Long day, short post

It's been a really long day and I'm really tired, so don't expect too much from this post...

Oh, who am I kidding? If you're reading this, you know better than to expect too much from any of my posts. I know, I know: shut up and make with the pictures.

Well, all right, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Our window of opportunity in terms of work was somewhat limited yesterday, owing to the fact that we'd invited some friends over for dinner without really noticing just how messy our house had become over the past few weeks. Between getting the kitchen/living room/dining table/bathroom cleaned up and presentable for our guests and running around all over town for booze and groceries (these aren't the kind of people for which you want to entertain without a skinful or two of good wine in your system), we had precious little time to work on the basement.

Today, however, was much better. We finally managed to tackle a job that I had long been dreading: the shower walls!

Rather than spend $53.00 (seriously!) on a 4-1/2" hole saw to cut the hole for the shower taps, we elected to use a 1" hole saw, followed by a series of 1/2" drill holes, followed by extensive Dremelling. Amazingly enough, it worked perfectly, and we got the hole in exactly the right position, and exactly the right size. Sure, it probably took us about an hour longer than it would have taken a professional to do the same job, but we're getting used to that. Sadly.

At any rate, we bolted the two halves of the shower together and then fitted the whole shebang into place:



Yes, the brown tape-like stuff is coming off, no, that isn't the color scheme for the bathroom.

We also -FINALLY- conquered that awful piece of drywall beside the bathroom door:



How did we manage that, you ask? Simple, I say: the War Department did what we should have done the first time and made a template:



Believe me, I was awfully close to stapling that piece of cardboard into place and then just playing dumb when Tony showed up to start the mudding.

"Cardboard? No way, man. That's top-quality drywall. Well, that's what they told us at Home Depot, anyway..."