Ninja Express Redux

I got an e-mail from Travelers Tales the other day. They're featuring one of my stories on two sites.

Of course, I'm sure you already read this on MariesWorldTour.com, right? 

http://travelerstales.com/carpet/002824.shtml
http://www.besttravelwriting.com/btw-blog/

This Just In

Stuart just spotted this online, so now I can tell you what I'm doing next. Woo-hoo!

Finished at Last

Okay, not totally finished. I have to saw off the top of the bolts and pop the caps onto the toilet, give the floor a once-over with a cheesecloth, wait a few days, spray on sealer, wait a day or so, and caulk. And there's a Home Depot plumbing section with my name on it. I just bought a new Fluidmaster 400 after the water company tore up my street, turned off the water, sent me sludge when they turned it back on, and gummed up the works. But that didn't survive my annoyed toilet removal for this project, when I couldn't get the bolt off.

It's wonderful to have indoor plumbing back, even if I have to flush with a bucket for the moment. The people at the gym were probably wondering why I was suddenly attending so devoutly.

Tiled But Not Grouted

So. I never need to do that again. My knees are red (and yes, I was wearing knee pads), my manicure is hopeless, and everything aches. And when all this was done, after I drank all my orange juice right from the carton in one long go, I still had to haul the old floor in two contractor bags downstairs for garbage night.

Bonus: According to the gym scale, where I showered this morning but didn't work out, because who needs it when you're doing manual labor, I've lost five pounds during this project.

Maybe in a few years I can tackle installing wainscoting.

The Floor

Here's today's adventures in flooring.

Phew. I'm beat. Manual labor is for the young. 

I ran into a few problems. There are two slightly raised spots. One I think I managed to gloss over, but the one on the lower right could an issue. I'm going to try screwing it down more tomorrow, or maybe I can get a smooth hill over the tape. The other problem is I can't quite get the screws flush, so I might try hitting them with a sledge hammer. I bought concrete backer board screws rather than the branded HardieBacker ones, which might have been a mistake. 

I will try tiling in the morning. The gym opens at 7, and I can head over there for a shower and there's also a toilet at the coffee shop on the corner, but I really don't want to make this a habit. I can go to the gym without being forced to use their facilities all the time. I can just go to, you know, exercise. 

The Update

Here's the current state of the bathroom floor.

I've cut the HardieBacker to fit all but the last patch under the toilet (which will also need a hole cut in it). I placed the marble threshold and it's held up by a chisel at the moment. Today, I spent the morning prying and tugging out wedged-in chunks of mortar.

Tomorrow I have to master getting that strip of caulk-y guck off the bathtub so I can make it look clean and new after it's tiled. And I need to learn how to cut the tile around the toilet flange.

Then I get to pull up the toilet and put down the backer board and threshold. Always something new to learn, another step I'd overlooked. How to cut tile in a circle? I have no idea. I will find a way, probably on YouTube.

Manual Labor

I started re-tiling the bathroom floor about 16 months ago, and promptly lost interest in the project after my landlord/friend let me purchase all the materials and tear up a section of bathroom tile.

Well, now my LL/friend is coming to stay in my/his apartment while I'm out of town. And he has kids. I can't have half- torn out tiles hanging around any more than I could have left those crusty old mouseturds under the refrigerator.

So it's time to finish.

This has been a learning process. I learned that using my crowbar and mallet was precise, but excruciatingly slow and painful. So I switched to something called a demolition hammer which I rented from Home Depot on 440 (my local HD, outside the Holland Tunnel, doesn't have a tool section). That came with its own level of pain, but mostly dust, and nothing like the pain of chiseling away slowly.

Unfortunately, the clean-up is tough either way. That takes longer than the demolition, and then I'm stuck with bags of heavy old mortar and tile. I've been putting them in the back of my car, where I'll leave a few at a time with the regular trash pick-up. The steel mesh wire I pulled out with my tin snips (left over from when we installed the really-pressed-steel "tin" ceiling at my last apartment) is more problematic, and I'm on the constant lookout for a dumpster. Can't leave something dangerous on the curb.

I also learned how to remove the pedestal sink. That was pretty fast and easy, but I'm not sure if I should just put it back until I get to the walls, or if I should get a new one or invest in a vanity. The good news is you can make a vanity out of just anything. That's good news because the narrow ones which would fit are either dirt-cheap and god-awful, or $800. I think I'll put that project on the back-burner for the moment.

I haven't removed the toilet yet, and that's coming up soon. Tomorrow I'll chisel out the extra mortar and cut the HardieBacker to fit everything except the toilet section. I need to also work out how to install the marble threshold. I had a stroke of luck when buying the backer board as the HardieBacker regional manager happened to be in Home Depot when I went to buy, and he showed me how to cut my board and even sliced the 5x3 boards I was buying in half for me so I could carry them in my car.

The big job is going to be pulling out the toilet. Denise is going to help me as it's heavy, and then that is going to be nasty and stinky while I scrape off the old wax ring and seal up the hole with duct tape or a plastic bag. I'm sure I once saw a cover you could buy but I've never seen it again.

I'm dreading pulling up the toilet, because I've seen a bit of warping of the plywood nearby, between the toilet and the tub. That makes sense -- that's exactly where the most water accumulates. But I'm hoping that's the worst of it, because I don't own a circular saw and that's what I'd need to pull up the subfloor and replace it. I could buy one, sure, and I've needed on several times, but I'm hoping to get away without it for a bit longer.

Here's the current state of the bathroom. I shower very, very carefully.

Long Day of Errands

I headed over to my garage on First Street Wednesday to clean out my car's trunk. I threw everything into the middle of the floor haphazardly and click-shut the door with the remote. I'd deal with it later.

I drove up to Michael Kraiger's and picked him up at nine on the dot. We were heading to our now-former office to clean out the big stuff. Our US office is closing (well, the whole thing is closing, but that's a more complicated story of international intrigue and finance) and I didn't know what else to do with the printers except put them into my garage. If they're still there in September (and why wouldn't they be), I'll try to give them away. Failing that, I'll take them to the Incinerator Authority.

The office is 4.4 miles from Kraiger's house, but I'd forgotten about construction happening on the viaduct from the Heights to Hoboken, and then we had to inch through the Lincoln Tunnel, so the excursion took 40-or-so minutes.

Our office is located on a block of Eighth Avenue between the main Manhattan post office and the New Yorker hotel. There are about four hard-to-get metered parking spots in front of the post office, and all other parking is illegal. A few days ago I'd scoped out an underground parking garage behind our building. I'd never even noticed it before. Now, I overshot our street and headed back uptown to hit the one-ways right, and turned into the garage.

"We'll be here an hour," I said to the attendant. He showed us the elevator and said we could bring out cart down that way.

The move went smoothly. Kraiger loaded up the office cart (he's a moving whiz) and we headed down by freight elevator, rolled our stuff about 30 feet west and through a door to the garage elevator, put it all into the car, and took our cart back upstairs. We left again via the people elevator, got in the car, headed west on 33rd Street, and zipped right into the Lincoln Tunnel. This time the 4.4 miles took less than 15 minutes.

We put it all in my garage, then went to Home Depot. I'd convinced Kraiger to help me buy the backer board I needed for my bathroom floor project.

But it's 3x5. And I've slept in the back of my car before, and I had to scrunch up. I'm 5'6", and I had to scrunch a lot. I knew the boards wouldn't fit.

"Maybe we should go back to the garage and get the roof rack," said Kraiger. We were staring at the HardieBacker board, which I planned to cut after we bought it and before we put it in the car.

"Maybe," I said glumly, wishing I'd brought the roof rack.

"Can I help you?" A youngish man approached, dark hair, stocky, taller than me but not quite as tall as Kraiger. "I'm not from Home Depot. I'm from the company." He motioned at the HardieBacker display.

"Yes! How can I cut these to fit into my car?"

"I'll do it for you. Is there a  straight edge around here?"

I grabbed a T-square from the drywall display, and he went to work, cutting both pieces in a jiffy, then showing me how to cut the circle out for the toilet flange.

I thanked him profusely. This man was now my hero, or at least my second hero with the first being Texas State Senator Wendy Davis.

Kraiger and I walked out to the car. We both opened our mouths to speak, spotted the other about to talk, and burst out laughing.

"What a stroke of luck," we both said.

Melancholy

Here's how my office looked at the end of today.

I cleared out the flat files and put stuff into boxes. I pulled some of the posters off the walls and disconnected the network. The two huge laser printers are ready to go. The Mac so old it's only worth $11 is disconnected.

I booked the office cart and got a pass to get the stuff out of the building. I located a parking lot downstairs -- it's hard to park next to Penn Station on a weekday and we're not allowed to use the freight elevators on weekends.

I'm not totally out of the office yet and I have it until July 31 officially. But I'm leaving town the 12th, so I need to make progress with this. I still have to go through papers and figure out how to notify various tax authorities that we have no more US office.

I've left this job before, specifically to embark on MariesWorldTour.com 2011. But it feels stranger this time. I've enjoyed being Editor in Chief, and I've been the boss of "Creative" for so many years now.

What'll come next, I wonder.

Dragging all this stuff to my garage and then figuring out what to do with it, I guess. 

Confirmed

I've got my frequent-flyer ticket to Mexico! And the owner of my apartment is moving in while I'm gone.

I've even paid my deposit on a little studio in San Miguel de Allende.

Now all I need is a lounge pass for the Admirals Club. Okay, "need" might be exaggeration. And then I'll have to sort out my return. I have to see what kind of payments come in at the end of July. If I get paid for the writing work I am doing between now and then, I'll go to the Yucatan for some sightseeing. Otherwise, I'll come straight home.

The cool thing about being in Mexico is if I can't get a reasonable flight back, I can just take a bus across the border and then use my Amtrak points to get home. No plane required.