renovationism

Spending a week with my writing group in Baja, in a little town called Los Barriles.
Construction here is… solid.

But it can end up looking pretty nice.

Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
- Otto von Bismarck

If that were true, then why is that show on the Discovery Channel, the one where they show, amongst other things, sausages being made, so popular1? Because it’s fun to watch things being made. On that premise, I offer, for [...]

The sink comes with a hole in the back right corner for the faucet, but the hole for a soap dispenser is optional, and must be punched out by the installer. That’s you. The sink cost a few hundred dollars, and now you have to smack it with a hammer. The underside is scored for [...]

A notched trowel spreads the tile mastic. A bullet level and a 2-foot level help to make sure everything is… um… level.
I wanted tight grout joints. 1/16″ spacers do the job.
I didn’t want to edge tiles pulling the top tiles out of whack, so I let the top tiles dry for a day before I [...]

a tray of water
beneath cools your spinning blade
yet i plug you in
nippers are so coarse
yet you beget a perfect
cut with toothless blade

click here

While doing some work at a client site the other day, she told me that one of her computers was experiencing blackouts several times a day. I felt the case and could tell it had a serious fever. It can be difficult to hear breath sounds on newer PCs with variable speed fans, but after [...]

I’ve mixed grout and thinset mortar in small amounts, without the right tools, and it’s no fun. Trying to get the mix right with a wooden stick is just plain crazy. So with the deck mud for the shower pan on the horizon, I decided to spend some hard-earned coin on a high quality hoe. [...]

One battle still to be fought is finishing the bathroom. The custom shower pan is half done. The first mortar bed was laid long ago (by an actual plumber), then the CPE membrane (rubber liner) was applied. I now need another layer of mortar on top of the CPE membrane to finish the pan. This [...]