Crazy Stable

...even if one only makes it from Brooklyn to Manhattan once in awhile. Living in the CrazyStable and working from home, it is easy to get an incipient case of Grey Gardens syndrome, drifting around the shambles like Little Edie, just me and the cats...there's always so much to keep me glued here (or grouted here). Yesterday, it took a long-procrastinated mammogram appointment to get me out of the house and into "the city" of a Friday.  So I guess travel was, er, flattening, although the Guttman Institute is the Cadillac of women's health centers, more like a day spa, with hot coffee brewing, private paneled changing rooms, and an unfailingly considerate staff. Thanks to all the friends, including some BC survivors, who have bugged me to get this important test.

Having been squoze, I repaired to Dean & DeLuca for a Lenten snack of tuna empanada and an obscenely expensive but meatless cupcake with piped lavender buttercream daisies on top--the sacrifices we make for our faith! I hit New York Central Art Supply, surely the world's most Serious art store. On a previous trip to their famed paper department, I panicked and bolted, intimidated by their stern and knowledgeable staff, who were talking shop with a lot of very Serious artiste types. This time, I was brave, and got the 10 big creamy sheets of Arches needed for a book art project. A young lady with dense black tattoos on her slender wrists wrapped the sheets in a nifty flat package, even cutting in a nice handle with an X-Acto knife. I kidded her about how much better a job she was doing than the cashier at the crafts shop at the mall, who tried to stuff $20 worth of huge archival paper sheets loose into a plastic bag. The waif looked up at me with blank, dark-rimmed eyes. "The mall?" she asked, puzzled.

Emerging into an early Spring rain, I dodged around the corner to Grace Church, the little piece of Gothic England at a bend of Broadway where I used to linger on my walk home from NYU, pretending for a few moments that I was in Oxford or Cambridge. Bless them Episcopalians, there was a noon-hour "organ meditation" just starting, so I slipped into a pew with my bundles of art supplies and basked in 20 minutes of jaw-droppingly good Bach, while the rain pattered on the roof as it's done (with some evident damage) since 1846. My dad and I always bonded over Bach, especially organ stuff--absolutely no accident that I stumbled onto this island of solace.

And then it was time to head for the train and pick up the Child at school. You know, the grout may still be unsealed, but I really do need to get out more.

Now that's more like it. Here's the second-floor tub after I regrouted and re-caulked it...

...okay, in my mind. The real thing looks like...a white subway-tile tub surround with some grotty bits still left--grot that fought off solvents, single-edged razor blades, bleach; grot that has fused into the tiles like glass. So it's not perfectly pretty, but right now, the job looks damn watertight. For about the next day or so, until the damn caulk line undoubtedly breaks again, and Zul the Evil Tile Grot Demon mysteriously colors everything black that was pure and clean and white.

Given that I procrastinated this hideous job for months--months during which we took "refugee showers" in the upstairs guest suite in the tiny leaky "Tardis" shower stall--it is good to report that I have learned many deep and lasting lessons. One is, choose a career as a bond trader early in life so that you NEVER EVER HAVE TO GROUT YOUR OWN SHOWER OR CAULK YOUR OWN TUB.

Ahem, but really...the Internet research alone was amazing. There is a tiling site called the John Bridge Forum that serves as a sort of pro/am clearinghouse for every conceivable tile/grout/caulk question. From these good folks, I have learned that I'm not done yet--I should seal the grout lines with a paintbrush. (Aha, maybe that was one of the problems the first time around--I'm sure we didn't seal it.) I also got everything I needed to know about why the original subway-tile installation sucked so badly. Indeed, it should've been a "mud job" or "thickset" and not a slap-'em-on-with-mastic job. Turns out there's a brotherhood of mud job guys who talk in mystic ecstasies of the Zen-like beauty of old-fashioned mud jobs. (Our contractor, Mr. Stupid, and we ourselves have unfortunately not met any of them--maybe they left Brooklyn long ago for muddier pastures.)

And caulk? Lordy, don't get these folks started. We're talking way beyond the old "wet the back of a spoon to get a smooth line" level here. (Although I did fill the tub halfway before caulking it, to "stretch the joint"; this means you have to, yes, lean over a foot of water, or stand in it, while caulking. Why not just put bricks in the tub?) Here's a typical tile forum entry: "I'm sorry to say I've gotten frighteningly anal about caulk lines lately. I think I've used about $50 of blue tape and ten trees worth of paper towels on the last few jobs. I can't see that blurry feathered edge anymore on tile or tub edges. I agree about the weakness and permeability of the silicone feathered edges. I'm going for solid, sharp cut lines. With carefully placed tape, minimal caulking onto tape, two inch putty knife, occasional finger work, towels, minimal water dipping and immediate tape stripping after striking... Good things are happening. I'm gonna go get a life now."

Me, I used my latex-clad finger and smeared it all over the place. (That last sentence oughta get some interesting Googles.) I'll trim the feathery bits with my trusty single-edge razor blade, which I keep in a folded 3x5 card that my Dad labeled, in typical Dad style, "Single-Edge Razor Blade." Opening it up makes it feel like he just took it out of his (now our) old green toolbox and handed it to me. He was a master tiler and caulker, who did a new tub surround in our apartment in Little Neck when I was a kid, faux-marble green-and-white tiles...that job lasted perfectly for 10 years.

It's my dad I channel, even more than the Internet mud masters, for stuff like this. I was never, alas, a helpful little tomboy at his elbow, picking up techniques for my Rosie the Riveter future as a girl renovator; I would mess with balls of caulk or line the washers and nuts up and make them talk to each other. But just by hanging around, I got a half-remembered headful of advice that tumbles out of the toolbox along with his labeled razor blades and other treasures. "Make sure all the loose dust and dirt are off; wipe it down with alcohol and a cotton swab." "Hold it at a 45-degree angle." "Give it a nice, even pressure." "I've got a Dremel attachment that would shave that down to just the right height."

Ah, yes, the Dremel. I inherited Daddy's Dremel Moto-Tool, along with his speed regulator and his beloved boxes of accessories--a forest of little grinding wheels, cutters, abrasive pads, and baffling thingies, but I've never, since he died in 1985, had the guts to take it out, figure out how to work it, and turn it on. For this accursed tile job, I was stymied by the remnants of old caulk stuck in the joint. I could just hear my dad saying that the Dremel could clean that joint out fine. So I went down to the seldom-visited "tool room" and dug out the set. I plugged it into the speed regulator, held it gingerly, took a deep breath, and turned it on; it sounded, as I recalled well, just like a dentist's drill. I put a metal brush wheel in the "chuck collet" (great name for a weatherman, Chuck Collet!) and touched it to the workbench; it made a satisfying whir. The power was mine!

As it happened, the mighty little Dremel didn't accomplish much on the caulk joint, but it hardly mattered. I had broken the Moto-Tool Barrier. Subsequent Internet research on the Dremel site (to supplement their unhelpfully minimal owners' manual) reveals that my dad was not alone in his obsession; had he lived longer, he would've spent many happy hours learning more cool apps (my favorite: frothing milk for coffee). There's even a freelancer's tutorial to help figure out all the little attachments. For years, I have fantasized about removing red paint from the bead-molding trim on the newel posts with that Dremel... (Yeah, I know. I'm gonna go get a life now.)

In the DIY spirit, some DIY psychoanalysis is in order. It doesn't take Freud, or even Dr. Phil, to figure out that my 20-year block over turning on the Moto-Tool went deeper than my power-tool phobia. I can see my dad's hands holding it, fixing everything that needed to be fixed all through my childhood, which apparently lasted until age 28, which is how old I was when we lost him. If I'm holding the Moto-Tool, he isn't, and if that's the case, it must be because he's not coming back. Several decades is a long time for a functional adult to realize that Daddy's not coming back to fix things, but one of the CrazyStable's mottos might well be, "Better late than never."

Inspired by the lovely domestic shrine to family ancestors on display in the Hall of Asian Peoples at the American Museum of Natural History, I decided to make a little Daddy Dremel Shrine to celebrate my breakthrough. (Note the fine cigar box from his storage archives.) Now that I've started using it, I miss him less, not more; he's right there, telling me to hold it at just the right angle.

Top image: Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 'A Favourite Custom," 1909, oil on panel. The Tate Gallery, London. Thanks to Olga's Gallery.

Sometimes I wonder who's in charge around here. One of my Lenten resolutions was a "news fast": I have toiled through the phone purgatory of the New York Times' home delivery "customer service" line twice requesting the suspension of my weekday only delivery, so that my mornings might be spent springing about the house and garden in a frenzy of renovation projects (or meditation, or Pilates) instead of lingering over breakfast with the Grey Lady and her daily dose of car bombs and style-setters. But the thing keeps coming every weekday anyway, and I can't bring myself to simply place the unopened paper to one side.

I did, however, let the Child drag me out into the garden yesterday, where the annual rites of Mud Season began. Not only did several rose bushes get mercilessly pruned, but I whipped out the loppers and started to discipline the cranberry bush viburnum, which has morphed from a "native shrub" to a handsome if overly ambitious tree to a wildly invasive grove, spreading by means of thick ground-level runners. Lopping away like mad, I realized the extent to which the garden has always bullied me. It began as a garbage-strewn lot, and I've always been so grateful for anything that will grow that I tend to let the aggressors have absurd free rein. Years ago, I planted a few raspberry canes against the back fence; they have marched inexorably toward the center of the garden, their rear guard dying off. The ferns are pulling the same stunt next to the shady garage wall, creeping like Birnam wood en route to Dunsinane. Every year I resolved to lift them and put them back in their assigned places, or just tear them out altogether, and every year they run roughshod over me. Well, no more Ms. Nice Gardener; I yanked up a raspberry cane and plugged it back yonder.

 Of course, this sort of thinking soon leads to a head swimming with ambitious visions for sweeping redesigns, glorious new hardscaping, garage demolition...and before long, I am overwhelmed and hyperventilating, and then I remember that what I can afford is a new bag of manure and some flats of pansies. And then (despite the weirdly early advent of daylight savings time) it is dinner time, and all I've got to show for it is a lawn'n'leaf bag full of thorny canes. There are no herb sprouts up yet (I eagerly await the first mint), but the crocus are being brave. Braver than me. 

Messenger:  As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
                       I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
                       The wood began to move.

Macbeth:     Liar and slave!

Messenger:  Let me endure your wrath, if't be not so:
                       Within this three mile may you see it coming;
                       I say, a moving grove.

                                                                 --Macbeth, Act V, Scene V

An unfortunate end for old Marat, but at least his tub seems to have been a welcoming spot before this episode of unpleasantness. Can't say the same thing for our tub--well, that is to say, our tub, the one in our second-floor living space, as opposed to the tub downstairs in the rental unit. (Which is just as bad, but sufficient unto the day...)

It's been a long time since I snuggled down for a relaxing bath, because that would put me at eye level with the Caulk from Hell and its co-conspirator, the Grout Job Done by Monkeys. Grout story first: We wanted subway tile in this bathroom, which was a total gut; the walls we had to demolish (due to hopeless water damage) once were covered in subway tile, with a pretty pink decorative border below the bull-nose caps. (There is no point whatever in being a renovator unless you can throw around terms like "bull-nose caps.") We decided to do an old-fashioned-looking bathroom, and our contractor, "Mr. Stupid," in his one decent moment, suggested the addition of wainscotting.

He did not tell us that subway tiles, which usually appear virtually flush (as opposed to being spaced evenly to accommodate a grout line), are apparently best installed in what I believe is called a "mud job," squished right into the wet plaster or mortar or whatever. Instead, they were glued to the Wonderboard underneath with ceramic tile mastic--with no space for a grout line. I honestly don't recall if we were the original Tile Monkeys who did this, but it soon became apparent that one would either have to (a) squish grout into that teeny li'l crack between each tile and hope for the best, or (b) just let water seep in. And loosen the mastic. And then, loosen the tiles.

We sort of went for (a) and got (b) anyway. Then at some point, I hired a Tile Monkey to amend the situation, and he made matters much worse, slathering on grout that just sat atop the cracks like cake icing and flaked off in little plastery splinters into the bathwater. Meanwhile, the new construction sagged just a micro-tad, causing several of the tiles to develop hairline cracks; and of course the tub sank more than a tad, splitting open the caulk line. Then, to complete the horror, the latest application of caulk turned a ghastly black, and resisted every imaginable cleanser, including straight bleach from the bottle applied with a toothbrush.

Fortunately, Spouse and I are blind as bats without our glasses, and stepped into the shower year after year in denial about the full extent of the deterioration. But when several of the lowest course of tile flopped off, something had to be done. We took the Norm Abrams high road, of course, and taped plastic bags over the missing tile spots. For months, until they got really skanky. But enough is enough.

As you may recall, I had been planning to strip red paint off the floors for Lent. Instead, my penance seems to be grouting...preceded by a hideous several days' worth of removing the caulk with a chisel. (That's after the application of "caulk remover.") We've been using the little stall shower on the third floor for months while I postponed this ordeal, on the excuse that "the tub enclosure needed to dry out." Everyone is tired of trooping upstairs to perform their ablutions. Easy for them to complain--like Marat, they are not grouting. For some reason, I am the appointed CrazyStable Groutmistress--something to do, perhaps, with my experience frosting cakes?

I am now officially half-done. Or maybe just half-baked. I also suspect that the problem with the grout/subway tile installation actually had more to do with the monkeys than with the "mud job" or lack thereof--using a sponge to micro-squish it in, it seems to be coming along nicely (if laboriously). And today I even filed down a subway tile to make it fit a space that had mysteriously shrunk since it popped out. Next week, I caulk; ora pro nobis.