Jeff's Home Renovation

Although the tile has been down for a few weeks now, I'm finally getting around to adding the pictures to the blog. As it always is with tile, there is a lot of work to doing the grout. It goes on reasonably quickly, but it takes a lot of effort and time to clean the tiles and remove excess grout. When it's done, you hopefully find it was all worth the effort. In this case, it was. Since these pics were taken, I've re-installed the trim and baseboard. I had planned on prepping the walls and spraying the texture today, but then I remembered I still needed to patch the wall where I removed the half-wall, so I did that instead. It's got the preliminary layer of mud and corner beads installed, but I need to let it dry overnight before giving it the final coat of mud.




Here is where the new 12" tiles meet the half-bath and the 2" and 8" tile. I'm happy with the transition, although 98% of the people who see it in the future will probably not even notice the difference in tile size. Those bastards.




I've finally found a solution to the rust in the water which has been making a mess of the toilet tanks. I poured a little Iron Out in the tank last night and expected a little change this morning. I was very surprised to see that ALL the rust staining in the tank was gone. I mean ALL gone, to the point where the tank looks new again (which it should, since it's only 3 months old). Yesterday it looked like it was installed a decade ago, today it's perfect. I've been trying it on the remaining old toilet, and it's been working well at removing 40+ years of staining. I expect that a few more treatments and it'll be in great shape again. At least good enough condition that I might almost feel guilty at throwing that old piece of crap out in the near future.