Life of Brian

We bought some double towel bars for the “big” bathroom the other day at Lowes. Trouble is we weren’t I wasn’t thinking. The towel bars are mounted behind the door, so because the double bar sticks out from the wall so far it wouldn’t allow the door to fully open. Tonight we went back to swap them out for a couple of single towel bars.

When we walked up to the returns desk the woman looked at me and asked, “Are you Brian?” She didn’t look familiar. I looked down to see if I was wearing my MMC Jacket which has my name embroidered on the front, I wasn’t. My name isn’t on the receipt anywhere… How did she know my name?

Donna was wearing one of these Ash Grey T-Shirts.

The small bathroom has been gutted. The genesis for this project was the fact that the pan under the tile shower was leaking. Turns out there was good reason for that, there was no pan. Apparently 55 years ago they just slapped a very (and I mean very) thick layer of “mud” and laid tile on top of it. As a matter of fact the whole bathroom floor was unorthodox. Instead of just plywood over joists there is a kind of lathe over the plywood sub-floor that was then covered with an inch and a half of the same mud, then the tile on top of that.

The file uploading that I thought I had fixed yesterday is still giving me problems today. I found another workaround, but for some reason I didn’t need it tonight because after a couple of failed attempts to upload the picture, somehow it was there and usable. I guess I should have read the forums before upgrading, but it seems that before releasing 2.5 into the wild someone would have noticed that the media uploader wasn’t working right.

I also found a hack to take the place of the plugin I was using to keep the Joke category entries from showing up on the front page. I added a cute one today — The Golden Screw. In spite of the title, it is actually PG rated…

I forgot one item that should have been included in the Saturday Snippets post — A Fool And His Money Are Soon Parted.

* I bet she has never heard that before. 🙂

This morning we headed over to the plumbing showroom we visited on Monday afternoon with all intentions of buying the final pieces for our remodel job. The woman who spoke to us then, greeted us warmly and asked if we were her 10 o’clock appointment. Ahhh, no. We spoke to her a bit before her 10 o’clock arrived. As we started to leave she asked if we would like to make an appointment, “How’s Monday sound?” Not good we replied, how about today? She said she was all booked up, but could squeeze us in between 12 & 12:30. Donna said, “We’ll see you then.” Gee it would have been nice if this wasn’t the first time we heard the word appointment from her…

We left the parking lot and turned right, drove 20 yards and turned left into Aiken’s other plumbing showroom store. The first time we visited here a couple weeks ago we didn’t get much help because the woman who normally “manned” the showroom was out sick. Rhonda was back, fully recovered from the flu, and hovered respectfully as Donna and I and our little tape measure wandered the floor ever hopeful in our quest for a small short one piece toilet. Nothing fit (pun intended) the bill. There was one toilet that intrigued us though, it was tall, but very narrow and as a bonus it was a comfort height model. Of course, it didn’t match our existing sink which we were planning on keeping, but what a coincidence, right next to the toilet was the matching pedestal sink. Rhonda told us it was real reasonable, like maybe $200. Donna shrugged and said, “Let’s get it. What’s an extra couple hundred buck.” I’m thinking to myself all of the possible Miata accessories I could get with two hundred dollars, but say out loud with enthusiasm (and wisdom), “OK!” We then quickly agreed on the second toilet and a tub, pretty much sight unseen.

The two pieces for the small bathroom are from Mansfield’s Waverly Collection. You can see them in this picture stolen from the company’s web site. So caught up in the whole consuming thing we didn’t think to check how big the sink was. The Waverly toilet is a lot narrower than our current piece, but the sink is 4-1/2″ wider than the one we have now. We are now going to end up with about an inch and a half between toilet and sink. Moving the toilet rough in would be cost prohibitive, but depending on stud location maybe we can get the sink moved over a couple, three inches.

Rhonda will be calling me at work on Monday to give me pricing and availability. Hopefully we can get the first toilet and sink in a hurry because the contractor will be starting work on Monday.