Remedy Station

After the epic fail on Tuesday, we took a little break to figure out how to get out of the mess. I convinced Jesse to call the manufacturer of the Quick Set Self Leveling Cement just to let them know what happened, ask them if anyone else has had any problems with that batch, and see if they would take mercy on us. Luckily, Custom Building Products stands firmly behind all of their products and despite Jesse's errors, gladly agreed to set us up with five new bags of Quick Set. I couldn't believe it. Everyone go out and buy Custom Building Products stuff. They're great.

We also had a few things to work on from the inspection on Monday - adding nail plates to our studs, adding a clean-out to the kitchen sink drain, and testing our gas lines and sewer vents. The nail plates and clean-out were no problem. The problem came when we tried to test our gas line. It wouldn't even hold 1 psi. Jesse figured out it was a regulator at the meter so he went out and capped the line at the meter. He was able to pump it up - but it had some leaks...

To fix them, Jesse took the whole gas line apart and put it back together - tight. Super success - no gas is escaping from our lines!

Back to the mess in the kitchen...

Boy oh boy, what a mess.

After about two hours of working on it, Jesse gave up on his idea to chip down to a level point and then level it all out with an angle grinder.

He decided just to make some cuts and start chipping away so we could then use our five brand new bags of self-leveling cement to fill everything in and make a nice flat floor.

This is what he did...ALL DAY LONG!

All those chips sure do add up...
The only problem with that is that by the time I got home from work today, there was about 1/16th of an inch of dust covering the entire house.
I give up.
I am going to become one with the dust.
I love dust.
Dusty dust dust dust.
Done complaining.

The floor is all ready for the pouring of the cement - after I got down on my hands and knees to vacuum away any dust or cement chips that were left.

Boy, sometimes I wish we had a third person just to take pictures. Cheeba refuses to do it.
You should have seen us. We had two 5-gallon buckets going so we could rotate through them faster. I measured out the 6.5 quarts of water for each to start, then as I was operating the mixer Jesse was slowly adding the concrete, then I would finish mixing while he was adding water to the next bucket, then, at exactly two minutes, he'd grab the bucket and pour. While he was pouring, I'd be readying the next bucket by rinsing it out and measuring out the next water.
We didn't have watches on and we're both pretty spooked about what happened last time, so we'd watch the clock on the coffee maker and as soon as the minute advanced, we'd start in on the new batch.
Done! Kind of. We ran out of product but we've decided to just move on because most of what's left will be under cabinets anyway and Jesse can shim those out. There are a few little islands left and we'll grind those down in the morning.

We've canceled Independence Day due to being behind schedule (sad faces) but that gives us three whole days to work together on getting this done - as I have Friday off.
So here's the schedule:
Friday: grind down floor, Big Orange Box trip to purchase necessities, lay mortar onto our newly flattened floor, set travertine
Saturday: grout travertine
Sunday: jesse finishes (grind down built-up joint compound, level, add trim) the windows in the kitchen (they'll look similar to the living room windows) and corinne goes to work to get some time in on some side projects so we can eat.

It's going to be a long but productive one.