We had a great weekend!
We continued working on the Master Bathroom Remodeling Project, which has included gutting that bathroom, installing tiles on the shower walls, putting in a heated floor and then tiling the floors. We have the tiling of the walls done, and we’ve been working on the floors. All the cement backerboard has been installed, and this weekend was devoted to the installation of the heated flooring system.
Saturday, my handyman hubby got a lot of the floor tiles cut and then our babysitter (we’ll call her Molly) came to play with Claire while we went out downtown with a couple of friends. Claire was so happy to see Molly, and when we told her we were going bye-bye and would be back later, she wouldn’t even stop playing, and just said, “Bye-Bye, Momma! Bye-Bye, Daddy!” Kinda like, “Okay, great! Get outta here, already.” It was pretty funny. Molly said she was great and cried for “not even a minute” when she put her down for bed. Whew!!
Sunday, we got the rest of the floor tiles cut and the heating element installed for the heated floor. We wanted to get all that done plus the floor mudded and tiles installed on top of the element, but we didn’t get to that point until 7:30 p.m.!! The heating element is pretty straight-forward, but tricky. It’s very delicate, so you have to be very careful with it. We checked the conductivity three times, and it still works (in theory), so we should be good to go. He is coming home early today so that we can mud and install the tile. We’ll test it one more time after that, and then it should be good. (We’ll probably test it again after we grout, just to be sure nothing gets nicked in that process, too. After the floor is grouted, it should be okay.) We just have to be sure that no one drills through the floor and into it, in the future.
We are both sore and exhausted today, but we consider it a great weekend. I’m so glad we got the heating element installed. Putting it down was like this insane game of twister. On one hand, it’s simple. “Roll it out. Fasten it to the floor. Install your flooring!” On the other hand, there are all these “rules” that apply, which make it not so simple after all. For example, the blue wire can’t cross itself (“Don’t cross the streams!!”), and it can’t be closer than two inches to itself. It needs to be 4 to 6 inches from the walls/showers/toilet, etc.
It comes in a big roll, woven into an orange mesh. You lay that down and then cut (or remove) the orange mesh to free up the wire to do turns and flip it around to fit your area. You use hot glue to attach the blue element on the floor and double-sided tape to stick the orange mesh to the floor. Oh, and try not to step on it as you’re doing all this. (Which means you have 4 inches of walking space along the wall and maybe three inches between each element ‘loop.’ Oh, and don’t accidentally stand on the double-sided tape with your bare feet. And? Hot glue is really hot.)
My hubby is really intelligent when it comes to projects, but he could just not get his head around how we were supposed to cut the orange mesh and flip the mat to get the starting point where we needed it to be. (Oh, that was another rule! The end of the mat connected to the wiring had to be at least one foot from the shower opening AND had to be as close as possible to the opposite – inside – wall, which is technically in the middle of the mat). I’m not a genius, by any means, but for some reason it was very clear to me how we had to do this. (Luckily!! Or, we’d still be there scratching our heads.) He just didn’t get it. He handed me the scissors and told me to start cutting. (Gee, no pressure!!) So, I did, and by the time I got things kind of laid out the light bulb went off in his head, and he got it. Whew!!
Anyway, while the tile-cutter was working in the garage, I took Claire to Target yesterday for groceries and found the cutest swimsuit outfit for her (for our trip to Santa Fe). She insisted on wearing the hat throughout the rest of the visit to the store, and the nice lady in the check-out scanned it first so that it could be put back on the Princess’ head.
Oh, speaking of Claire…you may be wondering where she was during the insane twister game? We set up the pack-n-play from the trip so that she could see us and play with her toys. It worked like a charm!
I got to help him, because a lot of the work corresponded with Claire’s naptimes. It actually went really well on Sunday. Saturday was a different story, and he had to cut a couple pieces twice. You would have thought the world had ended and that the whole entire project was RUINED. He’s so dramatic. He ate lunch and I helped him look at the mistakes that were made, and we found a way to adjust and make it work. He’s such a drama queen sometimes, and it’s always exacerbated when he’s hungry. 
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