Tile

[cjsmith]

I'd like to remove the Mary Kay Pink from my bathroom walls.

I'm learning a lot more than I ever wanted to know about how to choose the right kind of tile, how to hang tile, how to remove old tile, what to do if what was under your old tile is not in fact appropriate for putting tile upon, and just generally how much money and time could be sunk into a seemingly simple project like this.

I do NOT trust my house. The things we've discovered...! I half expect to pull that tile off and find oh, I don't know, bare wood underneath. Or electrical wires swinging loose through standing puddles of water. Or complete lack of studs in this section of the house, for all I know. That's the kind of suspicion a person acquires after being in this house for a while.

I have also discovered that tile is incredibly frigging expensive. It's a lot worse when you go over to Home Expo Center, A Home Depot Company, where a shower door costs (I kid you not) $2500, and that's for one that doesn't actually open wide enough for a human.

In a way, I'm almost glad my bathroom is Mary Kay Pink. If it were ANY other color, I'd be thinking "perhaps that's not so bad after all," and I might just stop and live with it, but every time I get tempted to do that, the words I actually have to put together are "perhaps Mary Kay Pink isn't so bad after all," and then I hear what I just thought, and that's the end of THAT little delusion.

Comments

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

Can you paint them? (I've never had tile in the house, so I really have no clue)

I don't have a strong memory of the Mary Kay Pink bathroom, so it couldn't have been that bad ;-)

[ohhjuliet.livejournal.com]

You must be living in my house. I cannot BELIEVE the things I find. Every "simple" project has turned out to be quite an ordeal!

[lkeele.livejournal.com]

My granddad did tile, professionally. Whenever we needed anything retiled, he'd bring over his scraps (spare tile left from this or that project) and put together a fabulous and artful mosaic for us.

The first time I had to pay someone to retile my bathroom, I about fainted.

Wish I could loan my granddad to you for a while. You'd love your bathroom, and you wouldn't even have to pick out colors -- he'd just make it beautiful for you. Too bad he's retired -- he might even go to California for it if you paid his bus fare and promised him a night in Reno on the way down! ;)

[sunnydale47.livejournal.com]

Oh, so Home Expo is Home Depot's upscale upstart. I didn't know that, but I knew I couldn't afford to shop there simply because one just opened in my community. This area has gotten so rich that all they want is the fahnciest places to shoppe. (For example, when the mall expanded a couple of years ago, the locals literally demanded a Nordstrom's, and got one -- as well as a Lord & Taylor. I'm not sure why they allow JC Penney and Sears to stay ... they must have long term contracts from the Good Old Days when there was actually a McCrory's dime store there. I don't go to the mall nowadays -- I can't afford to shop there any more. Fortunately we now have a Target and are getting a Wal-Mart, so at least there's someplace I can buy things. =grumble=)

I had to laugh at the Mary Kay Pink. We moved into this house when Meredith was 5. She was upset at leaving the only home she could remember, and although I was trying to keep costs down by using stock colors for the rest of the house, I told her she could pick any color she liked to paint her bedroom. She chose one called "Ballerina Pink" -- as much because she loved the name as for the color. She was thrilled with it when she saw it. It was pretty much the same color as Pepto Bismol (http://www.pepto-bismol.com/). ;-)