Nom de Plume

Today, Steve was going to take out the toilet and start laying the tile. It is not going according to plan. Every half hour or so, he bellows expletives while I rush over and say, “What?! What?!” and the dog scoots under the dining room table as fast as his short little legs will carry him.

First, he discovered that someone had cut out an entire section of the beam below the toilet. There was no support at all. Apparently, the give would make the tile crack; it needed to be replaced.

So off to McClendon’s he went to get a joist and down into the basement he hauled it. There are pipes right underneath where it was supposed to go, which meant it didn’t fit. He managed to plane down two inches at the edge of each side, and hammer it into place. Abd of course, a regular hammer wasn’t big enough, so he used his antique railroad hammer.

Actually, it worked really well. Five hefty swings on each side and the board was in.

He had just started to take out the toilet when I went to the library ($31.10 in overdue fines, thank you very much). When I came back, the dog was back under the dining room table. Turns out the wood under the toilet is rotten and needs to be replaced.

To be continued …