D.I.Y., or Don't Injure Yourself
I’m like most guys. If the car won’t start, I look under the hood. There’s no reason to. I wouldn’t know what was wrong unless I saw a family of woodchucks in the engine compartment gnawing through the wiring. But guys being a guy, I like to pretend that I know what I’m doing when it comes to fixing things. The same goes for home repairs.
When you own a house, you’re forced to learn new trades. There’s plumbing, carpentry, electrical, appliance repair, masonry, painting, wallpapering, gardening, and, because I’m clumsy, emergency first aid. (After even the simplest project, I look like some overzealous religious charismatic who, going to extremes, exhibits ten times the usual number of stigmatic bleeding. Not only am I all thumbs, not one of them is opposable.)
When something needs repairing, the first thing I do is buy a book on the subject, usually one with lots of big, colorful pictures which fairly scream, “Look! It’s so simple, even a writer can do it!” My do-it-yourself library is extensive, and covers pretty much the entire curriculum of my incompetence. So a few weeks ago I found myself looking for a book on installing ceramic tile. The grout in one of our showers had crumbled in places, and water had seeped into the drywall. My wife wanted the tiles and drywall replaced – for some reason not liking the duct tape I applied to fix the problem. Women. Go figure.
Now I can’t just go into the big box hardware store and take the book to the register. That would be an overt and public admission that I don’t know how to do manly things. For men, these books are like pornographic magazines, slipped in between copies of Newsweek and The National Review to hide your perversions. I browse the do-it-yourself section at Home Depot in a trench coat and a fedora pulled over my eyes. For this project I went straight to plumbing and looked at pipes and washers and propane torches, all the while furtively glancing at the bookshelves, and waited until the aisle was empty. I felt like a character from a Dashiell Hammett novel, this time searching for the Maltese Faucet.
When the book section looked deserted, I snuck over, trying to look nonchalant, my face radiating my best “Where am I? How did I get here?” expression. I walked down the length of the shelves, head locked firmly forward but eyes glancing over, and noted the approximate location of the tiling books. Coming to the end of the aisle, I turned around quickly, as though I had just noticed I was in the wrong place. Sweeping past the previously noted location, I grabbed a book and kept walking, my caper pulled off with absolute precision.
But I couldn’t go to the checkout with just the book. That would have been too obvious. I did what I always do – shop around and buy the largest, manliest power tool I can find to hide the book under. And most of my friends really appreciate the spare jackhammers I’ve given them for Christmas over the years.
Okay, so I’m an idiot. But my pride was still intact, and as I unloaded my new jackhammer from the car (note to self: anniversary coming up in three weeks), I waved to some of the neighborhood men, pointing to my haul. “Just a little project to take care of! Yep. Have it done in no time! The fact that the jackhammer outweighed me by 80 pounds probably made my pathetic little facade unconvincing.
The book looked pretty detailed. It said the whole job could be done in half a nonce, maybe longer if the nonces ran small, so I thought, what the hell, let’s tile that sucker!
Now I may just be overly fussy, but I feel that the do-it-yourself book section shouldn’t contain works of fiction. Easy Ceramic Tiling? No. More like Death Wish – three weekends, at the end of which I wished I were dead.
Leafing through the book, it seemed like the old tiles would come off as easily as Paris Hilton’s clothes in the presence of a video camera. Photo one showed a tile being pried off. Photo two was of a bare wall. There it was. Take off the first tile, the rest just disappear! Presto! What I didn’t know was that after the first shot the photographer probably went on a weekend bender in Vegas before being dragged back to take the second. In between I’m pretty sure nitroglycerine had to be used to remove the rest of the tiles.
Every tile clung to the wall like the claws of a frightened cat digging into your thigh. The sight of my pry bar just filled them with a greater resolve to stay in their place. When I did get some leverage between the wall and a tile it inevitably committed suicide by exploding into razor-sharp shards, and act of Ceramic terrorism. Dozens of pieces flew off toward my flesh, while the remaining bits stayed attached to the wall, mocking me. Each little fight was repeated about 300 times, once for each tile on the walls. After round six a referee would have given the bout to the tiles on a TKO. If I had enough strength to lift it, I’d have used that jackhammer on them, though I’m sure the tiles would have bent the power chisel like a knife on Superman’s chest.
Farewell six hours and part of one of my favorite fingers.
When I was finally done removing the tiles from the wall as well as the shards from the floor, tub, and my flesh, I had to start pulling off the backer boards. Again the book made it look quite simple, no harder than pulling open a door. It didn’t mention that the door would be locked, double-bolted, and nailed shut.
If you don’t know anything about drywall, it’s a thin 4′ x 8′ sheet of gypsum covered on both sides by paper. Its main characteristics are that it’s heavy, awkward to work with, and tends to crumble when you apply any pressure. It’s the FEMA of construction materials. I don’t really know why they use gypsum. It’s like nailing up sugar that’s sat in the bowl too long. It feels solid, but then falls apart when you dig into it with your spoon.
My old drywall wasn’t coming off any easier than the tiles. It was nailed, glued, and screwed, that last one pretty much describing me. Each pull produced a broken fragment and a white dust cloud that billowed out and covered me head to toe. I’m not sure if gypsum is toxic when inhaled, but I can say for a fact that even though it looks like cocaine, you can’t get high from it. Believe me, I was so pissed off by that time that I tried.
After getting all the drywall off, I still had to pull out all the nails and screws that stayed stuck in the studs. The nails weren’t too hard to remove. All it took was a claw hammer, a little elbow grease, and the chainsaw I bought last year. (I needed a book about kitchen remodeling, so…)
The screws were tougher. I thought it would be an easy job with my cordless 14.4v drill/driver (Make Your Own Window Treatments, $18.95, 66 pages). Just fit the bit into the screw head, set the drill to lefty loosey, and pull the trigger. Two hours later the only trigger I wanted to pull was on a .44 pointed at my head. Every screw stripped after a couple of turns. The drill whirled like a tire on an icy Buffalo road in January, traction nonexistent, screws not turning a millimeter. Why do screw heads soften under a bit? Did they use Gummy screws?
Giving up the drill fantasy, I resorted to loosening the screws with a pair of heavy-duty grip pliers (Install Your Own Energy Efficient Windows!) It was tedious, but worked well, the only side effect being that I’ll suffer from carpal tunnel for the rest of my life from the repetitive wrist movements.
Three small walls of naked pine studs faced me. Their minimalism evoked the simplistic beauty of a Barnett Newman painting. I briefly entertained the idea of just signing the lower right corner of the wall and attaching a small plaque engraved with, “On loan from the Paul Giles Foundation,” then charging admission for a tour. “This one is titled Studs, and tells the story of man’s search for fulfillment in a world which deprives him of the fundamental material wealth to evolve into his full potential.” Then my wife mentioned having to shower and something about a divorce lawyer. Back to work.
Remember gypsum? In the topsy-turvy world of home repair, what comes down must go up. That means new drywall had to be installed before the actual object of the exercise, tiling, could be done. Now I assumed putting drywall up would be easier than taking it down. I’d just measure, cut, and install. I also had this fantasy I’d one day have sex with Nicole Kidman. Of the two, I think I’d have a better chance at Nicole.
In order for drywall to be installed properly, you need the walls to be square. Mine weren’t square. They weren’t even close to square. They were more like rhomboids, but with each corner meeting at random angles. I’m not even sure what faced me could be called corners. At some points where the walls met, I believe the calculations needed to figure out the cuts extended to the use of seven more dimensions, a supercomputer, and three doctoral candidates in physics from Cal Tech. M.C. Escher might have been the original carpenter.
Using the old maxim, measure twice, cut your thigh open once I went to work on the drywall with my trusty carpenter’s square and retractable utility knife (Roofing Techniques of the Renaissance Masters). I cut the first piece to the specifications I thought would fit. The entire workday from then on consisted of the following steps. Carry heavy, awkward piece of drywall into the bathroom. Try to put into place. Discover it doesn’t fit. Mark where it doesn’t fit. Carry heavy, awkward piece of drywall back into the garage. Shave off piece that doesn’t fit. Repeat 486 times.
What’s nice about drywall is it’s easy to cut. That also means it’s easy to damage. Setting it down too hard breaks off corners. Pushing it into place too hard cracks it. Once again I wondered why it became common practice to use a soft mineral like gypsum on walls. What the hell do I recycle plastic soda bottles for? Can’t you reshape them into sturdy walls? Gypsum? Give me a break! Even after finally getting a cut right, I’d often break the piece trying to get it into place, or else chunks of it would drop off at the edges of the cuts, falling in clumps at my feet and leaving empty spots between the paper. That meant re-cutting another piece 486 more times. And me and razor-sharp cutting instruments…let’s just say if my garage were the Red Cross I’d be one of their biggest blood donors.
After God knows how long, I finished cutting and managed to attach the pieces with drywall screws. I moved on to the next level of hell – applying the adhesive and the actual tiles. To be on the safe side, I consulted my book once again, carefully reading every word so I’d be able to do a good job. I studied the photos to learn the proper technique. This was the part that should have been a piece of cake. Once the first course is applied on a straight line, the rest should go up quickly. Just snap a line on the drywall and apply the adhesive with a trowel.
A trowel (Crown Molding: Give Your Room That Royal Look!) is a handle attached to a flat piece of steel. You put stuff on it. You use it to spread the stuff where the stuff is supposed to go. It’s one of mankind’s oldest construction tools, second only to the kickback and the cost overrun. It’s a simple tool. I’m a simple man. A match made in Heaven.
Here’s how it actually went. I had a bucket of adhesive. I put a big glob of it on the trowel. I moved the trowel to the wall. As I turned the trowel from the horizontal to the vertical orientation of the wall, the adhesive slid off the trowel and dropped into my shoe. There were no pictures of gloppy shoes in the book. I tried again with the same result. A few more attempts and I felt like some Mafia squealer who was being fitted with cement overshoes just before he’s dropped into the Hudson River somewhere near Jersey. I took a squishy step back, checked the book again, and reevaluated my technique. I finally noticed that I should have touched the trowel blade to the wall before I turned tipped it vertical. Well, that should solve the problem, I thought.
I got the trowel to the wall and slowly twisted it up. Nothing dropped through to my feet. I breathed a sigh of relief, pushed the trowel in towards the wall, and began to sweep the adhesive upward. The pressure shot out two streams of gray, gritty mud from the sides of the trowel that slowly slithered down the wall, leaving slimy trails as they moved and settling near my shoes. I’m not sure how long I stood there looking at the mess, shoulders slumped in defeat, staring blankly at the still-blank wall, a broken man. I do know that when I finally roused myself my feet were firmly cemented to the bathtub. I was a human Weeble. I could wobble, but I couldn’t fall down. That jackhammer was about to get some real use.
I did finally manage to free myself, and with a lot of practice got somewhat adept at using a trowel. The adhesive was sticking to the wall and I got enough on to start putting tiles up. I aligned the first few with my plumb line and set to work, quickly getting the first course on the wall. That should have made the rest of the tiles fit in straight lines without much trouble. I often wonder where my unrealistic optimism comes from, but I hope wherever it is, that place can be hit with a large nuke and obliterated so it’ll never trouble my world again.
By the third course the spaces between some tiles widened. My straight lines began to curve, even though I spaced them properly as I went along. I had no idea why. I know that in physics space can be curved by gravity, so I can only assume that somehow I had inadvertently walled in a mini black hole that was distorting space/time in the immediate vicinity. It couldn’t have been anything I did. I had the book!
Pretty soon the unevenness got out of control completely. Lines began shooting off at 45° angles. I decided to just go with it. Half the tiles I tried to cut to fit corners cracked into shards anyway, so I got creative. If you look closely, even though it’s all in white, you can see on my shower walls a mosaic version of Picasso’s “Guernica.” The figure at the bottom left, lying dead with sword in hand, bears a striking resemblance to me. The sword bears a striking resemblance to a trowel. There’s also a section that bears the image of Jesus. I’m posting that on e-Bay, claiming it’s a miraculous apparition, and selling the wall to the highest bidder.
After the tiling (excuse me – artwork) was finished, all that was left was filling in the cracks with grout. Sure, it may have been almost as messy as spreading the adhesive, but I had gotten better at it and it went rather smoothly. I declared the project complete and collapsed on the nearest couch, asleep, dreaming of stainless steel, self-cleaning bathrooms with wood nymph attendants powdering and perfuming me at every visit.
I almost hate to mention that the new tiles leak and I’m planning to burn the house for the insurance money.
