Durock: Sheetrock With An Attitude

Whooosh!
What was that?
Five months of life passing by.

a dizzying Haiku

"You've gotta put Durock under a tiled floor", the sales dude advises. "You work with it just like sheetrock", the sales dude said. "Just score it and snap it", he says. Yeah, hmm, uh huh. D'ja ever try to cut a sidewalk with a utility knife?

Durock might best be described as a thin slab of cement, reinforced with fiberglass on both sides. Installing it in the master bathroom in our investment property, I quickly learned that it works like sheetrock the same way that a firehose works like a water pistol. If you're persistent with a knife, you can cut through the outer veneer of concrete, through the front side's fiberglass mesh (which is what keeps the whole thing from crumbling into little rocks), and score the inner slab. Then, you brace the back side along the cut, protect your eyes from flying shards and cement dust (that smarts), and gingerly throw all your weight into both sides. If the cut was deep enough, you get a reasonably smooth break. If not, you get a bunch of concrete pebbles clinging to the mother board via fiberglass. What a delightful material!

Anyway, Monday evening I got it installed, and about an hour later had the tile set. I'll be back for another long working weekend to grout, finish some plumbing, set the hopper, and move on to the half bath. We're hoping to get most of the remaining work done in the next two weeks so the place can be listed in early November. This project has consumed all available resources this year, so we're very ready to wrap it up and get our lives back.

The one event this year that you might call a break was our trip in August to the Shaklee National Convention in Chicago. It was a lot of fun and much was learned, but it wasn't a vacation by any stretch, and the kids weren't with us, either. Anyway, there's some highlights from the days' events here and here if you're interested.

I also had a working trip to Chicago in July. A good friend works for a company that contracts with The Weather Channel to travel around the country to run what they call The Weather Wall. It's part of an educational program TWC sponsors, 'weather camps', usually for kids, where they get to do a weather report in front of a blue screen, with clips of TWC weather maps playing in the background. Each kid gets a keepsake tape or DVD of their performance. So, this video company was overbooked one weekend in July, and Erin and I got to drive the equipment to a Boys and Girls Club in Chicago to do the Weather Wall for their weather camp. It was a tiring but fun and interesting weekend.

After that drive, I can safely say that 98% of all the world's corn comes from Indiana.

That's where most of the time has flown so far this year. We're anxiously awaiting some down time so we can take care of our own home, and just be still. Scarce resources will probably nix any family traveling this year, but it's looking like Pop and Joe might come up for Thanksgiving, so that will be Good.

Take care, y'all!