Boys Bathroom Part18: plumber and finishing walls

finally...

November 19-20

Well the plumber was here and fixed the mistake he made the first time. He's a nice guy but super slow and he kept chatting at the end when I just wanted him to leave so I could move on to the mudding and taping.

I had to enlarge this hole and I didn't have my BIL tool that we used the first time. I drilled some holes with my kick butt corded drill and then I had to use my box cuter (i love the cool red color)






Now I was ready to mud and tape. I decided in a stroke of pure genius to cover up the tub "just in case" something dripped on it. I'm not sure if this counts as a total moron moment because I did the right thing, but I was totally naive. I thought I was being extra cautious. That's a total laugh. The mud (really just thinset) was freaking everywhere. The tub looked like a flock of birds decided to camp out above the area and then suffered from mass intestinal distress. And I learned a little bit about that tape. Like its super sticky. But it hates to stick to the wall. It would prefer to stick to your fingers. And it will roll down the wall and land in your hair because it like it better there.

And thinset, that tricky bastard. Everywhere I read suggested "only make what you will use in 15 minutes" That is the most unhelpful piece of crap instruction. How in the hell do I know how much I can use. And even if I did, how would I know how much to mix to make up that amount. I ended up with a 5 gallon bucket of thinset filled 2/3 full. This was about 600% more than I needed. I started by adding what I thought was a small amount of water to the bottom of the bucket. Then I preceded to add the mix. Then I needed to add more. I added 1/3 a bag (the 50 lb kind). The consistency was like choc milk. I stirred and waited, hoping it would thicken up. It did not. After an hour of this useless wishing I was off to the store again. The whole time I thought I would come back to perfect mix, like maybe it felt sorry for me and decided to fix itself. But alas no. So I added more mix and more and more. Finally it got to the "peanut butter" consistency that happens by magic on HGTV. I preceded with the mudding part, which wasn't too bad except for the above mentioned tape issue.

I had no idea was I was suppose to do with the left over mud. Even if I didn't have 2 gallons extra, I've haven't found any instructions on the proper way to handle left overs of this type of stuff. I guess that stuff happens via magic again. I decide to sacrifice the bucket to the garbage mound. I just let it set there until in solidified and chuck it into the trash.

Oh and I suffered another injury. I used my finger to smooth the mud in the corners (okay that was definitely a total moron moment) and the cement ate away at my skin. I had to stop and put a band-aid on half way through because it was so raw.