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August 07, 2006

Both of the men in my life have lessons for me

My legs are on strike.

In the most current phase of the kitchen remodel, this weekend we installed the kitchen tile. (I added photos to the end of the kitchen madness photo album.)

Friday night after work, Cameron and I took our individual cars way out to Manchester to pick up our tile which had finally come in. Antique white 16"x16". Love it. We put approximately 500 lbs of tile each in our cars, and make our way back to Belleville, praying our cars don't realize that we're treating them like pick-up trucks.

Saturday morning we get up and head to Home Depot, where dreams are made. Sorry, I mean, where people are convinced that home improvement projects are as easy as, say, oh, snapping your fingers. We know we need that mortar like stuff, and we know we need grout. Based on our room size of about 500 sq ft, the helpful flooring assosiate does some quick calculations and tells us we need 10 50 lbs bags of the mortar mix stuff and 4 bags of the 25 lbs grout stuff. And we have to choose from like, 50 grout colors. ??????

So we again load up my car like a two penny ho.

Sat night, Cameron prepares the floor and I go to Concert for Cancer and hear Open Arms. Journey. (Ask me to tell this story, which the more I (re-)tell the more I am convinced that I'm thinking it's a lot more funny than it actually is.)

Sunday morning, Nichol comes over to school us in the way of the tile. Jorie comes over to help. At 9am, we start prepping, and Nichol and I head to HOME DEPOT where we load up my car with a wet saw and a few more things. We debated about doing everything but what needed cuts and renting the wet saw a separate day, or waiting until noon and seeing where we were progress-wise before renting the wet saw, but somehow we land on bucking such logic to the wind and just going for it.

We get back, conduct an experiment to deduce that the room is indeed square, and start from the south and east sides of the room. We FLY. We are cool. We like the tile. We love separators. Nichol starts us off, and soon Jorie and I are laying tile and Cameron and Nichol are ruling the wet saw. We get both walls complete, they master the cut around the A/C vent, and then we get to the second row on the east wall going north.

Pesky tile. Doesn't seem straight. In, out, up, down, tilted, nudged. Finally we settle and move on.

Then we get to the 3rd row. Same point in the process, it gets tricky. We end up having to cut a tile to get it to fit. But we think this will get us on track, we'll be fine moving forward if we can just get past this spot...

After the fourth row, we realize that no. Contrary to popular belief, the kitchen, my friends, is not square. We debate. We discuss. (at this point our expert, Nichol, has headed home to her own home improvement fun.) And ultimately we decide that the only thing to do is, yes, pull up everything but the south wall and start over.

It's at this point that the first lesson hits home. My father led by example: "If you can hire a professional, do." Not that my dad is lazy - he's a busy man with a job that has him up early and home around dinner time and he spends all day giving his energy to people. So when he came home he spent the rest with us, and any home/yard sort of stuff he hired out. We were never allowed to cut the grass because surely "a rock could pop up and hit us in the eye." So there were just always certain things you left to professionals. It was worth the investment to save you from injury/use your time in another way. Additionally, as my mother loves to add, there are people with specialties off of which they make a living - we should support them in their endeavors whenever possible! I live this philosphy whenever I can afford it.

Jorie helps us remove our work so far (at this point it's 4pm. We spent a good 2.5 hours alone on the trouble spots), and has to head home as well. Cameron finishes scraping the floor and I take the tiles out to the yard and wash off the mortar (after a call to Nichol she verified the necessity of this step to make sure that everything came out even in the end). And then we start again.

By the time I leave for KMOX, it's clear this approach is going to work. I had planned to go home after the show, but change my plans to come back and help finish. The wet saw rental was $60 for the day, and it was due back at 10am. We were finishing, dammit.

At 4am, Cameron made the last cut. A very complicated cut actually, which with his depleted 4am brain power took him quite some time to figure out. (and ps, we only used 3 of the 10 bags of the mortar.)

We cleaned up everything in a daze and got ready for bed. As we fell asleep, I found myself feeling a huge sense of accomplishment, partnership and love. I NEVER would have embarked on something like that were it not for having Cameron in my life, and despite all the insanity of the project, and the fact that it took 19 dizzying and sometimes very frustrating hours, we did it together, with the help of our friends. We found ways not to take out the ins and outs on each other. Working together came naturally. We made a good team.

And so the second lesson: Sometimes it feels damn good to do something on your own, with your hands. Especially together with the hands of those you love. And while you may not realize it in the moment, tests like that are the building blocks of relationships that last a lifetime.

Cue music, and goodnight.

Sudden cut in music as though someone took the needle off of a recond and voice over: But don't think this changes my philosophy about professionals and my duty to support them in their careers.

Re-enter music.

Posted by nikl at August 7, 2006 11:38 PM

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