taking a break one room at a time

Yesterday I bought 143 tiles for 75 cents a piece from the Habitat for the Humanities store and then came home and began to pop old tiles off my shower wall... oh my god! not certain what I expected, but the dirt and lizard eggs came as a complete surprise... the fact that the wall board did not extend to the floor, but stopped about two inches above where the shower floor sat. kind of freaked for a moment and called V. to come just look at it... he should be here this afternoon.

met a nice 84 year old man and his wife at the Habitat store... his wife told me he charges $20 an hour and he gave me his phone number... shared my amazement/horror at water aerobics last night and one of the guys there said he had remodeled his bathrooms ten years ago and found the same thing... he told me I could do it.

I have two of the tiled walls down... taking a break, eating watermelon, filthy from head to toe... I feel half sick over the whole thing and am having the self-pep-talk I need to just put one foot in front of the other, face one problem then another... really, it is probably not as bad as I thought... all that old wall board needed to be torn out anyway... the water damage looks contained and that is a blessing... but as I continue I become more certain that the whole bathroom must go and be replaced.

I can do this. I will need a plumber at some point and the 84 year old's diamond cutter (he was a doll!) and I might have to get the guy from water aerobics and V. walk me through a thing or two, and possibly a small home improvement loan from the bank... but I am determined to start school on July 30 with a new bathroom.

I will post pictures when it no longer looks so scary.

peace & love