Last weekend Paula and I were in Space Oddity, a retro antique shop in Ballard, and I spotted a cool, old desk lamp. It reminded me a lot of the type of lamp my dad had on his desk when I was growing up. Since I have his antique desk, I thought, why not get the semi-antique lamp to go with it?

The lamp took two fluorescent bulbs (I hate fluorescent) and the switch on the lamp was broken. But, hey, it was 25 bucks, so why not?

A bit of clipping, drilling and wiring later I now have a retro lamp with some very nice xenon bulbs. The whole thing only took about an hour and a half, not bad for a Reeves project.

Wabbit basking under the clean white light of my “new” lamp.

Paula had a break in her homework load and so we did some tag team tile work. The weekend flew and we now have just a little edge-work left before doing the grout.

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Roughly another day of work, spread across Saturday and Sunday, and I put a whole bunch more tile up on the back wall of the shower surround. Time to turn my attention to the side walls.

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Okay, I admit it, I was a little intimidated by the tile portion of the project. I knew if I screwed up the other stuff that it could be easily corrected or hidden behind... yep, you guessed it... the tile. Since the tile is the last bit I wanted to be doubly-sure it looked great and so was very cautious about getting started.

I spent a few hours Saturday reading about the process... and said process was different depending on which book I read, nice. On Sunday I dragged my feet, prepped the area, snapped some chalk lines, arranged some tools...  I finally got started around 1:30 or 2. After a couple hours I got the hang of it, but really only put up a few rows of tile.

No biggie, now I have the hang of it and the rest will go more quickly... and less stressfully. :D

Got the tub plumbing finished yesterday and Philip and I did the sheetrock and backer board done today. Next up: tile.

A big tip of the hat goes to Phillip for all his help over the past couple of days.  There's no way I would have been able to get this 316 pound cast-iron tub into place without his help (or have put the plumbing togehter without his tools ).

5 hours Saturday, 3 hours Sunday.

After swinging a 5 pound sledge for 4 hours we are now short 3 walls, 2 shower doors and 1 bathtub.

I think we'll sleep well tonight.

How to remove a bathtub, caveman style.

Homo-erectus? No, Homo-destructus. Ugh! Grock Smash!

Well, it's begun. Let's see how long this takes.