Coming at you live and in person from the 6:15 express train! Heeeere’s the Exurbanite! Appearing today will be a full recap of the bathroom renovation, another tuna grill and any other random thoughts Mr. Incredible manages to come up with before his battery dies.
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Thank you Johnny. As always a fine introduction. Hey everyone, let’s hear it for the Exurbanite blog band!
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They just got back from performing at Bonaroo and booing Kanye West off stage, so let’s forgive the patchouli and stale beer smell coming off them for now. We’ve got a good blog for you tonight so let’s jump right into it. First of all, this is the inaugural commuter rail edition of the Exurbanite. I’ve had a really old work laptop for the past few years. When I first got it, I cleaned a small sweater’s worth of cat hair out of the keys. Despite the grunginess, it was a stout, if slow piece of hardware. I had some real triumphs with it, but the battery life was only good for about 40 minutes. If you take into consideration the 20 minutes of startup time, 20 minutes of actual operation was really inadequate, so it never went mobile for anything more than an emergency pinball or solitaire game. So here we are with an improved piece of hardware – hopefully it will last for the ride home. Unfortunately, I’m on the circa 1978 train tonight, so the free wifi I had been looking forward to will not be happening.
Did anyone know that over at Bandmeltun we were doing a bathroom project? That’s right, the exurbanite who wrote about not being a home fixer actually tried to do something beyond changing a lightbulb and it seems to have paid off. After I chipped off the tile and partially destroyed the wall, I did a little research and spent 3 days plastering, waiting and sanding until I had a reasonable facsimile of a wall.
Despite crushing humidity, it dried in time to be painted this weekend. A Michelangelo fresco it is not, but it’s not bad. While the plastering was going on, I also removed the existing sink and vanity top and mirror. It’s sitting up in the loft at the moment, not unlike a modern art masterpiece. I’m considering leaving it on a pedestal and shining a light on it. With everything removed, it was time to tape and prime. Mrs. Incredible did her super fast tape job while I made a toilet tarp out of masking tape and grocery bags. If the work thing doesn’t work out, I can always make a super slick hobo survival suit out of random trash. After I got green on the freshly repainted ceiling, M booted me down to the crayon-level tasks, where I stayed. I hadn’t hugged a toilet like that in years – at least this time I remembered it.
The greenish primer did a good job on the red and after a night of drying it was time for real paint. At some point in the project we lost our backup light source due to an outlet failure. I need to learn how to use my volt meter before I can tackle that one though. We persevered and did our two coats before humidity sent us to bed again. I was all for a speedy finish, but even after 2 hours the last coat hadn’t set yet, so I gave in to fight another day. Sunday started with a vengeance. We finished the space saver. I hadn’t had much experience with these growing up, but I’m starting to appreciate them. M’s new one was kind of a time suck, requiring more thought and improvisation than I think it intended, but it’s sturdy and much better looking than its predecessor.
Not it was time for the final assembly. Having forgone a custom piece, our out of the box granite countertop needed some masonry. It did come with an awl and instructions on where to hit. After a few tentative taps, I realized this was a piece of granite and not a Faberge egg and got my sculptor on. Hole punching complete, next up was fitting. I’ve seen enough home improvement shows to know construction isn’t as precision as say, watchmaking, but a 90 degree angle should be expected with most corners, right? Not at Bandmeltun. At least not according to the vanity top. We did have sidesplashes to cover the gaps. Next time you come over, don’t mention it and you’ll be invited back. After a fitting and consult, I had my first run with liquid nails construction adhesive. Wow. If I knew about this stuff as a teenager there would have been trouble. I did a few strength tests to determine how much to use, quickly realizing than a little is quite enough. It lists LIMESTONE as an ingredient. That’s like saying you tossed some carbon steel into your tinfoil to make hold an edge better. I believe the Roman coliseum is made out of limestone. I don’t think the next owners will have as good a go at removing the new vanity top and sidesplahes as I did with those weak tiles and particleboard vanity top. With the counter in place, it was time for plumbing. I’ve never done plumbing beyond supergluing pvc remnants together to make a potato gun. Fiery flying onions aside, I was a little skeptical of this part of it. After reading all 1 page of instructions though, I figured it was worth a try before asking a more accomplished home improver for a rescue. I knew I needed to turn the water off and I had already disconnected the existing hardware without any floods, so now it was just reverse the process and turn it all back on. And. It. Worked. Sort of. After we got it all assembled, the 5! Year old cold water supply shutoff decided it was cranky or dry and started leaking. I’ve lived in houses that had freezer occupants older than Bandmeltun that didn’t freak out when the water got turned off. Of course those houses are built out of pure asbestos, lead and radium, all the building blocks a growing house needs, while our little unit is a little less lethally built. A few choice curses, silicone injections and ¼ turn of a nut and we were back in business.
The last bit, the whole reason we did this job, was the sink. The sink sits on a little collar, giving it an almost anti-gravitational look. We got the cheap chrome collar after the flamboyant home depot expo guy said we could spray paint things brown and then smear black paint on it to get a bronze look. M and I are established spray paint decorators, so it was the lower priced chrome collar over the bronze one. The collar was so successful, we may try bronzing other things, like the fridge. Who wants stainless when you can have bronze?? So the sink went on its little stand, and we attached a drain that didn’t quite line up with the trap. Luckily the store sold an industrial crazy straw for this exact application. A little adjusting and we were in business. Not a bad project overall. I think this earned me some credits towards more aggressive attempts, like the staircase hidden behind the bookshelves I’ve always wanted…
After a successful bathroom reno, what could we do for an encore? M and I decided grilling was in order and broke out some tuna streaks and burgers for dinner. M has really been expanding her palette lately, which has been great. I thought she’d be game for the Ahi tuna this time, but it was just a burger for her albeit with grande veggies. On our first date, we went to a bar that had some really wild burgers, and I figured it had something for everyone. And sure enough it did. The ’naked’ burger was the winner for M. Meat, bun, done. I got something that had onions, cheese, peppers, bacon and bbq sauce. I think I needed a fork and knife to eat it. If M could sit through watching me eat that, I knew she was the one. So on this night, we grilled up the tunas, a burger, some sweet potatoes and M steamed some edamame. We finished it off with ice cream and some PBS. It was a good day.
So that’s the blog for today. I hope you enjoyed it. Come back again soon when we have new material. Have a good one out there.
(the new laptop survived the trip admirably. Even more impressive was me typing 1298 of these words with just my right hand - seating conditions prevented me from using my left. My typing style is unorthodox at best, typing with 3 or 4 fingers, but years of video gaming have honed the muscles to taut pounding machines. 1298 words in 1 hour, that’s 21.633333 words per minute!)
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