kareid

Today NSTAR came to check our meter and pipes and told us we had two gas leaks. Small ones, no need for panic. Still, not something I expected. They put wax over them and will schedule an appointment later to replace the pipes and part of line to the street, which is also not up to spec.

Afterwards, I got to sit outside and eat the first ripe strawberries while smelling the peonies. Much more fun.

frolain and I are trying to remodel the downstairs bathroom and replace the floor in the downstairs kitchen.  If any of you remember it, the downstairs bathroom is the one with the square pink standing shower stall that doesn't fit the space, so that water hits the floor when it's running without a carefully rigged shower curtain, the rough 2x4s that were used as a frame for the door, the stained floor, and other general not-right.  The downstairs kitchen floor is pink and "white" linoleum from a decade I'm not sure of.  We thought it was black and white when we first bought the house until two moppings with bleach water revealed it was pink and white (matching the then-pink walls.)

We've had a contractor in to give us a quote on labor for replacing the kitchen floor with tile and doing the bathroom work, and have another one scheduled.  We also went to start looking at tile.  This is where the real problem comes in.  The tile places we've seen so far seem to want to exclusively sell natural-ish colors, things I sort of think of as mediterranean tones, in large, 12" tiles for floor tile.  They'll branch out a bit into 12" marble for baths.  Or into tiny hexagonal tile if you're going for the antique style (we're not.)  12" marble would look ridiculous in this closet-sized bathroom.  We'll probably manage to find something reasonable in this color palate for the kitchen, but I think we're going to have to compromise a lot more than I'd hoped for the bathroom.  This is really frustrating me, as I feel like we can't be the only people who don't want to do our bathroom in marble or antique tile.

On a different note, I called my dad last night, to find that he and my sister were feeding a baby goat in the house.  They'd brought it in because they were worried about it making it through its first few days in the cold.  Apparently one of the goats had triplets but lost them due to the cold in the barn.  My sister describes baby goats as being a lot like puppies.