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for want of unmodified thinset
Saturday, October 2 2021
location: 800 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
I was up before 8:00am with some cold-brewed Starbucks-branded coffee I'd bought at Rite Aid in Amsterdam. I then continued unloading the Subaru, which I'd done most of last night. At some point I cut little firewood for the fire pit and had myself and had a nice morning fire to begin the day. The morning was chilly enough to call for such a thing.
Eventually John Sr. came walking up the driveway (I'm not sure why he didn't just drive; maybe he'd heard I drive an old Subaru and didn't want me to see his nice car) to meet with me and show me how the generator works. John Sr. wasn't big on small talk but kept prefacing most things he said with the expression "like a said," as if he'd already told me. Anyway, it turns out that I'm supposed to run the generator in manual mode (started with the blue button), since the automatic (green button) mode is intended for situations where it acts as a power backstop. But for the time being, the generator is the only source of power. I asked John Sr. if there was a way to make the generator any quieter, and he didn't have any ideas. At about that point John Jr. (the stoner plumber and John's son) arrived to install a different fitting on the boiler exhaust. And then they both left, meaning I that now my day would proceed completely uninterrupted (unless I received unexpected visitors).
I would be installing tile, but the only putty knife I had was down at the dock. So my first chore of the day was to transfer the long pieces of lumber from the Subaru roof rack to the dock. As always for this sort of thing, I first drove the communal dock and offloaded the lumber while the dogs milled around. I noted that the lake's water level appeared to be down about three or four inches from where it was last weekend.
After returning to the cabin and hiking through the woods down to our dock, I launched the canoe, bringing Ramona (but not Neville). I managed to get all three sixteen foot two by eights, the twelve foot two by eight, and the accidentally-purchased twelve foot two by ten into the canoe along with Ramona (riding in a narrow slot to the side of the lumber) for a successful one-trip delivery of this lumber across the lake to our dock. Meanwhile Neville had been snuffling along the shoreline as far as Ibrahim & Jackie's dock. At one point he was standing on the shoreline beaver lodge, causing a beaver to surface not far from my canoe to slap his or her tail on the lake's surface. At that point Ramona started whimpering with her FOMO noises, but she was so constrained by the lumber that she couldn't move about to destabilize canoe.
Usually Throckmorton the Loon is visible somewhere on the lake at all times, but today I didn't see him anywhere.
After unloading the canoe and dragging it ashore, I gathered up the masonry tools I'd stored at the dock and carried them with me to through the woods. I was in possible need of a heavy roller for installing the underlayment, so I walked to the north end of the lake to where I knew there was a pile of broken glass and old rusty steel pieces. On the way there, I heard something cussing at me. I thought it might be some boreal species of squirrel, but then I saw it; it was a fisher, and only about fifteen feet away at eye level. He looked at me with curiosity and surprise, but ran off when I went to take picture with my phone.
At the pile of old rusted steel, I found what looked to be the hub of an old truck wheel. I might not use it for underlayment installation, bit it might come in handy for securing a steel pole against a rocky lake bottom. It reminded me that I have a number of old brake disks I could use for the same purpose. Carrying that heavy hub (along with masonry tools and a possible Gymnopilus mushroom I wanted to identify) up through the cliffs of the red-marked trail wasn't easy, and I took numerous breaks along the way. By then it was just me and Ramona, and Neville would return to the cabin on his own a half hour later.
At some point I went for a work down the nascent Lake Edward Trail to where it peters out in the wetlands to the west of the hill our cabin is near the top of. While down there looking yet again for evidence of where the trail continues from there, I came across a well-developed ATV trail not far away. By this point I'd taken off my pants so I could shit most comfortably, and I was just carrying my pants in my hands. So I was a little alarmed when the trail led to human civilization. It turned out that the ATV trail led to the "redneck trailer" owned by the long-time lovers of Woodworth Lake, the guys Gretchen was having a mild culture clash with when she chatted with them as they were fishing on the lake several weeks ago. (This is also the family that includes the little girl whom I refer to as "Little Miss Sunshine.") But the redneck trailer was gone and there was just a clearing in the woods, a little firewood, and a few other manmade items. Apparently it's only there for the warm season. I hadn't realized their parcel [REDACTED] is so far downhill from our cabin; it seems Woodworth Lake Road's gradual climb upward makes the elevational difference not so noticeable. I walked back to the cabin on this road, whose gravel was a little uncomfortable on my bare feet. (By this point I was wearing my pants again!)
It was time for me to stop procrastinating and to begin work on the tiling the downstairs bathroom. But when I opened up the package of Schluter-DITRA underlayment, its cryptic bullet-point-only instructions seemed to suggest that only unmodified thinset was suitable for applying the material to the plywood subfloor. The thinset I'd bought was, well, heavily modified. There was no way I was going to take the risk of using the wrong thinset, so I loaded up the dogs and drove into Johnstown, having Google direct me to the Noble Ace hardware store on Comrie Avenue, Johnstown's motor mile. Noble is a big old-fashioned hardware store, and I kept finding things (such as more putty knives and especially sponges) to add to my tiny little shopping cart. The staff were super friendly and helpful when I tried to track down a bag of unmodified thinset, but unfortunately they didn't have any at all.
This sent me to the True Value in Gloversville, and by the time I got there, my road beer had me urgently needing to piss once more. Fortunately there a was a boarded-up old church nearby. I ducked behind the bushes there (where I found the rotting remains of an old homeless camp) and experienced sweet relief. Unfortunately, though, the shelves in the masonry section of the Gloverville True Value were barren, and there was no thinset of any form in stock at all (supply chain issues?). Without other options, I was forced to drive to Amsterdam, which has both a Lowes and a Home Depot. At the Lowes, I found what I needed. And, since I was nearby and very hungy, I took the opportunity to buy an Impossible Whopper and a large order of fries from the Burger King.
Back at the cabin, I greedily devoured first my fries and then my burger. I'd remembered to tell them to hold the mayonnaise this time, and it came with both lettuce and tomato, very much unlike the last time I ordered an Impossible Whopper at the exact same place. As always I saved a few (though, this time, not many) fries for the dogs.
Now it was time to get cracking on the tile installation. I fired up the generator so I'd have lighting in the bathroom and then cut out the pieces of Schluter-DITRA necessary to completely cover the floor. This was a fairly involved process in itself, and as I worked I kept thinking about how much I still needed to do just to tile the floor of this one little bathroom.
In order to get anything done today, I'd be working well after dark. So I set up some rooster-themed Art Deco desk lamps Ray had given me in the yard near the fire pit (near, that is, the front door), set up the wet saw, and proceeded to lay tile. The tile I'd be laying consisted of individual hexagons nearly two-inches across set in one foot by one foot arrays on a fibreglass mesh. Just to get started, I would have to cut the peaks off a sheet of hexagons so it would look nice against the wall. And I'd have to bisect the last column of hexagons on that same sheet so they'd look nice up against the bathtub. I hadn't ever cut arrays of meshed tiles on a wet saw before, and it took me awhile to get up to speed. The fence on the tile saw was useless in this application, since the meshed tiles were too flexible in relation to each other. I had to focus the blade on each individual tile, cutting in the approximate place I needed to cut. Precision wasn't actually all that important, since the size of the tiles ensured enough precision just by eyeballing things and, in some cases, measuring the width of available space. In some case where I removed tile (to, for example, accommodate the toilet drainage), whole tiles would have to be cut out of the mesh that could then be used in other places (such as filling in one last tranche in a row). I kept working this way until after 1:00am. At that point I ran out of unmodified thinset. I could've actually have used modified thinset for setting tile on top of the Schluter-DITRA, but it was a different color from what I had been using, so I thought it best to stick with what was working. Also, I noticed that the plumber had failed to plumb any cold or hot water to the sink area, and I didn't know if he would be coming up through the floor. So I stopped for the night. By then I'd used up over have the tile and, most importantly, I'd tiled the entire area around the toilet, meaning a toilet could be installed next week.
I ate some cannabis, cracked open a Hazy Little Thing, and joined the dogs on the futon; they'd already been sleeping for many hours.
The firepit this morning. In the foreground are the nice all-plastic Adirondack chairs I assembled last weekend.
The canoe, fully loaded with lumber, before setting off from the area of the communal dock. (The beach here is more suitable for loading cargo than the dock itself).
Ramona in the canoe with the cargo out in Woodworth Lake.
Ramona going ashore at the "tree dock" near where we are building our dock.
Ramona at the tree dock.
The disgusting remains of a homeless camp at the abandoned church in Gloverville.
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