Dear Gabby:

I have a personal preservation problem on my hands, and I need your help again.

Your advice to take two weeks off from the office and work on my house was
inspired.  It sure has improved my marital relationship.  Especially
getting the master bath finally finished; after all, it has been four years
since we moved in following the big rehab push.  I know that your interests
really fall into the area of historic loos, not so much this modern water
closet compartments business, but that's what my 1926 house had when it was
built, and therefore I cannot restore a loo.  But she sure is shiny now,
all those white porcelain fixtures, white tile wainscot grout joints
freshened up with grout colorant, original fixtures replated with nickel,
light fixtures polished and relaquered, plaster patched, floor re-grouted,
wood stripped and repainted.  Yep, we have conquered the germ.

Not having had the pedestal sink for six months, that was the final straw.
It was really unfortunate timing to remove the sink to work on the 1" hex
tile floor grout joints a few days before that car pulled in front of my
road bike while I was going 25 mph.  It's hard to scratch those joints with
a severely sprained wrist.  But your friend John Leeke's tip about the
linoleum knife was really good; I only wore down to a nubbin four of them,
instead of probably about forty of the little teeny weeny tiny screw
drivers...filing the knife blade point to a thin profile works better than
filing the screwdriver.  To paraphrase the good man Bryan, there was much
pretending: "Pretend you are in your aerobics class - 'Come on now, scratch
- scratch, work it out - scratch - scratch - do it right - three - four -
make it hurt - three - four. Left hand - scratch - scratch - Right hand -
scratch - scratch. Can you feel the burn - scratch - scratch - work it out
- scratch - scratch' "

But I must tell you that this project has seriously impacted my
personal/professional preservationeerista standards, and posed me with a
grave dilemma.  Each tile has six five-eighths inch long edges, each shared
with six other tiles.  By my calculations, I have engaged in scratching out
approximately 933 linear feet of joints.  This is only sixty feet short of
the height of the Eiffel Tower, and just over three times the height of the
Statue of Liberty (including the base) with which you may be more familiar.


My dilemma?  It was somewhere around reaching the second Statue of Liberty
that I began to seriously question my devotion to original fabric.  I know
that we are supposed to retain it wherever possible, but I was confronted
with  feelings that maybe I should have just tiled over it with new hex
tiles.  Of course, now I had invested too much into the project and was
doomed to see it through, but to even be having these thoughts...horrible,
horrible.

Oh Gabby, what can I do?  Should I retire?  Be impeached?  Have I lusted in
my heart for a new floor?  Can I ever speak with conviction again to
preserve everything at all costs no matter what?

Sincerely,

Hexed in Raleigh




______________________________________________
Dan Becker,  Executive Director            "What's this? Fan mail
Raleigh Historic                                     from some flounder?"
Districts Commission                             - Bullwinkle J. Moose

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