Month: <span>September 2015</span>
Month: September 2015

Front Hall Overhaul – Part 10

I HATE grout haze. It’s my current nemesis, although I’ve made huge progress towards eliminating it. Removing it requires lots and lots of scrubbing. With warm water and a green kitchen scrubbie. And once you think you’ve done as much scrubbing as you can handle, you have to to more scrubbing. And rinsing. Lots and lots of rinsing.

Living With Depression

As a DIY blogger, I don’t often talk about my personal life. I like to keep things light and fluffy and focus on my accomplishments and the funny things my pets have done. It helps me to keep a positive mental attitude and outlook on life. But behind the scenes things aren’t always so easy. I have suffered from depression since puberty. Without medication I find life unbearable. I wanted to share a blog post I wrote in 2005, originally published on MySpace.

Front Hall Overhaul – Part 8

I laid the last 10 tiles in the front hall today! And sealed them. I’m so happy they’re done! After laying them I let the mortar dry for a few hours while I attended a friend’s birthday party. Then I sealed them. Now the entire front hall and closet is covered in beautiful, dark grey slate!

Removing Dried Mortar From Slate Tiles

This post addresses a very valuable “lesson learned”. I was planning to lay more tile Tuesday afternoon, but I decided to first tidy up the mess on the tiles I’d already laid. There were spots, glops, drops, & smears of thin-set mortar on all 23 of the tiles I’d laid earlier this week. I figured I could scrub them off later with a kitchen sponge. Wrong! Oh so wrong.

Front Hall Overhaul – Part 5

I think this is the longest I’ve gone without posting in a while. There’s been some drama going on behind the scenes which has affected my focus in terms of blogging. But that doesn’t mean stuff hasn’t been happening! I laid 12 tiles in the front hall on Saturday, and 11 more today. I’m about ⅔ done!