Bathroom remodel II

Stephen here, Yogi will be spending the night in his crate and we can clean up in the morning. The puppy seems to be reticent to go out to his designated area when it is raining.

I am hoping that if I can make it nicer by putting down some more gravel. That dries pretty quickly. Also we "flush" the potty by removing any droppings. And since a wet dog is no fun I am trying to construct a way to go potty without getting rained on. So we went to McLendon's hardware store. I bought the largest hot water heater pan they had. Then I bought a bag of sand and three bags of marble chips. I put the sand in the bottom and the marble chips on top.

Yogi started digging through it the first time he saw it, but he did use it twice today. Only time will tell.

As I was putting it all together, it brought back memories of the past. I went to college on the GI bill and didn't like dorm life. I was four years older than my classmates. I tried several living situations, the most colorful was a four bedroom apartment over a warehouse. Rent was $125.00 a month cash and the landlord had exactly one rule, never bother him. The good news is that is was just across the street from the restaurant my brother and I helped develop the menu for and very near the Rappahannock river, we hung our kayaks on the porch, it was really nice in the summer and fall. But it had no heat, I had a good sleeping bag. However, when the toilet froze, I started looking for an option.

Turns out I met a fellow paddler who was a senior when I was a freshman. He was working at a Navy lab and decided he wanted to buy a house in Fredericksburg and was looking for a roommate and asked me to take a look. It was small, it was definitely a fixer upper. The linoleum in the bathroom was torn in places and sticking up; a tripping hazard. But the toilet wasn't frozen, the little house had heat. I agreed to move in.

The location was fantastic, two blocks from Mary Washington University, two blocks from the restaurant I worked in, (and interestingly, two blocks from from the restaurant I would work in until my government job opened up).

Two single guys two blocks from my college. We were going to have a number of visitors, it is a bit like living in Hawaii, we never knew we had so many friends. We fixed the bathroom floor. I had some slate roof tiles from a tear off in the summer. We ripped up the linoleum and I was getting ready set a concrete base and install the slate when Jeff had an idea. We framed a rectangle eight inches larger than the toilet, I laid the slate outside of the rectangle. Jeff drove to 84 lumber, bought two bags of marble chips and when the concrete was dry and stable, we put the marble chips in the rectangle. You see, guys are not always that fastidious when they go potty. Once a month we would shovel out the rocks, put them on a pebble screen and wash them down. Who knew, 33 years later I would be doing this again.