Monday, November 5, 2007

Success & failure

November 5, 2007
Time to confess. Not everything has gone perfectly lately.

On Tuesday evening Laura & I installed the so-called ‘self-sticking’ stainless steel backsplash. We planned the sizes, the jointing, templated the outlet locations (by this point we weren’t speaking anymore) and ‘enhanced’ the sticking power of the membrane with some liquid nails. This worked only to reinforce any inconsistencies in the substrate we were sticking it to. We used two different types of adhesive and the better performing one was clearly the DAP Better than Nails tube adhesive. Liquid Nails once spread on the surface cures very fast, turns out much faster than we can lift the panel and align it in place. The photo speaks for itself, not good. Plan B is to construct painted MDF panels that are face mounted to the backsplash to cover the already been lived with look of the stainless sheeting. Work in progress, I’m calling it a failure at this point but I’m fickle. We're speaking again, but not to the backsplash.

With a name like 'Roll-a-lam'...I should've known

This weekend while Hurricane Noel passed by to our east lashing us with strong winds and inches upon inches of rain. We were spared power outages but many of our neighbors were in the dark. A sleepless night found me at our house around 2am early Sunday only minutes later a tree fell a few feet from the car, across our driveway squarely on top of the port-a-potty. Laura and family rescued me later that morning with a breakfast sandwich and chainsaw.
The weekend plan was to complete all of the tile setting. I made it slightly more than half way by Sunday mid-day with the larger bathroom complete leaving the master shower to complete by Tuesday. Things went well, not a professional job but respectable for a virgin tile-setter. It’s markedly more stone-like in person, the photos make it look like…well cinder block. Strike that thought. Now we just have to seal and grout it. Thankfully I masked every square inch of our tub before slinging thinset around, my work with a margin trowel is amateur at best.
And…our heat is on today, starting with a low temp in the tubing to dry things out slowly.


Red = membrane waterproofing (RedGard)

Completed tile work

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi. Are you happy with your Spagna Vetro range hood? What do you think of the quality, finish, fan, ability to clear grease and odors, ergonomics, cleaning, noise level at different settings? Would you buy this Chinese product with the sexy Italian name again? Who was the supplier, and were you happy with the service, reliability, shipping, price?

I'm an urban planner re-doing an urban condo in downtown Vancouver BC. Very different project, but similar need for a range vent. Good luck! Mike

eric said...

Mike...
The look, fit, finish, are all great. The sone rating must have been taken in a different room, b/c in terms of noise it's just plain loud. As far as I can tell there's no difference between the low/med/high settings, the fan changes in speed only slightly and all settings are loud. The fan will draw smoke from the woodstove if it's not draughting properly so it's a strong fan and thus the noise. Bought online through Euro-Kitchen.com, service was fine.
Hope this helps.