Demolition is over; construction has begun

Lots more happened today in bathroom world, much of it positive. All the electrical stuff was negative, though.

That's a joke. Technically.

OK, so we started off with a trip to the store for thin-set mortar, tile nippers, concrete board for tile backing, plaster patching compound, a trowel, insulation, a mixing bucket, and god knows what else. A second trip to the hardware store got me a new electrical box, some twisty caps for wires and a pair of ground wires I could use for the new socket. I was just about ready to get down to work when the remainder of the tile arrived. It's in a very small box, and evidently, the one box weighs 200 lbs. It's maybe a square foot by 14 inches. I guess the contents are uranium?

Anyway, after the excitement of pulling the cars out of the driveway so the guy could wheel the 200 lb box into the garage (raining all the while, obviously), we were ready to get down to work. 

Stage one: infrastructure, by which I mean electricity. This was the slowest part of the job; every step had a hundred sub-steps (you want to run a new cable to a new box? Fine, punch out the cable lead, attach the box to the stud, separate and strip the cable, etc., etc.). The single most exciting part was when I realized I had to put a screw in sideways, and there was not enough room to use a drill. Well, I bought myself a little Father's Day present, as it turns out, and today I got to put it to use -- a ratchet set, seen here with the cross-point screwdriver attachment.

Action shot!

As a result, this particular task took seconds instead of a half an hour of me swearing. And eventually, it all went as planned, and when we were done, a working outlet!

I'm going to leave the breaker for that circuit off for now (I want the electrical box to be covered when I'm working next to it), but I should be able to turn it on and leave it on tomorrow, once there's more wall -- but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Stage two: infrastructure, layer two. Check it out -- the same old wall, but with insulation added. I kind of went crazy with the insulation, since I had a moderate sized roll to get through.

This is probably not very impressive for you, but super important for those of us who live in houses without insulation in super cold climates.

Stage three: wall. I barely had time to start this step before leaving for my drum lesson, but I wanted to get at least a small piece of wall up today, symbolically. I drilled out holes for the pipes (with that snug hole, sadly, you have to remove the shut off valve, which means you have to turn off the water to the whole house... again, lots of sub-steps), and tomorrow I should be able to actually attach it properly with screws, while also adding the other pieces; then I tape and prep those, and start work on the floor. 

It's possible that tomorrow not much will get done; I have a 1 pm appointment with a student, and middle of the day appointments tend to kill my whole day. We'll see. But it's very exciting to be putting things up rather than tearing them down (although this is harder). Right now I'm making a pie so I have something nice for breakfast. Talk at y'all tomorrow.