11/21/09 Workday

The weeks keep rolling by and the dedication date of December 19th keeps getting closer and closer. Good thing the house is almost ready. In the last two weekends we finally managed to get all the tiling done. This included finishing the diagonal tile in the kitchen, powder room, and basement landing, as well as the two upstairs bathrooms and the foyer walkin area. All in all I estimate around 320 square feet of tile that was laid down. It looks great now that the pain of tiling it all is over =). We grouted some of the tile that was laid the week before, and got a lot of other little jobs done too. Hand rails were hung, linen closets were finished and painted, and we cleaned and poly uthathaned the exposed brick wall in the foyer area. It's starting to look real good. We even have a few outlets installed so we don't need a generator anymore. By next week the plumbing and lights will be done too by professionals.

Here's a pic of the kitchen floor being grouted in the back area, and just finishing the front. Below that is an image of a bedroom with finished window sills.

Our 11/07/09 Workday

How much do we love tiling? Well, at the start of this workday, we all loved it. The tile we put down last Saturday was fixed to the floor, and it looked gorgeous. So we were all pumped to get started on finishing the areas that weren't done yet on the kitchen floor. Not too many Northrop people showed up this time, in part because of the short notice of our new every-weekend schedule, but thankfully Matt, Alex, and Tina showed up since they had been there the week before and were now also tiling experts. =) Sandtown threw a bunch of University of Maryland folk in our backyard in order to give our house some sod, and to finish the deck stairs and fence while the rest of us tiled our little butts off. The kitchen floor area is now finished, and the "foyer" connecting the kitchen, powder room, and basement landing is underway. We also got some more work done on the closet shelves and window sills. We will be back next weekend for more tiling, so I hope we get more tiling experts, if not we should have a bunch by the end of the workday.


Below are a few pictures. The first is the kitchen floor at the beginning of the day, while the second is at the end, after lots of tile cutting and placing. The last pic is of the beautiful backyard.

10/31 Workday

Another successful Saturday on our house. We had lots of volunteers both from Northrop and from LaTisha and her family. The main goal of our workday was to get started laying tile down onto the kitchen floor. I know this would be a daunting task and managed to get Mike and Craig to help me Friday finish laying the cement backerboard in the kitchen and figure out where the keystone tile would go. The keystone tile sets the pattern for the whole floor and should make the pattern be balanced across the floor, i.e. if only a third of a tile is needed one the left wall, a third of a tile should be at the right wall as well. We decided to lay a diagonal pattern for the kitchen floor which made finding the keystone a little harder. But once Saturday was underway, we just started mortaring tiles next to the keystone tile and moved out from it. Having the keystone tile in the center of the floor allowed several tile layers to work in their own directions and avoided having too many people in one spot. A bunch of people preped the tile by slapping mortar on the tile back, while still others worked on cleaning the tile and spacing between the tiles. The kitchen was a very busy place, but we successfully laid about 130 tile, or 130 square feet. It is going to look great when it is all finished. The rest of the volunteer team on Saturday worked on getting window sills made as well as handling lots of other smaller tasks. Here is a picture of the kitchen pattern laid out. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the tile mortared down, but I'll get one next Saturday.

-Rob