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Tim went and picked up the tile yesterday afternoon. As some of you know, they goofed up a bit at the tile store when we were first pricing the tile. They tried to charge us for 675 square feet of 6″x6″ wall tile instead of 675 tiles, or 169 square feet. We pointed out their mistake, and everything was fine… so we thought. (I think you can see where this is going). So, I get to the tile store, and there’s one and a half pallets of tile. I look at it, and think it’s a little big, but I think to myself, “this shower IS bigger than the last one, so it must be right. They’re the tile people after all.”

The forklift driver picked up the full pallet, and dropped it into the back of the truck. The truck is instantly on the bump stops of the rear suspension. I told him to take it back out, we’ll load it by hand into the back of the bed to more evenly distribute the weight. This should have been my first indication of the problem. So the forklift driver and the warehouse guy handed the boxes of tile to me in the back of the bed and I stacked them as close to the cab as I could. The truck was still pretty darn low when we finished. The warehouse was closing, so I went to pay for the tile.

I came back out the the truck and still didn’t like what I saw, so I took all the 12″ x 12″ floor tiles out of the back, and piled them into the passenger side of the truck to help even out the weight. This helped quite a bit, and I figured I’d get the two miles home. Sure enough there were no issues on the ride home. I backed the truck into the driveway to start unloading the tile into the garage.

I unloaded two piles of boxed (about 16 boxes) and took a breather. Meghann, giving me moral support with all this heavy lifting, and I started adding up boxes in our head. If we only needed 169 square feet, we should have only 14 boxes of tile (12.5 square feet, or 50 tiles, per box). We already had unloaded more than that, and the truck was still full of tile!! How many frickin’ boxes do we have! I unloaded the rest, with a couple breathers in between (they’re heavy). We counted boxes…. 54. 40 more than we need, or paid for. We have 500 extra square feet of 6″ x 6″ wall tiles in our garage. It makes for quite a pile. We could tile our bedroom floor almost twice over. We chuckled quite a bit over this one. Finally an error in our favor. Too bad we really don’t want or need all this tile.

We’re going to wait a bit and see if they find their error. You’d think they have to pay for all this tile, and might figure out their error. If not, we may call them and tell them if they want it, come get it. There’s no way I’m loading any of it back in the truck to haul back to them. I already hauled four times more tile (two times, no less) than I needed to. It’s theirs if they want it, but they gotta come get it.

Well, we’re going to go tile and paint. Here’s a “picture”:http://www.labrodeurs.org/photos/2005-04/Tile/ of the tile and the large pile.

We added a “few photos”:http://www.labrodeurs.org/photos/2005-04/Yard/ to the photo gallery. The contractor has been making progress on the back yard. It’s coming along very nicely. He’s using blocks and brick to match what’s already there. The brick work is done. The next step is pouring concrete into the wells made by the bricks. That should happen next week.

We have been finishing up the electrical bits in the evening. Tuesday night we hung the fan. Tonight we finished the speaker terminals and installed a new switch for the fan. The old switch was a bit hay-wire and needed to go.

This weekend we’re going to paint and install some trim, and hopefully get started on the tile work. The tile store has not been very good this time. We’re kinda disappointed since we had a pretty good experience last time we used them. We ordered our tile on 4/13 and we still don’t have it. Apparently it’s all at the store, but they are awaiting some accent pieces to arrive. It took 3 days of phone calls to find this information out. I talked to one lady twice, and she took my number both times and told me she’d get back to me…. never did. Finally I got a guy that had a clue and got the info. We’re going to go get the tile that they have tomorrow, no matter what and we’ll pick up the rest when it arrives. Why is good service so hard to find?

We had pain management class last night. This was the best baby class we’ve had so far. It was taught by a RN that talked more on the medical side of birthing and pain, rather than the mumbo jumbo relaxation technique side that we’ve been presented with in the previous classes. It was very informative. The bottom line (in Tim’s view) is that with an epidural, everyone wins! I wish all the classes were that well run.

Mom and Baby are doing very well. All indications are go for “launch in July”:http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts114/050428july/ . Let’s hope the kid stays in there that long.

Just a quick note to let you know We’ve updated the photo gallery. More pictures of the house, and one of the beautiful pregnant lady. You can find them “here”:http://www.labrodeurs.org/photos/2005-04/Yard/

We had a very shocking weekend… well, at least Tim did. This house is really screwed up when it comes to electricity. Who knew the backyard sprinkler breaker was now also the bedroom socket breaker. I sure didn’t as I touched the hot and the ground at the same time. I sure make a nice circuit. Bzzzzzz! No harm done, just a large, shocking surprise. It didn’t end there though. I wired one socket backward, and it took out a 15 amp breaker. Oops. Now I gotta get a new breaker. I swapped with the pool light breaker and now it’s working fine (except for the pool light of course).

We took some photos of the addition and updated the gallery. Click “here”:http://www.labrodeurs.org/photos/2005-04/Paint/ or check the photo album. The painting is done and, the switches, sockets, and lights are mostly installed. The largest hurdle to go it the tile for the shower. After that it’s just details. Can’t wait to be done!