my home repair journey continued this weekend. Armed with the intent to fix the grouting, I started cleaning the grout around the soap dish. My curiosity got the best of me as I tried to figure out why the dish was loose in the first place. I mean, if the dish is loose then putting new grout around it isn’t going to fix the thing. It’s just going to continue to shake and we’ll have the same problem all over again.

So I shook. and I pulled. and I shook. and I started removing tiles. I got the thing out of the wall and found a couple surprises. First was the rotted wood and cement-board. Second was the back of the dish itself. What in the hell is this?
Supporting the entire dish was a hunk of plaster and crumpled newspaper. Great. I’m new to this, but aren’t you supposed to actually anchor this sort of thing in the wall?

So I decided that we don’t even need a freakin’ soap dish. It’d be so much easier to replace the tiles, sans dish. We went to Home Depot and Lowe’s to discover that they don’t make these tiles anymore. I figured they were just ubiquitous. Someplace had to have them. Hilary thought the same… so much so that she remembered her parents have the same tiles themselves. I’m happy to report that a set of authentic black-speckled fine ceramics are being imported from Maine, directly to our door (thanks guys!)

For those of you wondering, the date on the newspaper that was stuffed in the wall was Tuesday, November 14th, 1963. Who knew that a shoddy job would hold up for over 40 years?

Had an excellent friday evening at the Battaglia residence. Hilary posted a set of moderated pictures of the event HERE