Icewind's Ramblings

The story continues from previous post . . . My wife learned quickly that things are not exactly as they are shown on HGTV where things are wrapped up nicely in a thirty or sixty minute television show.  They do not show the time preparing, marking lines on the walls and floor to install straight tiles or that time needed to mix the sand and mortar mixes used in the deck mud (concrete shower base) in the bottom of the shower.  With each batch there is the mixing to get the consistency of something that looks like toothpaste.  The adhesive thin set is applied to the walls and the tile itself and pushed onto the wall with a little wiggle and tap to make them stick to the wall surface.  What should happen next is the waiting time for the thin set to cure.  For us it did not happen that way for us . . . the tiles would slowly creep down below the line I had drawn to align the tiles.  This led to some heated words and a scramble to cut wood to make a ledge t...

If anyone has a decent memory you will remember I have been remodeling two bathrooms in my house.  The first one was completed with a quick pace using just a couple of weekends to accomplish the demolition and make the necessary repairs.  The changes were also done quickly and included installing new tile flooring, new moose light fixture, toilet and towel holders and relocating the lavatory/base cabinet giving more room next to the toilet. Moving on to my master bathroom I was reminded this week that the demolition pictures which started with tearing out the shower tile walls took place the last week of October, making this makeover several months longer than was initially anticipated. I worked on the demo and the repairs which were more than I thought we would find but nothing that really surprised me.  The work progressed getting the walls and floor stripped and the piping relocated for the water and drain lines.  The water damaged areas were cut out and the ...

I was standing in line at the bank yesterday. As if there isn’t enough anxiety about banks these days, the branch where I go has a giant plasma screen TV behind the tellers so you can watch while you’re standing in line. Great. They always have it on CNN.  I’m worried about my account because of a mistake they made earlier and now I get to watch another war and more people with blood on their faces in Texas at Ft. Hood from an Army Major who is a coward killing soldiers and civilians as I wait to speak with a representative. Please pump all the fear and loathing you can into an otherwise normal trip to the bank, Wells Fargo! A shipment of Viagra was high jacked today I saw it on the news.  Police have put out an All-Points bulletin: Be on the lookout for two hardened criminals! They will face a stiff sentence when convicted and they'll surely be sent to a Penal Institution. Have you realized that in about 30 years, we'll have thousands of OLD LADIES running aro...

Happy Halloween everyone! As most of you know I have been working on a couple of projects here at the house leaving me little time to write so I wanted to post a couple of pictures of the first bathroom makeover.  I just finished for another night at 10:30 pm so I sat down with a glass of Beringer’s, a couple of Advil and that good tired feeling of accomplishment after progress today working on the master bathroom. But today I wanted to share some of the pictures from the previous work over two weekends.  This bathroom is the main full bath for the upstairs part of the house and is the one everyone uses all the time.  There was nothing about this room that really stood out but was painted when we moved in several years ago and my wife did a great job of decorating it, but it always seemed to lack something.  Here is a before picture which almost shows the bland flooring of linoleum which I hated.  The walls are a very pale yellow color and the light bar...

These past couple of weeks has had me tearing out bathrooms, with the remodeling ongoing leaving me little time to write or have any thoughts to put on paper. I can report the first bathroom is finished except for a towel bar so it went smoothly with the demolition of the flooring, cabinet, sink, and closet being redone.  The hardest part of the demo was getting the several layers of flooring out and the prep for the tile. Once everything was taken out the first thing was a fresh coat of paint, Lowe’s Baguette color.  It is a nice color that in the low night light conditions gives off a nice easy tone.  In full light it blends nicely with the tile shades.  What started this makeover was my wife looking on Craig’s list and finding Italian marble tile for a low price.  She found 18”x18” squares (40) of beautiful tile for fifty bucks.  It was enough for the bathroom and closet floor.  The cabinet was painted and new base trim was installed. We ...

Voicemails Many of you know I work as a mechanical plumbing contracting company where we have projects here in Anchorage and scattered all over the State of Alaska. Sometimes you find those little things that brighten your day when you least expect it.  It may be a call or an email you receive about getting a new project or something good has happened on a jobsite.  At times with the difficult logistics getting materials into some of the most remote locations in the world a call that it arrived at all is cause for celebration. Then there is those other calls . . . you know the ones that crack you up when you play them back on the answering machine returning from lunch.  Here is one from this afternoon. Voice Message 1: You know what you're all a disgrace to your profession. This is my 8th call to a plumbing company . . . I’m telling you our bedrooms are flooding . . . I thought we had a relationship . . . you people don't even have the decency to call back.  T...

Or when will they come up with waterproof phones? What would you do . . . when you've dropped your cell phone in the toilet? Sometimes we get in a hurry and do stupid things and recently I did one that gave me a pause . . . as in should I or shouldn’t I? I was in my office and it was the typical morning with several phones ringing at the same time, the office phone, 2 cell phones, and a fax machine. I had tried to go to the bathroom several times and it just was not happening so I figured I would do the next best thing since the restroom is only about ten feet from my desk. Yes, it’s fun right after one of my chili eating, Chinese or sushi eating lunches. I happily did my thing and turned the water on to wash my hands as I reached across the toilet, bent down to flip the handle as I watched one of my two cell phones fly out of my shirt pocket doing a two and a half gainer before hitting the water with a near perfect splash. There is t...

Continuing last night’s blog about Joe the Plumber . . . before we move onto other things since this cycle is quickly winding down. With more of Senator Socialist’s tax plan. The government raises taxes on behavior it wants to discourage, and lowers taxes on behavior it wants to encourage. It becomes clear from Obama’s statement that he wants to discourage Joe’s success and wants to encourage socialism by giving a handout to the “bottom.” The idea that “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody” is naive at best and nefarious at worst. It isn’t good for anybody! Joe the Plumber is punished for his success; the “bottom” is punished by being locked into the lie that somehow they deserve a portion of Joe’s money and should not apply themselves through hard work to rise from the bottom. The thread worn class warfare rhetoric of taxing the rich and giving to the poor is a thinly veiled fabrication that there are “have’s” and there are “have not’s” in our co...

He certainly got plenty of airtime. Funny thing is . . . I’m a “Joe the Plumber” now for over 35 years. I’m thinking the hottest costume this Halloween: Joe the Plumber This debate came totally out of left field for me. Like, who knew to put Joe the Plumber down as the “drinking game” name in the debate tonight? If you for some reason had decided to take a drink every time Obama or McCain referenced their imaginary friend, you'd be dead. Dead of alcohol poisoning. For those of you who don’t know what that exchange was all about, McCain and Obama were referring to an impromptu encounter between Obama and Toledo , Ohio , plumber Joe Wurzelbacher. Jake Tapper, at ABC News, has the full video . Now I’m not an economist. Nor am I a medical doctor, but I don’t have to be one to know that smoking is not good for my health. Likewise, I don’t have to be an economist to know that capitalism is good for a country’s economic health and socialism is not. This ...