More chugging

Today I worked a little more on the shower. I cut two pieces of the curtain track with a hacksaw as suggested on their web page. What a job! It took forever and the cuts came out poorly. I had to file them down to get them smooth and straight. I am going to try my table saw for any future cuts. The material is aluminum and I think the saw should go right through it.

Just for clarification, yes we have lived here for 14 months with no shower. We have to take baths. What's taking so long? Well, because we wanted a big tub in our small bathroom, the big tub has to also serve as a shower. Normally you can just hang a shower curtain on a rod and contain the water in your tub. We can't use a rod because it would have to span 8.5 feet (from wall to wall, not because the tub is that big). Also, it would visually and physically obstruct the whole bathroom. This in and of itself isn't a problem - I purchased curtain track like they use in hospital rooms which suspends on the ceiling and give you a clean look. The problem is that we, mainly I, picked the wrong kind of tub for this application. Regular plain old bathtubs have an apron around them which catches the water (on non-shower-curtained sides) and sends it back in the tub. We have a drop-in tub, meaning it doesn't have an apron and any water not caught by the curtain would sit on the tub deck and probably spill onto the floor and/or leak into the walls. Ok, still not a problem, I used the curtain track to make a complete circle around the tub. Why it's taking so long is that the calculations to put it up are quite complicated and I spent many sessions trying to get it just right. Also, the track itself is made of many parts and comes with no instructions. You have to reinvent the wheel on everything. At each point where 2 pieces join, there is a splicer piece to hold them together. The problem is that if the splicer touches the ceiling then the rest of the track won't. I've had to figure out exactly in what order to put each piece so that I can mark the exact location of they drywall anchors for that piece. Add to it the fact that you are working on the ceiling over a large bathtub, and well, it turns into a big project. I spend a little time on it every day, and I will celebrate the day when I can actually take a quick shower, but in the meantime, taking baths is the least of the discomfort we live with daily.

I also cut the last piece of trim for the one window I am trying to get done before my mom comes to town. It didn't fit! Argh! I really get why finish carpentry is expensive. I am learning though - I started by cutting the piece too long and then shaved off bit by bit until it was almost right. The problem was I couldn't shave a small enough sliver off at the end and took too much making the piece too short. It was also warped anyway so even if the length had been okay it wouldn't have held onto the wall. The lesson here is that nails will not hold a warped piece of wood to a straight wall.

Lastly, I continued my weekly ivy trim. I swear the stuff grows faster than I can trim it. I fill the yard waste can every week and don't keep up with the waste the yard generates. I can't wait till the ivy is gone (as if that would ever happen.)