Zen like spa bathroom...or not

I am a do it yourself kind of girl. I have a really hard time sitting back and letting someone else do something that I know is going to be screwy. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I can be controlling, but I try so hard not to be. Sometimes, I err so much on the side of caution that I could just kick myself for not being more controlling.

Once again, our tile is screwed up. This bathroom that seems like it will never be completed is causing me heartache and pain. We are still waiting for the rest of the tile mosaic to replace the mosaic that got trashed in the last debacle, but meanwhile the rest of the tile has gone up and looked good. So yesterday, the grout went down. I should have known something was amiss when the tile guy had to get a second bag of grout to finish the shower floor. A 25 lb bag of grout should have handily covered the shower walls, floor, and the rest of the bathroom floor. At 6pm, I discovered that he needed more grout because he had grouted the river rock shower floor so it was all level.

That is right - river rock covered in grout to the point that you couldn't really even see it. The point of having a rock floor is so you can have a zen spa like shower experience. You want to feel the rocks beneath your feet. We even had the rock in our house for a few weeks before deciding to use it to be sure we were OK with the bumpy feel. So he made us a grout shower floor like you see in a really old grubby locker room shower.

Well, he stayed and removed some grout. Then he removed some more. Then at around 8pm, he went home. This morning I looked and while you can see some rocks, there is still way too much grout and when you stand on it you can't feel any rocks. So what's the point? Why did I pick out this great rock floor if it is just like regular tile? Oh boy. There was a grout haze still on all the tiles too, which I know is a bad idea because I have made the mistake of letting it sit too long myself. We have a perm ant haze in our hall bath, and there was no way I was letting that happen again here - I washed the shower walls and bathroom floor this morning before honey left for work and they look much better. So this morning I called to talk to the "boss" and they will fix it....of course they will. But honestly that is not the point. The point is that I am paying for someone else to do this and do it right. There is NO REASON that I should have to be a fly buzzing and buzzing around to be sure things are done right. Nor is there any reason I should have to be reading grout and tile specs when others have not checked them out themselves... I should get a cut of the labor cost at this point as I am acting GC most of the time.

So now the shower floor has to come out. And we have to order more tile. And it needs to be reinstalled. And re-grouted. I think I won't do the math because it might make me ill, but I bet it would have been much less expensive for me to have them get to the point where the bath was tile ready, hire a nanny for two weeks and just do it myself. We still have no closet and our clothes are all in the guest room where we will have guests next week. We have no light fixtures or switches installed as of yet. We have no paint on the walls...it seems while we are dealing with all the tile headaches that we could have made some headway on the other parts of the work. I am so close to just doing the wiring myself. I think if I wasn't blogging right now that is what I would be doing.