Because the Couple That Tiles Together Stays Together, Right?

About a week before we left for our trip, Derek and I decided that now would be a perfect time to finally tackle a project we'd been discussing for some time:  tiling our kitchen backsplash.  I mean, it wasn't like we had a trip to pack and plan for or guests coming to stay with us immediately afterwards, was it?

The thing about tiling is that it sounds like a good idea before you start, and when you're finished the transformation is a little staggering, but when you're in the middle of it you frequently stop and say, "I don't want to do this anymore."  But you can't give up because only half the wall is tiled and you and everything around you is covered in mortar and you haven't even begun to think about grouting.

It took us the better part of three days:  Derek manning the wet saw, making what felt like thousands of minute adjustments so that the tiles would fit just so around the outlets and window and in the corners, while I had the more satisfying task of actually applying the tile to the wall.  My job made me filthy.  Derek's job made him filthy and made him bleed, as the spray of water would fling tiny shards of tile onto his bare skin, and when he tried to brush them off they would embed themselves into his flesh.

And yes, it was Derek that repeatedly stopped whatever he was doing and hopelessly intoned, "I don't want to do this anymore."

He only allowed himself about twenty seconds' worth of riding the tiling depression spiral, however, before he'd shake it off and get back to the wet saw/ bloodbath.

That's what we did Saturday and Sunday, around trips to the hardware store and church.  Monday I spent all afternoon grouting and cleaning and sweetly pleading with the kids to Get Out of The Kitchen GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN GETOUTOFTHEKITCHEN!

Then Derek got to spend super fun times fixing all the outlets and the light switch so that they lay flush with the new tile.  Obviously he did all the fun parts of this whole business.

Still, we worked well together... although there toward the beginning I had a rather manic five minutes' worth of freaking out when Derek was out back cutting- the tile and his skin, one on purpose, the other on accident- and I had just started mortaring.  I had a big glop of mortar on my trowel and somehow managed to get in not only on the wall but also on the lamp I was using, on my face, in my hair, and on the dishwasher.  It was one of those moments where things just keep going wrong and every time you try to fix something you end up making an even bigger mess.  I felt like I was in one of those early silent films that relies on slapstick comedy for its laughs, except my soundtrack was to the tune of my helpless and increasingly hysterical laughter.  I got it together before Derek came back inside, and made sure not to tell him until the wall was half-done; I was afraid he wouldn't let me help anymore.

Monday night, we were both so happy with the way it looked that we decided to go ahead and paint the kitchen, too.  And by "we" I mean "I."  I was going to paint the kitchen.  We picked out a kind of medium green, I painted Tuesday, and decided Tuesday night I didn't like it.  Wednesday I went and got new, more greenish-gray paint, decided I hate myself, and painted again all day Wednesday.  (This decision was spurred along by a promotion Valspar paint is doing, where if you paint your wall with one color and don't like it, you can go ahead and buy a second color and Valspar will reimburse you for the price of the original unwanted color.  All you have to do is fill out a form, include both receipts, take a photo with both paint colors, cut off a lock of your firstborn's hair, and write an essay about what your obituary might look like someday.  I sent all that off in the mail yesterday- well, almost all that- and am hopeful that it will all result in an actual check headed our way soon.)

There's still a bunch of little things to be done in the kitchen- ah, the joys of home ownership- but Derek and I have both decided that we're done for a while.  Thank the good Lord.


Now for some quick, low-quality Before and After pics:

The "Before" backsplash:

We decided painted wood paneling just wasn't for us.  We're snobby and pretentious that way.

The "After" backsplash:

White subway tile!  I was the one who wanted the darker grout (because I'm lazy and didn't want to have to worry about keeping lighter grout clean-looking, and because I've read that darker grout is more vintage-y looking, and I think I've established what a sucker I am for anything with that label).  Derek was a little leery about the darker grout at first, but it's definitely grown on him.  I'm pleased as punch about the whole dang thing.

And the bigger picture "Before":

Fine.  It was fine.

Better.  

Forgotten Photos

Today I was going to write either about Adelaide's parent teacher conferences, a tree in our front yard, or some of my garage sale finds from this summer, but I got bored writing all three posts, and I figured if I'm bored writing them, chances are you're going to get bored reading them.

Instead, we're going through some old photos that I meant to post way back when, but just never got around to it.



See this?

That, my friends, is the wallpaper we found on the kitchen walls when we tore out our old cabinets last spring.  Most of those are pastel-colored kitchen tools, but some of the stuff I can't even identify.  Like the curved knife-thingey in the upper right-hand corner.  See it?  It's the one with the violently pink handle.  Maybe an old bottle opener?  I'm also not sure what's in that serving dish on the bottom left.  It's pinkish with green leaves growing out the top.  Maybe some kind of jello salad?  This seems like a jello-salad-era type print to me.  You know, the kind with suspended fruit in the middle?  The stuff that's hardly been touched when the rest of the buffet has pretty much been demolished?  See, you do know what I'm talking about!

A layer deeper, we found even older wallpaper:

(See the wicked-looking pink-handled knife again?  What IS that?)  

I have no idea how old that green and black wallpaper is, but I do know they must have put it up when people were really into textured wall hangings, because that stuff isn't just ugly, it's velvet flocked ugly.  I wish you guys could have touched it for yourselves.

If, by chance, you actually like that green stuff, never fear!  I found something similar that you can buy today:  

That's right:  Victorian Flocked Velvet Wallpaper!  Yours for the bargain price of $63 a roll!

I'd like to submit this whole wallpaper conversation as evidence that I do not like just anything that's old.  I do have some standards, low they may be.



Our next forgotten photo is of Adelaide's birthday cake.  Derek's mom gave me one of those little grocery store checkout aisle booklets that has all kind of kid-themed cookies and cakes that are fun to look at, but which I know I will probably never actually do.

Well, unless Adelaide looks through it and decides that she must have the Candy Land cake featured on one of its pages.

Here's what it looked like in the magazine:


 Photo credit:  Taste of Home


Before I show you what mine looked like, may I just say that the above cake looks deceptively simple, when in fact you needed half a bajillion ingredients to make it look like that, including Valentine's conversation hearts and mini candy canes that you can't exactly find in your corner store during the month of May, and that Taste of Home's cake is actually two sheet cakes laid out next to each other to make space for that giant game board, and I had no intention of feeding our children cake scraps for the next two months.

Brace yourself, now.  Here's the beauty that is my cake:

Nailed it.

It actually gets worse the longer you look at it.

In my defense, I didn't get around to decorating the cake until the very last minute (as in, we're about to light the candles and sing to the birthday girl), so I had three over-eager helpers decorating it along with me.

And with that, I have spread enough beauty around the internet for one day.

The end.

Random Thoughts

As we knew it would be, it was an extremely busy weekend.  As a result, my mental processes are all discombobulated and my thoughts are scattered.  I feel like if I could just catch hold of one, I'd be able to pin it down and work it into something coherent.

Since that doesn't seem likely, how about a fun list to help me make some sense of what's going on in my head?  And you lucky dogs can come along for the ride.

• We (and by "we," I mean Derek and his dad) ripped the cabinets out of our kitchen.  We discovered a couple layers of awesome wallpaper, awesome linoleum, plaster, scary holes, and wood paneling.  I'd love to see what this kitchen looked like in the 60's; if the wallpaper and flooring are any indication, I'd say pretty darn amazing.  And by amazing I mean incredibly ugly.

• When Derek's parents generously offered to give us the cabinets out of their rental property that had burned down (well, except for the kitchen, of course), I said, "Yes, please!"  Do you know how much kitchen cabinets cost?  Well, neither do I, but I do hear they're really freaking expensive.  

• Although the cabinets made it through the fire, they are coated in a thin layer of soot, which is not so surprisingly difficult to get off.  After watching my old standby of vinegar and water fail miserably, I was contemplating using an actual manufactured cleaner (gasp!), when I decided to try give my magic eraser a try.  Let me tell you what, the person that named that product was no marketing genius; those things seriously have some kind of magical properties- I wouldn't be surprised to find that J.K. Rowling herself had written them into existence.  

• After Derek's parents stayed way later than they intended, re-hooking up our dishwasher, sink, etc, they finally headed back to Kansas.  Ten minutes after they left, Caedmon found a container of screws and created two large piles of them- one on the floor in front of the back door, the other by the front door.  I can't help but feel that this was no accident, and that the poor child may have inherited some of his mother's paranoia.  His sharp screw-booby trap reminded me rather forcefully of my sister's- only hers involved upside-down shoes, sharp high heels pointing upward to ward off any intruders.  While I won't say precisely which parent we inherited this tendency from, I will say it's not my mom that sleeps with a gun under her pillow.

• I was again reminded of just how useless I am when it comes to home improvement.  I'm terrible with power tools and have a tendency to break things.  My major contributions to the weekend involved sweeping the floor every ten minutes in an effort to appear useful and whimpering every time Derek asked me to go down to the basement for something.

• What does the expression, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" mean?  What's a gift horse?  Is it like the Easter bunny, breaking into your house to leave you unhealthy gifts, or more like the tooth fairy, giving you money in exchange for body parts?  Can anyone enlighten me?

• Shortly after midnight last night, Adelaide woke Derek and me up by knocking on our bedroom door, crying softly.  She said her ear hurt and she couldn't sleep due to the pain.  I gave her some Tylenol, water, and sympathy, and tucked her back into bed.  After eventually falling back asleep, I had a nightmare, in which I took Adelaide to the doctor the next morning, and when he inspected her ear, instead of an infection, he found a cancerous tumor.  After a drawn-out illness, Adelaide died.  I woke to a sopping wet pillowcase; I had been crying in my sleep.  When we actually went to the doc this morning, there was no tumor in her ear.  Nor was there any infection.

• Derek's folks also took our children home after the first church service Sunday morning, which allowed me to sit with Derek in the video room during second service while he directed the video broadcast of our church's Easter service.  It was the closest thing we've had to a date since last November.  

• Garage sale season has once again begun.  I've already found some really cool- and really cheap, which only adds to its cool factor- stuff.  I won't bore you with the details.  Not today, anyway.  I'll save that for another post that you can already plan on skipping now.