dennisjudd.com

Things have been beyond hectic here the last three days but with really good reason. You see Jen gave birth to our daughter Tabitha Ann Judd on 10/24/2010 @ 1:34pm. I was lucky enough to be there for it since my sister watched Connor and Amelia all day. You would think by the third you’d have it all down pat but that’s just not the case. Jen did a great job with all the real work and even did it without any medication at all. To top it all off Tabitha weighed in at 9lbs 11oz and that was still 4 days early from the first due date.

Here are some pics early on:

The next day everyone got to come visit at the hospital and meet each other:

And finally we were all able to go home:

Life sure is crazy.

So I won a BOC from Woot.com last month and when it arrived it’s safe to say I was less than excited after opening it. Desperate for at least one useful item I just could not console myself with spending roughly $8 for a screaming monkey.

That being said I finally came to a solution. When life gives you lemons (8 2010 desk calendars) you make lemonade…..burnt ashy lemonade!

You know I have to say that metal and glass furniture was much cooler back when I was 24. Fast forward 10 years and taking apart this beast is a nightmare. Then again here I am back in a basement with my computers so really nothing has changed to much since back then. Needed to move out of the room upstairs to make room for baby girl “T” (T being the initial of her first name which is the only hint for now).

Not to mention there is a large project launching this weekend and I need to work all saturday night and sunday so I need to get this done asap. It’ll be easier at least working down here at nights because I don’t have to worry about waking the kids with my noise.

So this weekend my goal was to finally get a toilet installed in the master bathroom. I got the trim work all done (mostly) during the week and was pretty much ready to go Friday night but hit a few snags.
First of all the toilet was one of those all in one kits that says it has everything you need but of course we all know that’s just not possible for under a hundred bucks. The wax ring it comes with is a joke and the seats is made of such thin plastic that it bows when you sit on it. A trip to Home Depot got those two issues solved (plus it turns out I needed a new longer water supply line anyways).
Installing a toilet is a pretty easy thing so aside from shimming one side with a couple of pennies (which you won’t see after I silicone caulk it) there wasn’t really anything to it.

After that the next step was to install the OJ cabinet we’ve had sitting in our garage for the last year or so…again nothing amazing just some measuring and 4 screws. I think I spent more time messing around with getting the european hinges aligned properly than actually mounting it.

Now I need to just start working on that darn clawfoot tub and getting it’s plumbing worked out. At least with a toilet and sinks the bathroom feels mostly usable now. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Why is it that people keep falling for these easy to spot scams? Nobody is going to be giving away 4000 ms points for the hell of it and they certainly aren’t going to be hosting the site on blogspot nor requireing you to click “like”. Hell just ignore all that earlier stuff and if any thing every makes you click the “like” button then it’s an immediate scam.

bonus points if you noticed the european spelling of words….

This past weekend I spent a lot of time working on the master bathroom and pretty much finished up in the course of two days. We went with Laticrete Spectralock “Raven” for the grout after looking at all the samples we had ordered. There are some small ribbon’s dark grey/black in the tile so we think the color will blend nicely. Plus since this is an epoxy based grout it doesn’t need sealing and is honestly quite rock hard. It’s really quite scary stuff honestly because I underestimated how strong it’s bond is even if you’ve just dropped it onto the top of a piece of tile. Cleanup is the real key to succcess with this stuff that’s for sure.

Last weekend I finished tiling the “bench”, cleaned all the grout lines and put some hardware on the cabinets:

Now this is not my first time grouting however it is my first time using an epoxy based grout and I’m going to just say that it’s a pain in the ass if you aren’t expecting it. I made the mistake of starting on a wall which is even harder for your first time and as I sit here typing this my lower back and sholders are pretty much shot. You really need to pack that stuff in and you don’t have very long to do it in. The room was pretty much the perfect temp for this thanks to the colder weather lately (70 degrees) but you still only get like an hour of real usable time. By the time I got to the third bucket I was much more comfortable with the product but if you can avoid doing a wall the first time I’d recommend it.

That aside here are a few pictures of the shower wall’s and tray completed. Between the two walls and floor I used 3 buckets (mixed individually).

Since I had forecasted 4 buckets for the whole room it’s obvious to say that I ended up needing more. Jen ran to the store the next morning and grabbed 3 more just to be safe. In the end I used 6 total, the floor is 52 sq feet and the wall tiles were 1/2″ troweled plus the mosaics used alot of it. Here is a picture of the shower curb cleaned and ready to get stuffed and then the rest of the work:

I have to say the curb was kinda difficult but the floor pretty much flew by. If I was doing just a large floor I’d certainly have mixed multiple buckets at once. Of course by this time I was familiar with the product and so far I haven’t seen any issues with color difference so really it’s
personal preference.

Thank god I’m all done:

One last thing I will comment on is clean up. Let me tell you when you think your done you need to stop and do it again. This stuff loves to leave behind haze and it takes a lot of buckets of vinegar water to clean off the residue. I recommend really taking your time and making sure you do the clean up 200% because you’ll save a lot of time later on trying to jackhammer this stuff off.

Today is grout day. We decided on  using Laticrete Spectralock epoxy grout based on a few recommendations and the fact that it will never need sealing. I hate to seal caulk. That being said this stuff is so hard to put up onto a wall that I literally had to take a break due to cramping in my hands. Of course I don’t do this for a living every day, heck I sit and type all day but I was still surprised.

That and the work time is very minimal. Since it’s epoxy it starts to set up rather quickly so you’ve only got like an hour max. All in all though I think it’s looking pretty good though it’ll clearly take me a while to finish.