade though so I went and bought my own. It took a long time for me to figure out how to change the blades though! I basically had to take apart the whole thing but I feel much better about using my own.

See the "waves" around the square. I was excited when I figured out that I could make it look like that because for the most part the pieces fit together right. (It took a couple hours of juggling them around though). It's quite amazing that the mixed matched tiles that I got at the restore have ended up allowing me to do such a cool design.

Where I got to on Saturday. Good progress if I say so myself : )

Snowy was good about staying off the tile too. (for the most part)

Oh, and my parents also brought some square clamps so I could finally put together my picture frame I made in the summer! It fits perfectly and turned out awesome I think!!

Then Saturday night I finally spent some time with Weston! I went to the basketball game with him to watch him perform the national anthem with his "docappella" group! They were really good! We can't get the video to load, but we'll try to post it on facebook or something. I also got to meet them a little. I'm way glad Weston has gotten involved with them. It's a fun group of guys. Good mixture of personalities too! It was fun to see them interact : ) I also got to hear them practice a little. They need some work [That's why it's called practicing. We're not ready to perform those songs yet!] but for a random group of guys getting together, they're pretty good. : ) I'm excited to hear their final versions of some of the songs. It was surprising to learn that some can't read music so I was quite impressed with their ability to harmonize and remember their parts. We stayed for half the game afterwards, which was fun but we were hungry because we didn't eat lunch since I was busy tiling. [Not to mention that we don't exactly feel ties to the Toledo Rockets. I mean.... would YOU?] And... that's all folks. Have a great week!

Here is the link to a video of us singing on YouTube! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMte7ZqPiEA (Maria's finger gets in the way, but she insists that it's because she was holding two cameras. She was. But it's funny that she stresses the point, as if I'm trying to insinuate that she's incapable of holding a camera. I just thought people would want to know what the fuzzy peach colored thing is that covers the corner. :) )