Detra

Bathroom day 20 remodel

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well, today was finally the day that actual tile was applied to the bathroom remodel. I was not sure it was ever going to happen as long as it was taking to get to that step. Before Mr Rainman began tiling the floor I made us go out and measure the toilet to make sure that it would fit. I wanted to make sure it was far enough from the wall to not hit after we installed the tile. We will have about an inch to spare! If we were going to have to tackle that mess I wanted to do it before we had tile on the floor.

We opted to tile the main floor first as I will be setting the wall tile on the floor tile to hide the lower edges. In the shower I have to actually tile the walls first before I do the floor. It has to do with how the drain is installed. I need to watch that YouTube video again. This entire process has been internet searches and YouTube videos when it comes to the Schluter part. I am super happy with the waterproofing ability of it but man it takes a lot of time to do it correctly if you are not proficient in using it.

It took 3/4 of a bag of mud to get the floor installed. We are going to use two buckets tomorrow and only mix 1/4 bag at a time so the mud is fresh and not so thick. It gets very hard to use when it is thick.

I had forgotten how much I dislike using tiles that are mesh backed. Each of the 2×2 squares is attached to a 12 inch square mesh. In theory this makes it faster. It does do that but the gaps are not equal between the tiles on the mesh so placing them can be difficult. I managed it with adequate swear word usage. I need to use the do rag on my head again. I had sweat dripping off my face into my eyes halfway into the floor tiling process. It is a lot of work to get that mud down into the squares on the Detra membrane.

I had unfortunately set the laser up in the hallway and Mr Rainman kept bumping it. About 1/4 of the way into the floor he asks me why I did not set up the laser in the shower space out of the way. This is a great idea and one that I did not think of earlier. I think I did not do it because the ladder is there but I could have made room for the laser.

We managed to just get the last of the tile laid using the last bit of mud/mastic. Mr Rainman go to go home early.

Bathroom Day 19 remodel

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well the weekend was well spent, the bathroom is almost ready for tile. We just have to install the two membranes in the shower around the nozzle and the handle then seal the Detra membrane seam and Detra to the wall. The shower pan is still pending arrival by this Wednesday. It should not be a holdup for us as we can do the main bathroom floor and then the main bathroom walls first. If the pan is still not here after we get those tiled then we will grout them all next.

I just need to keep making progress every day. It took two days to get all of the holes and seams sealed correctly to provide that waterproofing that Schluter guarantees. I did not realize how long it was going to take. Mr Rainman asked me if I had read the reviews or not on the Schluter products and I said no. I knew it would do what I wanted but did not want to know about the reviews. He said one of the biggest complaints was on how long the system took to install by people not professionals. After getting this far I would say those reviews are spot on!

On Saturday, the Gingerman helped me seal nail protrusions and joints all day and on Sunday Mr Rainman helped me do the same thing. It is not a fast process. The bucket time on mud is around four hours using the All-set version and this is nice as that much time is needed. The only real problem is as it thickens you cannot add water to thin it out. You have to just hit it with the mixer to smooth it out again. This only works for so long before it is too thick to work with. If we were faster this probably would not be a problem.

When we set the Detra membrane on the main floor, I told Mr Rainman it would only take us an hour. Nothing else I have provided a timeline for has turned out to be accurate and it was already 1500. He grumbled and said we would be there till 1700 at a minimum. He mixed up 1/4 bag of All-set and I cut the Detra membrane to size so that it would fit. We got the entire floor covered with two sections. It only took us about 15 minutes once we had the All-set cured and ready to go. It did take the entire bucket of All-set. If we had another 1 square feet of membrane to apply we would not have had enough to cover the floor.

This gave us time to go out and try and catch one of the alpaca, Mad Max as the idiot had a piece of baling twine dangling from his neck and dragging on the ground. Annmarie had noticed it the day before. I figured we could just show up with treats and they would come running up to us, we could grab him and then be done. Nope, they did not want to cooperate. After multiple failed attempts to grab the needed alpaca by the head or hold onto the twine trailing it we ended up having to push Mad Max and Snoop into the orchard and shut them away from everyone else. This now resulted in us chasing two alpaca around, after several failed attempts and one resulting in me getting dragged across the ground as I attempted to hold onto his foot while being dragged, we opted to open up the gate into the back alley way hoping to get them both into a smaller space so we could catch Mad Max. Mr Rainman went to open the gate and I followed them to gate leading out of the field. It was closed but they both knew it was the desired escape route, it just needed to open for them to have what they wanted.

As I was approaching them, Snoop decided to start picking on Mad Max, this unintentionally forced Mad Max into the fence and I went onto the open side of him. Snoop was blocking the other side and Mr Rainman was able to sneak up on Snoop’s side and grab Mad Max by the neck. I just had to slide the twine over his neck and we were all done! Mr Rainman was out the door with everything done by 1620!

Our grain cracker came a week ago but we are going to have to get it set up. The Gingerman is getting grain from truck clean outs and it is a mixture of everything. The chickens don’t like entire pieces of corn, wheat, barley, or peas. So we will need to crack them so they can be eaten. If the bags are a little wet I put them out for the sheep and they do not care in what shape the grain is, they will eat it. We have a lot of storage space available currently but I plan on getting four more metal 50 gallon drums to put in the back of the chicken coop. The drums will hold about 200# of grain/drum. I have enough room in the back of the coop to hold five drums and then there is a the grain storage out in the barn. The barn storage can hold at least 2000# maybe more.