Scrrrrrrrraping

Apologies for the delay -- I normally do this daily, but missed a couple of days. I promise I've been hard at work -- all of life is basically endless scraping of the adhesive gunk on the bathroom walls. Happily, the big wall doesn't exist any more, so it doesn't have to be scraped, but there's still about 25 square feet that do need to have the adhesive removed. It takes a while, and my hands can pretty much only handle about two hours per day.

So let's see what we've been up to, scraping included. A lot of it has just been reading about how to proceed to make sure that I don't create a leaking mess or a giant hole in the floor.

First up, scraping: East wall is done:

Check out the crazy, original pattern -- you end up seeing both the original and the second layer of tiling (because the adhesive leaves a mark). It's a palimpsest! Of squares out of phase. It might as well be a piece by Steve Reich!

The adhesive looks and feels exactly like supermarket caramels. Fairly hard, but with some give when you push on it, and a smooth, yet tacky feel. It is also *exactly* the same color. I have not eaten any, despite the feeling you may be getting.

Second, necessary things have been arriving. Like the toilet. Once the floors were cleared, I was able to drag toilet and sink into the bathroom to do a mock up of different possible arrangements. It was very instructive, as in, one arrangement works, the other absolutely does not.

This arrangement works

This one does not

No, srsly, doesn't work

There's been much more, but I'm supposed to go running, and I don't actually have pictures because it's not photographable; I've cleaned out the existing toilet flange, and removed the newer flanges they dropped in (?); I am hoping I can drop my new flange over the old one, because the old one is made of cast iron, and is not screwed on -- the only way to remove it is to break it with a chisel -- without breaking the cast iron sewage pipe that it is attached around, like a millimeter away. I got leveling compound for the rather jagged plywood, looked into some moisture sealers at Home Depot (the employees there did not fill me with confidence; they had never heard of the brand (EasyMat) of sealer that Home Depot recommends, which they also don't carry in store, by the way), bought casters to replace the cabinet legs with, etc.

I don't want to leave you with a picture of a toilet, so in miscellaneous news, this little guy came and perched on the screen of our dining room window; he let me get like, right up in his face, before he flew off. Kitty slept through the whole thing.

Also, I made a pretty nice dinner of insanely expensive sea bass poached in spicy tomato broth. With tortilla chips, since it's just me.