way better DIY subway tile

The hunt for subway tile is worse than a needle in a haystack. It’s more like looking for that one black Lego with the triangular doodad on the front in a giant bin of Lego, which I can confidently say is WAY WORSE.

I digress. Subway tile is super popular. Clean lines, tons of ways to install. Hardy for floors or walls, showers and kitchens. The problem is since it’s a simple shape and a solid color, there are about a bajillion options, and buying online is difficult. Fortunately, after only 6 samples, I finally found a set I LOVE that came in a pure white and a lovely blue, with the end cap pieces I knew we’d need (La Riviera Blue Reef and La Riviera Blanc).

As always, long-suffering Hubs was willing to try creative patterns, so we ended up with a 1/3 offset — BUT since I don’t like the steps that get formed in a typical 1/3 pattern, this is a 1/3 offset vintage or some other weird names I found online.

The trickiest part for us was the transition to the shower color — and truly, it could not have turned out more perfect. Hubs has skillz.

What I love about this tile is the super-shiny finish combined with the heavy texture. It has so much depth with its hand-scraped finish.

For our first line, we measured from where the top of the tile would be down to the floor and cut the bottom tile so we knew the top line would be a complete tile. Note: when you do this math be sure you include the grout width. Meaning if your tile is 2-1/2” high and you’re grouting 1/16th”, you need to do the math on 16 tiles as 2.5625” x 16 tiles to get to 41”. Otherwise, you’ll be a full inch short and think that 16 tiles is 40”.

Make sure you’re level on the wall and NOT using the floor as your level, because unless your house was built by the Lego company, it isn’t perfectly level. This will catch up with you and ruin your tile.

We are using chair rail caps at the top so you can see we space planned for this as well.

To get the tiles perfectly spaced, we used x-shaped tile spacers. These are really handy to help on long tiles where you could easily end up cockeyed if you don’t put in several. It also reduces tile slide as gravity is always your enemy on the wall tile.

As we worked, we had plumbing to work around, so there was a good deal of trimming. The wet tile saw is still the way to go, like we did upstairs on my hexagon tiles. It makes clean cuts and doesn’t leave the edges all chipped.

The best process for tiles is to get a row going while you have the concrete wet, so if you have a lot of cutting to do, try to cut a few at a time so your grout isn’t up there setting while you run and measure.

For the small pieces, we often put in multiple grout spaces and then used painters tape to make sure they didn’t fall off. There’s just not a ton of grip when the quickset is fresh. You can see that in some of the pictures, but fortunately because he did a lot of planning, Hubs was able to avoid most tiny cuts.

Because we were working during the supply chain disruptions of 2021 , you’ll see we were getting single boxes of tile and were working on the floor at the same time. (That was not ideal.)

After all the tile was up and dried, the tile spacers come up and then you step on them for six weeks, mostly in bare feet, and it hurts like a Lego.

Then all the tiles get a good scrubbie cleaning and you can get on to grout!

Grout is a lot of pressing. Schlep it on the wall, press it in with a tile float, press it again, wipe it off with a wet sponge, press it again, keep going back, screech a little that there’s still a missing spot, press it again, wipe it again, lean back and rub the top of your head while you inspect. At least that seems to be the process Hubs follows. (Note: at the end there is a lot of grout in his hair.)

We wanted a medium contrast to the white, so we selected a medium grey. I know people are into bright and super-contrast grout right now, but royal blue or black doesn’t feel timeless to me. I never want to hate our DIY in five years because we were too trendy. Maybe I still will but at least I tried. And it’s still better than the pink cherub butts we took down.

I have a lot of “after pictures” but since you can already see some sneak peeks of the floor even though I’m TRYING to keep is hidden…. you know where we’re headed.

Stay tuned for the shower tile next time! Then the floor… and we’re finally getting back to a functional restroom! And stunningly beautiful, if I can say that about something I had like 0.4% to do with creating…

get your bathroom ready for tile

You know how you see all those pins about how you can paint furniture with no prep? Paint your walls with no prep? Concrete your counter with no prep? Well, they lie. That job will look terrible in, like, maybe a week. If you’re lucky. It will peel, chip, not adhere — and everything else.

Prep work isn’t fun. It isn’t appealing. It’s drudgery. And it’s also the only thing that will make your DIY work last and look good. Put the time into the prep.

How do you get the bathroom ready for tile?

1. Plan your space.

2. Prep the mechanics: plumbing, electric, etc.

3. Use the right materials.

4. Install the materials correctly.

5. Waterproof everything.

Here’s what it looked like for us!

Rough plumbing was set up from our last step. We just had to make sure everything was in the right place before we closed up. That means measuring the shower head, standing in the shower and making sure it looked right. That also meant putting my shampoo bottles on the roughed-in shelf to make sure they were deep enough and tall enough. (If you have long hair or shop at Costco, you also know about the 6-gallon drum of shampoo.) We also determined exactly where we wanted the new light switches and electrical outlets. This is also when we installed the tub drain, which was one of those things that should have been simple and wasn’t because the floor joists were placed off just enough that there wasn’t space—but a 30-minute (slightly grumpy) sawzall detour, and Hubs got it in.

Once the “guts” were all in place, there was a lot of measuring, followed by drywall and concrete board cutting. Then there’s a lot of awkward lifting and grunting while you get them into place. Attach, then you seal and sand and seal and sand until you’re old and grey and Hubs will still say it isn’t 100% perfect so you’ll bicker that 46 coats is really the perfect number…

Once all the walls are in place, the shower pan can go in. We got lucky that the tub we removed was a standard size, so this was an easy find at Home Depot.

Once the pan was installed correctly, it was time to begin the waterproofing. Now, waterproofing (as we learned in our upstairs bathroom reno) is a smelly and very pink process. It involves cutting and shaping the waterproof edge tape (we used Kurdy tape) around corner after corner, snipping and measuring until everything’s covered and you can move on to the waterproof application. It goes on like paint, and smells way worse. Vent-i-late, my friends.

For the parts of the bathroom that weren’t in the shower, we sealed the seams and edges with more Kurdy tape and thinset. Lastly, we installed the guts of the ceiling light/fan but kept the cover off while we repainted the ceiling.

Next step…. let the tiling begin!! You’ve never seen such fantastic subway tile…

DIY bathroom early stages - insulation, rough plumbing, subfloor, and plaster patches

Bathroom renovation is more than knocking down the old tiles and putting up new ones. There are a lot of unexciting steps in between that have to be done right. You know the old adage, build your house on a solid foundation…

Insulation is important for many reasons - temperature control and noise reduction being prime benefits. In our case, it also helped shore up a thin wall to give the concrete board something to press against to create the very solid backing we wanted for our new tiles.

We used solid purple foam insulation that we slid up the gaps between the studs as far as possible in small increments. We toyed with tearing down all the plaster, but it was in such good shape, we decided to keep it. Plus, we were lucky and that’s an interior wall. So our bedroom on the other side is fully temperature controlled so a little co-mingling of temps would be a-ok.

Also — our son thinks Dady did a gOOd joB!

After the insulation was installed, it was time for some rough plumbing. This is the part where you measure everything to ensure your fixes are going to fit. It was an opportunity for us to attach things more effectively so there was less pipe banging and thwacking when you turn on the water.

The toilet and sink positioning were fine from before, so we left those. We ran new plumbing for the shower because we were changing to a different style of faucet in there. Additionally, since we were switching to a radiator, the job of adjusting the water lines was substantial.

We moved on to the new subfloor next. We needed the height to match the floor in the rest of the house so there wasn’t a tripping hazard at the threshold. The jigsaw puzzle of getting all the holes right isn’t the complex part the way you’d think. We got the toilet hole right the first step. The trick was how uneven the walls were. So even when we had the angle right, we were running into small arching sections that managed to look visually straight and somehow weren’t. OYE. We finally got it, though, and fixed that baby to the floor TIGHT to reduce squeaking. We are very anti-floor-squeak in this house!

We also prepped the sewer pipe for the toilet with a new flange that 100000% looks like Iron Man’s arc reactor.

Once we’d murdered our fingers scraping off the remaining tile glue, it was time to fix the wall up. There were holes from the plumbing work that we’d just made, but there were also large holes that had previously been behind the large mirror from an old medicine cabinet and toothbrush holder. There were also two holes from a towel bar that had been in the shower, over the tub.

Plaster patches are not very fun. There are a lot of steps to get it right. We’ve all seen lumpy walls… terrible. Paint can’t hide that. So it’s mud and sand and mud and sand and mud and sand and mud and sand and mud and sand and then you repeat…

Stay tuned next time for the exciting start of work on the shower!!

the scarlet letter

Think back to high school lit. The copy of The Scarlet Letter I read was a Penguin Classic, so it was mostly black with a few letters and a big red A. It’s 1642, and Hester Prynne is standing on a scaffold in the center of town, facing public humiliation. She made a choice that conflicted with the prevailing cultural ethics of the time and is sentenced to wear a giant red A to define her as an adulteress for the rest of her life.

The sentence of shunning and the false morality are both delivered courtesy of the colony’s three government leaders: the reverend, the minister, and the governor.

But good news—the Puritan colony survives beautifully, because community oppression works! The self-righteous townspeople are so giddy to participate in the shaming and ostracization of Hester and her daughter that the sin-spread their leaders swore was coming never happens! The shame-bullies win!

No wait.

I think… maybe that wasn’t Nathaniel Hawthorne’s point.

Many of you can attest from personal experience that if you make one choice that conflicts with the capriciously unpredictable morality of the culture, everyone else is so pleased to judge a new penultimate sin that they happily join in the shame show.

It doesn’t matter that you’re a pack-a-day smoker right now, if you make *that one good choice*. You are a picture of health. America thanks you!

It doesn’t matter if you weigh 450 pounds, if you make *that one good choice*. You are helping to keep America’s hospital beds empty! You have made excellent choices to care for your body! Thank you!

It doesn’t matter if you let your potty-mouthed elementary-age children watch R-rated movies, play violent video games 4 hours a day, eat Hot Pockets dipped in Mountain Dew for breakfast, or have played tackle football since age 7. If you took your 12-year-old for *that one good choice*, you’re America’s parent of the year! Thank you for raising the next generation properly!

Honestly, worse than that hypocrisy is the opposite.

If doesn’t matter if you worked extras shifts as a “healthcare hero” through the worst months of 2020, if you have any hesitancy about making *that one mandated choice*, you’re unequivocally a selfish monster.

It doesn’t matter if you have a beloved family member who experienced a terribly unfortunate reaction after making *that one good choice*, if you have nerves about taking *that one mandated choice*, you’re unequivocally a selfish monster.

If doesn’t matter if you have a history of Bell’s Palsy or Guillain-Barre syndrome. If you feel anxiety about those life-altering conditions returning with *that one mandated choice*, you’re unequivocally a selfish monster.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a pregnant or breastfeeding mother who’s avoided sushi, soft cheeses, lunch meat, sleeping on your right side, and maybe has a history of miscarriage or infant death and wants to try and do everything 100% naturally because you just feel emotionally you can’t handle any more unknowns. If you haven’t made *that one mandated choice*, you’re unequivocally a selfish monster.

Just as a random example, it doesn’t matter if you’ve been a foster parent for eight+ years, taking medically needy children into your home for the better part of a decade, including a preemie addicted to cocaine and a NICU baby whose intestines were formed on the outside of their abdomen and a newborn who has hyperinsulinism among others. If you haven’t made *that one mandated choice* because you feel like you’d be more comfortable with a longer trial period and more transparent reaction-reporting procedures, you’re unequivocally a selfish monster who should never have gone into a career in healthcare.

(Obviously, this is a hypothetical.)

The simple fact is that if the townspeople hadn’t participated, the government would have never been able to ruin Hester’s life. Three people condemning her from the front of the crowd didn’t make her life hell, the people IN the crowd did.

If the townspeople hadn’t participated in shunning her for her personal choice, the government squawking would have amounted to nothing. But the people did participate, gladly. They literally took the shirt off her back to label her as unwanted, undesirable, the worst of society.

So, hey, if this is you—congratulations on being part of the angry mob that puts real people on the scaffold in town square (or on social media or in your family) because of your ever-changing, ever-evolving, goalpost-moving false morality.

If you took an honest look at yourself, I bet you’d find out why you’re so delighted that ‘those people’ are the current subject of societal disdain.

Because at least it isn’t you.

Yet.

Lancaster Newspapers is putting your family in danger by refusing to report how bad things have gotten at LGH.

Yesterday, the Lancaster Newspapers’ propaganda machine reports that LGH’s vaccine mandate has ‘worked.’ They are celebrating that—by removing the basic right to medical freedom and bodily autonomy from their staff—they have raised the vaccination rate from 66% to 98%! Yay for tyranny! But even though the headline is a lie (we call it clickbait now to call a lie a nicer word), even the article admits all they’ve done is given out hundreds of medical and religious waivers just to keep the doors open. Their mandate may have increased under-duress, violation-of-medical-ethics vaccinations – but the true results of the mandate are increased (1) quitting and (2) exemptions to vaccine mandates. It has also (1) decreased morale and (2) decreased their ability to deliver quality patient care.

LGH decimated their staff volume massively to get to this high-pitched, headline-screeching 97.5% rate. And, the devastating exodus continues. Here’s the graph I showed you at the beginning of August with an update added. It’s so much worse than I would have even feared. Do you see that the first jump shows a time change of 26 weeks (half a year) and the second jump is over less than three weeks? You and your sick child are going to walk into the doors of LGH when you need help and find a ghost town.

Do you see all the open jobs? LGH’s new mafia enforcer CEO and his gangster hitmen have been running all the undesirables out of the hospital. They are ridding LGH of those losers we don’t want: the three-decades-experienced pediatric nurses, the four-decades-of-service-heart-of-gold dining services staffer, the 15-year veteran of non-invasive cardiology, and the beloved gerontology nurse practitioner – you know, all the gross ‘non-compliant’ people who don’t want to show their papers to come to work. All the nut jobs, the conspiracy theorists who have read… um… any history book, ever, and see that we should all know it’s a bad plan to allow someone to control your freedom over your own body.

Read the article for the quote from the expert who says, “This is not the way to raise vaccination rates,” then goes on to add that “a staffing shortage exacerbated by the pandemic means the loss of a single employee could be disastrous.” And yet, we are supposed to celebrate that this is precisely what they are doing at the hospital you’ll need if your daughter wrecks her bike, if your mom finds a lump in her breast, or your pastor starts experiencing chest pain.

This mandate of Penn’s that LGH is blindly swallowing is making Lancaster a more dangerous place to live, to work, to raise a family. The patient care level at our hospital is suffering because of their politics. The mandatory-leave papers were distributed last week in advance of the mass firings. How many nurses, how many wound care specialists, how many behavioral health counselors, how many technologists, how many phlebotomists have their last day of service on Tuesday? How many more will leave as the stampede continues?

And the big question: how long will you let this go on before you tell LGH to grow a backbone and stand up for our healthcare workers?

Here’s what you need to do.

• Bang on the bully-in-chief’s door and tell him his New Orleans mafia tactics are not welcome here. Tell him we know that Penn Medicine brought him in as a big-city enforcer to get backwoods little Lancaster to crumble. But we are standing, in his line of fire, together anyway.

• Don’t let LGH’s upper management and board continue to be spineless. Jan Bergen, LGH’s former CEO, worked in the ranks here and used to come to staff huddles. Now, their ivory tower leadership hides and ducks any staff contact, cancelling meetings and refusing phone calls.

If you’re reading this, you went to school with someone in leadership at LGH. You’re friends on Facebook. You golf with somebody on the LGH board. You go to church with their Director of XYZ. Your son plays on the same soccer team as the daughter of their Manager of something-of-other. TELL THEM WHAT YOU THINK. SPEAK UP. REMIND THEM THAT THEY ARE IN THIS POSITION TO KEEP OUR COMMUNITY SAFE, AND A SAFE COMMUNITY HAS A WELL-STAFFED HOSPITAL NOT A SKELETON CREW THAT CAN BARELY KEEP THE LIGHTS ON.

• Demand Lancaster Newspapers actually do their job as journalists.

If you’re a local, you are going to wind up at LGH or another Penn facility at some point – whether you have COVID, a car accident, cancer, or a baby to deliver – and you’re going to pay the price for not speaking up. This mandate is destroying our hospital, and your silence is letting them destroy Lancaster’s healthcare quality a piece at a time.

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LG Leaders Contact Info

Alex Jorgensen, Chief of Human Resources
alexandra.jorgensen@pennmedicine.upenn.edu | 717-544-1210

John Lines, PR Director
john.lines@pennmedicine.upenn.edu | 717-544-5054

Mike Ripchinski, Chief Clinical Officer
michael.ripchinski@pennmedicine.upenn.edu | 717-544-5817

Stacey Youcis, Chief of Hospital Operations
stacey.youcis@pennmedicine.upenn.edu | 717-544-5007

Note: You’ll see above, I’m saying may have increased vaccination rates, because they haven’t actually told us if there’s been a vaccination rate change. They’ve reported there’s a change in the rate of ‘compliance,’ a number they admit includes all those who been granted exemptions and remain unvaccinated.

Competitors are reaping the benefits of the massive LGH staff exodus

I don’t think Lancaster General Hospital’s new out-of-town and out-of-touch leaders get out of bed in the morning determined to run your hometown hospital into the ground.

But that’s what they’re doing.

Here’s how: local competitors are reaping the benefits of LGH attacking and destroying itself from the inside.

When you’re on a fake moral crusade, business sense goes out the window.

I showed you last time how bad LGH’s hiring catastrophe has become, but that was an internal look. Now we’re going to look at the bigger picture, and ask, what’s the rest of the central PA health system doing?

Anecdotal wisdom has led a lot of people to say things like, “Boy, Hershey and Ephrata are lucky that we’re handing them all these good nurses,” or, “I guess Penn State’s gonna have an easy time staffing their new hospital in Landisville.”

Is that true? Let’s compare LGH’s situation to the local competitors that, unlike bullying Penn Medicine, have thus far refused to label a huge percentage of their own healthcare professionals as miseducated, foolish, or irresponsible.

Again, courtesy of the nonprofit internet Wayback Machine, this is all publicly available and verifiable information. (Links at the end.) Here is LGH compared to the four closest hospitals of (somewhat) similar size.

Since early 2021, LGH has now almost doubled in its need for employees. (rubs eyes and looks again)

One of these things is not like the others. It doesn’t appear that the economy or the strange worldwide circumstances can be blamed. No one else seems to be experiencing a stampede out the door… In fact, Hershey has 486 LESS openings than they did before LGH ordained this mandate.

Shoot. That’s awfully telling.

But, to be fair, these facilities are not the same size, so let’s look at the data as percentages instead of hard numbers.

(Gasp) What’s happened to LGH’s competitors? My goodness, it’s almost as though these other hospitals know something Penn Medicine doesn’t. It’s almost like Hershey in particular is suddenly experiencing an influx of talented, educated healthcare professionals to fill all their available positions!

What could this source be? What secret do they know that LGH does not?

Where, oh where, are they getting all these registered nurses? Where, oh where, are they finding all these surgical techs? Where, oh where, are they getting LPNs, care managers, laundry workers, clinical research coordinators, lab supervisors, transporters, medical assistants, and utility plant operations mechanics?

Where could LGH’s competitors be getting all these great employees?

Generally accepted business wisdom will confirm an organization’s people are its most important asset. Even at the best restaurant, food isn’t going to prepare and serve itself. Even at Apple or HP, technology doesn’t sell itself. No matter what state-of-the-art medical equipment you put in a building, that plastic isn’t going to treat patients without skilled healthcare professionals.

People matter. More than just bodies in a space, well-trained, dedicated employees matter the most to move the needle from good to great.

Lancaster General Hospital must stop throwing away many well-trained, dedicated employees. These are the nurses who made this place a MAGNET hospital. These are the staffers who were recognized for the US News & World Report Ranking, the Blue Distinction, the OSHA VPP, and the Joint Commission Certification. These are the people who built the LGH legacy.

Why is middle management bullying x-ray techs, security team members, dining services staffers, phlebotomists, housekeepers, and nurses out through a mandate designed to limit an educated healthcare professional’s autonomy over his/her own body?

I hope you like driving to Ephrata, York, or Hershey for care because LGH’s talent pool is shrinking by the day.

Lancaster, you deserve better from your hospital. Tell LGH that Penn Medicine’s mandate has got to go.

Use the phone numbers and email addresses I’m giving you, and get involved to support the legal defense fund for the healthcare workers who want to maintain bodily autonomy.

And, once more, because some of you are still reading what you imagine to be here instead of what is actually here: I am NOT advocating for or against any medicine or medical procedure. I am NOT suggesting we take away anything people need or give them something they don’t want. I am explaining to the spineless leaders at my local hospital with numbers and pretty charts that it is a bad business decision for LGH to be hemorrhaging valuable employees to their competitors. 

Wayback Machine Links

LGH (archived by Wayback on Feb. 4, 20210)

WellSpan Ephrata (archived by Wayback on Jan. 21, 2021)

WellSpan York (archived by Wayback on Jan. 24, 2021)

Penn State Hershey (archived by Wayback on April 23, 2021)

UPMC York (archived by Wayback on Jan. 25, 2021)

If you want to know what the internet Wayback machine is, do not email me and ask. Read this.

Current hiring numbers were accessed on Aug. 13, 2021

LGH

WellSpan Ephrata

WellSpan York

Penn State Hershey

UPMC York

LG Leaders Contact Info

Alex Jorgensen, Chief of Human Resources
alexandra.jorgensen@pennmedicine.upenn.edu | 717-544-1210

John Lines, PR Director
john.lines@pennmedicine.upenn.edu | 717-544-5054

Mike Ripchinski, Chief Clinical Officer
michael.ripchinski@pennmedicine.upenn.edu | 717-544-5817

Stacey Youcis, Chief of Hospital Operations
stacey.youcis@pennmedicine.upenn.edu | 717-544-5007