7/8 Done

Yesterday morning GB and I left the house around 7:30 and took a two hour ride. We went south on Highway 15, following the east shore of Lake Toho for about 15 miles. We then picked up US 441 west into St. Cloud and had breakfast at a Village Inn. We then kept going west into Kissimmee, took OBT (Orange Blossom Trail) north, ducked over to pick up Orange Ave, and took that north back to Conway. Traffic was light, temps were in the mid-70's, and the humidity was fairly low for a Florida summer morning! We also took the bike out yesterday evening to downtown Orlando and Lake Eola for the city's Red, White, & Boom celebration. We parked under the Angel Wing by The Christ School and walked three blocks north to Lake Eola. We saw a great display of fireworks -- 20 minutes of whoosh-flash-boom! The fun thing was that, with the bike, we were able to scoot out easily and were home 20 minutes after the end of the celebration! We saw on the evening news that most of the 150,000 who attended were stuck in a huge traffic jam...not us!

GB and I spent over 3 hours this morning setting the last of the shower tiles. I had spent about 8 hours laying out and cutting the tile for all of the area above the tub. I did a pretty good job -- had just one full tile left! Now we'll let the mortar dry for several days and then put on the grout. Last - but not least - we'll seal the grout, so we should have no mold problems. I think we'll be able to get this done before we leave for the North, but we probably won't be able to use the shower until we get back from vacation. GB took the curtains down for cleaning, so the room looks really light. I will remove the hibiscus bush you see through the window. It's really overgrown and was a runway for our pesky ants to get from their nest in the laurel oak in the backyard. I'm going to take it out on Monday (yard waste pickup is Tuesday) and we will put in a grapefruit tree. We've missed the home grown citrus we enjoyed in Ft. Myers. I also want to clean out the "river" in the back yard so we can use the fountain again. Too much debris in the channel right now! And that should wrap up the summer projects...

Project Mid-point

This has been an interesting project. I've been waking up in the middle of the night and thinking how best to do this or that with the tiling. One 3 AM inspiration solved my angled step problem that I had been wrestling with, so I guess it was worth the sleep interruption. I ended up buying a 14 inch tile scorer and cutter -- it's really accurate and for straight cuts, it saves loads of time. I still did a fair amount of trucking to the garage to use the wet saw for the little nibble work, but it's working. I got the front tiles cut and ready to set today, which is most of the fussy stuff. GB helped me set the tiles late this afternoon, so we're more than half done! I've been barking my shins on the top edge of the backer board just in front of the tub; it's sharp! Good thing we got the tile on it now. While I was working this afternoon, I had a visitor in the back yard. A young great blue heron was on patrol looking for lizards. I think he walked between my yard and the neighbor's for 2 hours, looking for lunch.