Day 78: Blinding Progress

I plan to lay the tile Saturday so I did some prep work tonight. Laying out the tiles is essential if you want straight lines and as close to full tiles as possible when you get to the threshold between rooms. I have a few thresholds to contend with, but things look pretty good. I used my handy dandy laser level which does right angles on the wall or the floor. So there I am, laser levelling away and making marks on the floor when I looked up. There was Evin sitting with the laser line going straight up his face. I stopped what I was doing, shut off the light, and sat down with disbelief at how innocent he looked with the red line going up between his eyes. He obviously wasn't blind, but it just goes to show you how dumb cats can be when it comes to home renos. I'll be mounting large cardboard panels across the stairway so he can't get into my way when I am tiling. If that fails, I guess I could pull one of my bedroom doors off the hinges and lean it up in front of the opening into the staircase.

Speaking of Evin. I just had to go see which box of food he was just now getting into. I tried to pull him off the box of cereal he was rooting around in but his claw got stuck on the inner bag. It is like living with a raccoon some days. Heck, it is like living with a raccoon most days.

Prepping for tile laying also meant moving upstairs. I am now confined to 500 square feet for the next few weeks. My microwave and toaster are in my bedroom and the dish rack continues to live in the bathroom. So far living out of the bathroom is not that bad. I could really use a table to prepare the bit of food I have, but keeping Evin off it is probably more work than it is worth.

Back to the tiles. The mortar will set up in 24 hours, and the sealer needs up to 72 hours to cure. I'm in Vancouver all next week, so I hope all the tiling gets done Sat so I can seal the floor late Sunday. That way it can be curing away while I am in Van. And apparently I only need to put one coat of sealer on slate, so I'll be grouting next weekend and grout sealing the middle of the week following (14th-ish). That leaves about two weeks to go before the cabinets arrive! December 8th is probably when the cabinets will go in. That marks 114 days since the first 2x4 went up and the drywall installed over top of the hole in the wall!