Essays
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Lost & Found
Like most accomplishments, successful remodeling projects require both creativity and perseverance.
I was standing in the aisle at the hardware store while three men shook their heads at me. The teenage shelf stocker had no idea what I was looking for, the clerk thought there might be something back in aisle eight, and the customer who interjected himself in the overheard conversation said, "You can't do that. Who told you you could?"
I'm used to getting this kind of response at hardware stores. Twenty years ago, I got the same thing when looking for a natural sponge to apply paint to my dining room walls. I once made "window treatments" by stringing leftover muslin through leftover plant hooks. When I was fencing my yard and couldn't find cast iron gates, I made some out of what were meant to be shoe scrapers.
Let me assure you, all this inventiveness is not Martha Stewart-inspired. It's because I'm cheap. With an old rag, a beat up brush and a quart of watered-down paint, you can do an awful lot of "specialty painting." Of course, you can now find the same tools I dragged out of the barn in special displays at any hardware store, and even pay extra for them.
This time, I was looking for a tool to rough up existing tile so it would hold new tile. I wanted to jazz up the small, dark kitchen in my new/old house with a mosaic of colors on the backsplash that ran around the room. My first thought had been to cut up self-adhesive vinyl tile. To this idea, I got a lot of "That's not the recommended application procedure." I discovered that this meant the vinyl might not stay put for the next fifty years. I assured various sales people that by then I would have moved, changed my mind, or be dead. But I abandoned the vinyl idea when I found I had to buy large boxes and it came in only a few colors.
When I started asking about ceramic tile, I got the same response six or seven times. Then I called an old, family run store where they said, "Well, we've got all kinds of stuff here. Why don't you just stop by and we can figure something out?" I did, and we did. I was lucky this time. I got a sales person who was intrigued rather than stymied, who took the time to think things through, call around, find options, and then brought out a professional tile installer to explain to me, step-by-step, exactly what I'd need to do. I bought the smallest quantities I could of 2X2 inch tiles set in sheets, separated by plastic spacers. I cut the sheets apart until I had stacks of individual tiles in eleven different colors. To prep the existing tile, I needed a stone to break the slick surface so it would accept a skim coat of filler and then adhesive. (It turns out this is a fairly standard tool.) When it came to applying the tile, I remembered the stern look of the weekend handyman and did just a small section, fully expecting to find the tiles fallen to the floor the next morning. But they stayed put, as did all the others I applied, and now I have a vibrant mosaic that's even more interesting than I originally envisioned.
Perhaps this is the lesson of following crooked paths to implement odd ideas: the results have always more than paid off perseverance in the face of nay Sayers. Even more important, the process of discovery-uncovering painting tools in a tack shop, making trellises from discarded grape vines, turning five and dime finds into something artful-turn what should be a chore into a rewarding creative exploration.