On Saturday morning, Mr. Scout and I ventured down to beautiful Jessup to buy some metal. We’re going to make bumpers for our Scouts, and we needed raw materials to get started. Based on measurements taken from a plan I built in Illustrator, some nice bluehaired ladies in a dark bar-enclosed shed sold us lengths of box steel and plate, and we loaded up the truck with our booty. This place was a picture straight out of 1960, from ancient brick and wood paneling to the yellowing xeroxed cartoons taped to the walls. There were no computers in sight; our order was transcribed into a three-ring notebook and estimated with a calculator. Mr. Scout told me he’d priced out the materials online and what we got was dirt-cheap, which makes me feel good. Now to find the time to get over to Chestertown to start building it all.
Later that day, I bought some underlayment for the bathroom and began the tiling process. Sadly, this meant the sink and toilet had to be removed, at a crucial time for our household: Finn is on a potty-training program which means we have to get her upstairs every 45 minutes or so before she leaves a puddle somewhere on the floor. She’s doing really well, though; there were only a few accidents and she woke from both weekend naps completely dry. She’s also sleeping in her big-girl bed, which is a huge step for all of us. Saturday and Sunday morning she peeked in our room before dawn and woke me quietly, and both times she was dry—this after about 8 hours of sleep. Then I’d hoist her into our bed and she’d thrash around between us until I took her downstairs; clearly I need to get to sleep much earlier if this is how the pattern is going to change.
The underlayment went down quickly and with minimal fuss.
Waiting for the adhesive to cure, I finished off the kickplate, top trim, and other bits of carpentry and slapped a first coat of gloss white on as much as I could see clearly at 11:30PM. Mr. Scout brought a 1/4″ router bit with him, and we quickly milled a piece of wood for the space between the two right-hand windows. He also pointed out that I’d been using the wrong gauge nails in my pneumatic gun, which is information I could really have used about two months ago. (Thanks, Mr. Scout!)
Sunday morning Finn and I let Mama sleep in as long as she wanted, and we all spent the morning together before I got started tiling. It went in pretty easily. Mama suggested laying it with the points facing inward, so the hexagon shape stands out in the pattern, and I think it was the right move. We have a bit more trim work to do, and I need to cut about twenty pieces in half for the threshold, but we’re almost ready for grout.
