billroper: (Default)
I have been buying the Orthofeet shoes for a while now. The problem is that after about three months of daily wear, my feet start hurting. And shortly after that, my knees start hurting. Eventually, I realize that the shoes have worn out and switch to a new pair.

But the Orthofeet people will sell you a new set of insoles and arch supports for half the price of a new pair of shoes. Maybe that would be a way to stretch out the life of a pair of shoes at a lower cost.

Narrator's voice: It isn't.

I swapped out the insoles and arch supports in my most recent pair of shoes a short while back. This improved things for a short period of time. But I have developed some persistent pain in my right heel (which I can alleviate by taking the pressure off a particular spot in the heel) and other things in the shoes are starting to feel a bit caved in.

Today, though, was the acid test. As we continue to try to figure out what to do about the shower in our bathroom, I stopped at Floor & Decor after Gretchen and I had lunch and ran in to see if they had any likely looking tile. They had a lot of interesting things, but none of them were going to work in the current bathroom design.

Fifteen minutes of walking around on that hard concrete floor completely wrecked up my knees. My feet were none too happy either.

Later this afternoon, I pulled out a new pair of shoes, put them on, and my feet now feel much better.

Lesson learned.

In the meantime, tile quest continues. I checked in the garage and there is virtually none of any of the large format tiles left from our previous bathroom work, so whatever we do is going to have to work with the tile that is present or find a way to replace it, because there isn't any more of what's there.

But I have ideas. And I have ordered more tile samples, one of which I think may work really well for solving this problem, if it will just coordinate with the existing tiles.

I suppose we'll see when it gets here.
billroper: (Default)
We keep accumulating more mail-order tile samples for the bathroom shower project. *Two* big boxes of samples arrived yesterday (along with my new sunglasses, necessitated by the old ones breaking) and with work and all, I didn't try to get them off the porch until after dark. Ruby the Dog was, of course, interested in the open front door as I tried to wrestle the packages in, but that was ok, because she no longer bolts out the front door at any opportunity and I can normally tell her to back up without a problem.

"Normally", however, does not include the situation where Ruby sees a rabbit on the sidewalk. Ruby lit out after the rabbit, the rabbit lit out for cover, and Ruby went running two yards down our side of the street. Great.

But once the rabbit was out of sight and out of mind, Ruby turned around as I called for her and headed back to the house. Well, except for a stop in our front yard to sniff at all of the places where the rabbit had recently been. But eventually she came back in, I could close the front door, and I could stop juggling heavy boxes of tile samples.

We have now examined the tile samples in detail. Today, over lunch with Gretchen, we were able to discuss a fine set of contingency plans for the bathroom depending on:

1) How much of the old tile may be available in the garage.
2) How much damage is done to the existing tile by removing and replacing the old shower pan.
3) How long Gretchen is willing to tolerate having our bathroom (or parts of it) torn up.

I've ordered more tile samples. Tomorrow, I'll look for tile in the garage.

*sigh*

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