Project was not an improvement

Editor’s note: This column is being reprinted from Oct. 20, 2004. Jack liked to take on projects. Occasionally, they probably went better than the one he describes here.

Somewhere along the line I forgot a couple of the basic rules of do-it-yourselfing.

First, you don’t know as much as you think you know.

Second, it’s never as easy as it looks on television.

For months now, a remodeling job on our kitchen has been 95 percent complete. Just a couple of things needed to be done. Two baseboard radiators needed to be painted, and the backsplash behind the kitchen counter needed to be tiled.

A weekend full of visitors on the calendar gave us all the incentive we needed to take them on. But, as usual with home improvement projects, ambition and confidence weren’t all the tools we needed.

Connie zipped through the painting project in no time. But the tiling was another matter. It was something we’d never done and required a leap of faith on our part.

It also required a tile saw. Fortunately, our next-door neighbor — Roger Jonas, the kind of guy who sets world standards when it comes to do-it-yourself projects — had a tile saw and offered to lend it. More importantly, he offered a few minutes of instruction on how to operate it safely.

(Thanks to Roger, I’m writing this column with all of my fingers intact.)

So, with a deadline ahead, the tiles and tools at hand, and more confidence than good sense, we took on the first tiling project of our lives.

And to our great surprise, it went well.

We plotted things out first together on the counter. Most of the tiles are plain, but there are five we had made by a glassmaker we know in New Hampshire. Our plan was to drop them in pretty much randomly.

Then Connie focused on handling the adhesive and spacers, while I operated the saw and did the measuring.

End result: A tiled backsplash after only a couple of evenings of light work. It looked beautiful.

Except for one thing. It wasn’t finished.

The tile was up, but it wasn’t grouted.

No problem, we told ourselves, we can handle that.

(In retrospect, it was probably at that moment things got away from us.)

Not knowing exactly what we were doing, we probably bought the wrong grout. We picked up an expoxy grout, figuring that we’d save on labor since it was billed as self-sealing.

By now, the calendar was getting crowded and our weekend full of guests was getting closer and closer.

So we had only one night available to take on the job.

It was almost 6 p.m. as I read and re-read through the instructions. The label said to take part A and mix it with part B, then add part C.

It sounded simple enough. I pulled the stove away from the wall, making sure I’d start the process in a section of backsplash which would be permanently hidden. It was the smartest thing I did all night.

“I think I’d better mix this outside,” I said, figuring that the chemicals in part A and part B might give off a stink when mixed. It was about that time I also noticed that the instructions said to mix the different parts with a special attachment on a variable speed drill.

I didn’t have a variable speed drill. I had a paint-stirring stick. And too much self-confidence.

Stepping out the back door with a bucket, a stirring stick, and parts A, B, and C, I walked onto the leaf-covered patio and immediately stepped into a deposit the dog had left behind amid the leaves.

“This stuff sure smells funny,” I thought as I stirred. Parts A and B did their thing pretty well, but part C didn’t want to blend in. I stirred and stirred and smelled and smelled, oblivious of the mess I’d stepped into which covered the soles of my shoes.

I was equally oblivious when I took the grout mixture back into the kitchen.

“What’s that smell?” Connie asked.

I still figured it was the grout and was stirring the stuff as fast as I could, kicking myself for not owning a variable speed drill.

“What did you step in?” she said.

And then I noticed it. The grout — which was gritty and virtually unmixable — didn’t smell. My shoes did. So did the tracks I’d made up the back steps, through the back door, and across the kitchen floor.

Because this is a family newspaper, I can’t give you an accurate account of what I said at that point. Let’s just say I kicked my shoes out the back door into the October darkness and said something appropriate to the dog.

Scurrying back to the tile, I loaded up a float with the not-properly-mixed, probably-the-wrong-kind-for-this-application grout, and did what I’d seen people do a thousand times on HGTV.

Only this time, instead of behaving like grout, the stuff behaved like the material on my smelly shoes. Instead of easing into the cracks, it dropped on the floor with a reproachful “plopping” sound.

Connie, meanwhile, was trying to clean up the dog-induced mess I’d created. The kitchen fan was going full tilt to try to remove the smell.

She was throwing a door mat away and had a mop in her hand.

“This ain’t workin’,” I said, as if talking like a handyman were going to transform me into a handyman.

“Then quit,” she said.

To her credit, she did not add, “before you do any more damage, you idiot.”

She didn’t have to. I heard the words in my head anyway.

I also heard a third rule of do-it-yourselfing which I’ll never forget: Watch where you step.