Usually in the summer I like to spend my days laying tile.  Living in an older house that needs a lot of work, this has become tradition by now.  But I was worried this year that I had run out of things to tile.  Not so.  I found a couple of things to work on.

The first was J's bathroom.  Last summer we tore out her old bathtub and the tile work that surrounded it because the tiles were growing mould in the grout lines.  Maybe this happens anyway when you live in an old house, but it happens faster when you have a teenage girl who likes long hot showers.  We replaced her bathtub with one of those one-piece things so that no water could gather in any grout lines, and I was sort of sad not to have any tiling to do.  But in the end I found that I could finish the tub nicely by adding just one row of tiles around the edges to create a smooth line.  Hooray for tiles.

After that I repainted the bathroom ceiling, and frankly it doesn't look too good.  I used a paint that was too old, I think, and it didn't cover as nicely as I hoped it would.  A second go-over will fix that.  It's on my list.

Then I decided to paint the downstairs part of the house, leading to the upstairs bedrooms, which was a big job because we have very high ceilings that required borrowing a ladder from my father in law.  It is a nice ladder, very versatile as it can fold and unfold in different ways to allow different ways of climbing.  It can be an A-frame or a straight ladder as needed.  The only thing that troubled me a little bit was that when I folded it as an A-frame the instructions told me to climb ONLY both sides of the ladder.  It was a little confusing but in the end I decided that it was a positive sign indicating that I should proceed.  (Those little yellow stickers at the top both say to climb that side.)

The house started out a pale (dingy) shade of blue, aptly described I think by N as "corpse blue".  Shawn and I debated what colour to paint.  We wanted something warm but not overpowering because it is a large area.  I picked something I thought was nice but Shawn declared the colour looked too much like "skin" which was bizarre.  We finally found another colour that we both liked, although it is undoubtedly the colour of someone's skin somewhere, but neither of ours.  (It shows up strangely in the photograph... but the colour at the top of the stairs is a much more accurate representation of the new colour than the peculiar colour at the bottom.)

I made Shawn replace all the old ugly light switches and plug covers, which were 80's style off-white that someone had considerately painted over with pale blue.  He also replaced the doorbell which was quite an adventure that resulted in us having to choose between "ding" or "dong" because it refused to say both.  (We went with dong.)

The painting is mostly done but I have reached a stumbling block and am awaiting artistic guidance.  There is another area downstairs that could go the same colour I've painted the other part or could do something different, and I haven't decided yet.  I like the idea of lots of colours but I recognize that my love of colour can be expressed in ways that are artistic and focused, or, left to my own devices, can become cluttered and chaotic.

Finished with painting for the time being, I decided I needed tile baseboards in the kitchen.  There was a lot of leftover tile from when we tiled the kitchen floor, and I thought tile baseboards would be more interesting than wood.  Waterproof too.  And I love tiling.

This project required me to operate the tile saw which was extremely noisy and dusty.  Across the street, some contractors were working on a neighbour's driveway, and I pretended I was a contractor too with my measuring tape tucked in my belt, a pencil behind my ear, ear protection to stop me from being deafened by the saw...  I should have been a contractor instead of a teacher.  Of course it took me all day to complete this job so I'd probably be fired for being slow, but I would enjoy it while it lasted.

Now I need to grout the kitchen tile baseboards.  And make a decision and finish painting.

Summer is ending too quickly and I wish I had more time to play.  This afternoon some contractors are coming over to install our new furnace and heat pump.  I think I may put on my contractor outfit and see if I can blend in with them and help.  Maye they won't notice that I'm an intruder.