Other People's Projects

Last weekend, we took a little working vacation to assist friends Eric and Gail with their project house in Southern California. Gail keeps a blog about all such adventures that interested parties can check out for more of the fun.

Steve's primary project was getting tile down on the bathroom floor. Eric and friend Scott had painstakingly pulled up the stubborn linoleum from the floor on a previous weekend. But there was some demo yet to do. 

Vanity was attached to the wall and firmly caulked/glued in, so reciprocating saw and mini-sledge it is:

Getting down to the subfloor:

Committee meeting (with Gail, Eric and Steve's brother Philip):

First cement board down:

Scoring tile for nipping:

Scott patiently nips tile with his adorable assistants (my nephews, Philip and Jenny's boys, one of whom is sporting a lovely blaze of orange paint from a previous project - Jenny and I were both supervising that painting project, but we're still not entirely sure how the self-decorating occurred):

Clearly what this project needs is more supervision (Jenny, Philip and Steve look on):

Mortar mixing committee (Philip, Eric, Scott and Philip's youngest watch Steve work):

Philip, master of thin-set:

Final stage before we had to leave, Steve wipes excess grout from the tiles: 

While Steve toiled away on the floor, I puttered around, assisting where I could. I also did a little painting:

I witnessed Gail's mental breakdown due to ridiculously difficult to remove wallpaper:

Philip and Jenny's littlest shared his duck sounds with me:

He's wearing earplugs since he'd been watching Steve use a tile saw. The boys were very interested in the saw, and I explained to them how it worked. The five-year-old (seen quacking above) correctly identified the part of the saw which pumps water over the blade while his eight-year-old brother concluded after extensive examination that the saw was an "interesting contraption." They're pretty amusing boys.

Speaking of such, great picture of the brothers, Steve and Philip:

Overall, I was impressed with everybody's work:

There's still a lot of work to do on Eric and Gail's fixer-upper; all we could manage was to make a small dent in a few projects. In Steve's and my experience, all projects take 3x as long as you think they should. But I'm sure they'll keep plugging away and end up with a great place they can be proud of. We'll definitely be stopping in as often as we can to lend a hand or simply to enjoy their handiwork.