dr. weightloss

*…or how I learned to skip workouts, and love Aleve 🙂

Tile. Pretty heavy stuff. Over the last week, we’ve taken delivery of about 16,000 lbs of it, plus another 8800 lbs of bluestone for the exterior decks that arrived a while ago. We’ve also received 5 granite countertops that weight 340 lbs each, 32 bags of Thinset mortar for the tile, and about 16 bags of mortar for the shower walls. Since I’ve either moved it all in my truck, or helping to unload it from a delivery truck, I’ve been getting plenty of exercise. I’m down more than 5 lbs in just a couple of weeks. Why didn’t I think of this before? Much easier than going to the gym. Not!

Here is our 26,000-lb garage. 1850 square feet of Brazilian slate on the right, 5 granite counters and 8800 lbs of bluestone on the left. Oh, and 800 lbs of solid wood doors in the back. The mortar and most of the Thinset are stacked elsewhere. It doesn’t look like much, but each of those 150-odd brown cardboard packages weighs about 60 lbs. I’m glad the foundation is thick. Yes, that’s a toilet hanging out by the doors, ready for 2nd-floor installation.

And the slate is lovely, even without any grout yet. Eduardo is a skilled craftsman, and places the tiles with precision, 1/8” apart, tops aligned within a tiny fraction of a millimeter, as Nancy looks on. The second pic shows a few tiles in the bedroom, and the variation in color (along with a few dusty boot-prints 🙂 The entire 3rd floor should be done by the end of this week, when we will get the appliances installed in the kitchen.

In the mean time, we’ve painted almost all the rooms, the cedar siding is done on the outside, and we have to clean alkali stains off the garage door, from the stucco process. Finish electrical work starts today, and I’ve brought all the light fixtures. Next week the finish plumbing will start. In two weeks, we should have lights and a working kitchen and bathroom. We still plan to move in by the end of June. Cross your fingers.