34 white hexagon bathroom floor tile ideas and pictures 2020
Hexagon Tile | The Tile Home Guide
Large Hexagon Shower Floor Tile | NIVAFLOORS.COM
Shower Floor Tile | Daltile
Everything You Need to Know About Hexagon Tile | Julie Blanner
Shower Tile | Floor & Decor
60 Stylish Hexagon Tiles Ideas For Bathrooms - DigsDigs
Shower Floor Tile – The Tile Shop
Hexagonal Tile at Lowes.com
hexagon tile floor shower
hexagon tile floor shower - win
Are relief cuts needed for 11x13 hexagon tile on shower floor?
I am having the hardest time cutting the relief cuts. Both sides are sloped towards center drain. Just asking due to frustration. Bought two manual cutters and they veer off at the end of the cut.
I have hexagon tiles on my shower floor that the installer did a poor job of installing. In several places, it's not smooth and sticks up, which you can obviously feel while you're showering. But it's not all sections, it's limited to just a handful of individual hexagon tiles in random places. Is it possible to remove and replace a single hexagon tile? Thanks for any input in advance.
Renovated my bathroom to bring it back to the 1930s
full album renovation here —— Edit: post was locked as I forgot to add more detail. I wanted to renovate my bathroom on my DIY budget. I’m located in Ontario Canada and we had a lockdown in spring where all stores were closed and I thought it was the perfect time to start this reno. I spent about $4000 on it. I was able to reuse the pedestal sink and the shower glass door, which probably saved $1000! The toilet is a Toto Drake II. The sink faucet is Kingston Brass cross centre set in brushed brass. The paint is Farrow & Ball Bancha. I used a Schluter Kerdi system in the shower and basic 6” subway square tile from the big box. The floor I bought sheets of white hex porcelain mosaic and cut out my own pattern, filled the gaps with black, to get a vintage-look mosaic floor that’s true to the homes age. I ran into a lot of challenges, including finding some galvanized pipe that needed replacing. I had to wear a lot of hats - electrician, plumber, tiler... I relocated the vanity light and learned a lot about electrical. I used Sharkbites to convert a small galvanized pipe section to PEX and join to existing copper. I’ve tiled a few times before but this was the most intricate job I’ve done. Lots of time was spent planning the pattern. For anyone wondering how to start, I recommend printing off a hex pattern on paper and then using a sharpie to colour in the pattern to your taste/dimensions. A word of caution for DIYers trying the Schluter Kerdi system for the first time... it works great but make sure you use the right mortar!! You’ll see one of my failed steps in the album. The big box store I bought the kit at didn’t have the KerdiSet brand, so I asked an associate what to use and they gave the wrong advice. I went to a specialty store (the one I actually ordered the hex tile from) and bought it there. Learn from my mistake and time wasted on that step! ——— I live in a 1931 Tudor heritage home. Our main floor 3 piece guest bathroom was very loud 1990s style. I gutted it during the pandemic lockdown and brought it back to the 1930s to fit our style and the rest of the home. It was a challenging project but I’m very pleased with how it turned out. I did a custom hexagon mosaic tile pattern by individually cutting out black tiles and placing them inside the white ones. I made DIY wainscoting with plywood and poplar rails. Painted everything Bancha green by Farrow and Ball. New subway tile shower with Kerdi system, brushed brass and matte black finishes. I also did another mini-DIY within this project by making my own medicine cabinet. I used the existing cavity in the wall (and resized it), a vintage gold mirror, and added sliders to make for a practical but hidden medicine cabinet. We didn’t like how most were multi-door mirrors as they didn’t seem to fit the space. However in a small bathroom we desperately needed storage so this was the creative solution we came up with. Overall learned a lot and happy with the turnout. Hope you enjoy the album!
Master Bathroom Remodel. Completely gutted to the stud walls and rebuilt for about $20K. Before, After pics, budget, product links, floor plan and renderings included.
Album here! My mom wanted a new bathroom and so I did my best. This took around ~130 hours and $6k Canadian. This was my first time doing the majority of the work involved so I made a lot of mistakes along the way. While grey isn't really my thing it's what she wanted and she really likes it. This took place over about 6 weeks as I could only work on weekends and the odd hour during the evening on weekdays. I learned so much from doing this and can't wait for the next one.I'm in Ontario, Canada. CostElectrical - $300 Fan - 80 Foil Tape - 5 Duct - 10 LED Strip light - 40 LED Driver - 50 Cover plates - 15 Dimmer - 20 Timer - 20 Pot Lights - 30 Wire - 30 Tile - $1045 Hexagon tile - 225 Thinset - 40 Grout - 95 Profiles - 120 Shower Tile - 240 Floor Tile - 100 Wedge spacer - 50 Tile spacer - 15 Glass mosaic - 120 Sealer - 40 Framing - $205 2x4 - 30 Insulation - 60 Vapor barrier - 35 Plywood - 20 Tuck tape - 10 Floor screws - 20 Wood screws - 30 Trim/Paint - $275 Silicone - 20 Caulk - 5 Baseboard - 100 Painters tape - 10 Trim - 20 Floor register - 20 Paint - 100 Drywall - $167 Drywall - 65 Mud - 35 Tape - 15 Screws - 20 Sandpaper - 10 Sealer - 20 Corner bead - 2 Fixtures - $1170 Valve trim - 70 Shower head - 70 Mirror - 250 Faucet - 160 Toilet - 240 Towel bars - 80 Shower door - 300 Waterproofing - $920 Kerdi Niche - 100 Kerdi Shower kit - 575 Drain - 55 Ditra - 120 Thinset - 30 Corners - 40 Plumbing - $220 Mixing valve - 120 Pex/Fittings - 35 Abs/Fittings - 35 Shutoff valve - 15 Supply Line - 10 Wax ring - 5 Vanity - $1000Bin Rental - $300 ToolsPower -SDS with tile scraping bit -Impact driver and drill -Sawzall -Multi tool -Brad nailer -Circular saw -Laser level -Mixing drill Plumbing -Pex crimper -Pipe cutter Tile -Wet saw -Angle grinder with diamond blade -Tile levelling wedge crimp -Grout removal tool -Grout float -Trowels
Preparing for new home construction and trying to make decisions on master bathroom design. Pictured is the layout, but we will have white cabinets, a rectangular drop-in tub and there will be a seat in the shower. I want to use black hexagon tile somewhere. On the shower walls only? If so, what to do with shower floor, bathroom floor, and tub surround (ours will be tile all the way up to the tub, no apron like in the picture)? Or would it be better to do small black hex on the shower floor and larger on the room floors. Then white subway tile on the shower walls and the tub surround? Crazier idea: Wood look tile on the floors, black hex on shower floor, white subway tile on shower walls and tub surround. Wish I knew Photoshop. This is the only room that's threatening my marriage! https://preview.redd.it/f6w2r31ul5a61.png?width=976&format=png&auto=webp&s=a6d2859f72eb8e3e27a37ba7af29eeafb6a3b77c https://preview.redd.it/7ujzthctl5a61.png?width=882&format=png&auto=webp&s=05f9c0ac0e9a09eb23c67eddfd1e4d1069bc0b72
Hello, I just bought a new construction home and was going to do the grout sealing before moving in. The master shower has the floor and one wall with a nice pattern of small hexagonal tiles, which would be a huge pain if using an applicator bottle. I saw some Youtube videos of a girl just sealing the entire plane of smaller tiles with a brush. Is that the right solution, or do I need to do it the hard way, line by line? Everyone else just skipped over these tiles Thanks
We're first time homeowners in the Pacific Northwest area and knew we had to redo our bathroom when we moved in. First time doing a remodel and dealing with contractors. We got 3 bids, at 20K, 30K and 40K roughly, ultimately going with the people who can start immediately (lessons learned- red flag!) and the lowest cost. We hired these licensed contractors to start doing work at the end of November, they said they'd be done by Christmas but they're still working on it now. This is our only bathroom and I just wanted to post all the headaches we've gone through here, maybe seek any advice if we still can, and also help anyone who may run into a similar problem. At what point can you ask for a discount from your contractor based on these issues? Before/After http://imgur.com/gallery/I6zFG9s Photos http://imgur.com/gallery/TC0b35K Tiles: Subway tiles, Merola Mosaic Hexagon Tiles from Home Depot Vanity: Stanhope 36" from Home Depot Bathtub and fixtures: Kingston Brass The issues:
They hired subs to work on the tiling and they did an awful job. I asked them to redo the tiles that were sticking out, uneven, crooked. We asked them to redo the niche tiles because it was cut with a dull blade. This has been extremely stressful because I am still not 100% happy with it but short of ripping the whole thing out, I don't know what else could be done.
The tub was not level. They initially installed this tub angled toward the wall. My fiance asked them about this because he checked with a level after they left that day. They said they do this to prevent water from splashing out, and we foolishly believed them. After all the tiling was set and we were able to use the tub, we noticed pooling of water on one side. We asked them to relevel the tub so they had to rip out the bottom row of tiles.
The vanity lights were too high initially, we had asked them to move the mirror because they installed it way too high but they forgot to move the vanity light down as well. We asked them to fix this.
Plumbing. The shower fixture valves were not set at the correct depth causing the fixtures to stick out. we found this out after they completed tiling, but luckily they were able to go from the closet wall in the back. Upon inspection, they used zip ties to support the valves. NOT OK. We told them to use metal straps, when they said "oh that was just temporary," still not sure if this support is ok. Also, they scratched our brand new fixtures during install!! They're replacing it. But still, ugh.
Asbestos. I'm very concerned that when they cut our vent to make it larger, they exposed asbestos. I'm planning to hire a remediation company to come take a look after they finish with our space. Of course get it tested first. This is a big concern for me.
Other minor things we will be asking them to fix: bathroom fan seems to be wired incorrectly/blowing air out and not in, they will fix. Pocket door guide not installed yet. Door lock is crooked (but whatever it works). Some hardwood flooring is chipped outside our bathroom (not sure if they can fix this?!). I feel like there's more but I'll just let this go, they're willing to do all these fixes.
The contractor who is the owner of the business hasn't been around since week 2 of the project when he told us he'd be here every day. This resulted in us doing all this QA/QC work. We have about 15% or 20% left in payment and we don't know what to do. Obviously won't pay them until they're done with the work but we didn't hold back enough to have others redo the work. The subcontractors who are here are redoing all the fixing/rework per our request but this would've probably be swept under the rug if we hadn't noticed or brought these issues up. Plus, we are so tired... And it's our only bathroom. We've had to rely on our friend for over a month. This is just me venting at this point, it's been stressful.
Really struggling with planning a bathroom remodel. Need help on tile.
I'm redoing my bathroom and really struggling with choosing showewall/floor tile. I really like this blue tile for my shower, but I'm not sure if I also want this on the floor and all the way around the bathroom (half-wall). I was considering this for the shower and the same tile in a medium gray for the floor, but wonder if that is too much hexagon pattern? Does anyone have tips or tricks for selecting matching types of tile in small bathrooms? Is there any tool I can use to plug this tile in and see what it might look like? https://preview.redd.it/9g3dxxet3xd61.png?width=531&format=png&auto=webp&s=4b5694386d7408ebb1ef4be26e0cfbe82ec46245
Grout/Caulk/Weep holes - I'm confused and need clarification on standards
TL:DR at bottom I have a full bathroom reno starting next month and have been doing tons of research everywhere I can to apply the right materials and methods. I do have a contractor coming to install everything and recently had a discussion on tiling the showeTub. The plan is to use the wedi system behind the walls and wedi niche's to waterproof the walls. The contractor normally grouts everything, all the transitions (corners, niche's). Most of what I have read says to caulk these transitions and apply NO grout. Is this the general consensus, grab the matching silicon caulk from the manufacturer and use that in the corners? I have included a link to the grout and caulk I was considering buying, any other recommendations are welcome. Floor and shower grout: https://www.lowes.com/pd/MAPEI-Ultracolor-Plus-FA-25-lb-Charcoal-All-in-One-Grout/1000127941 ---I realize floor grout should be sanded but this claims to be ok for floors to. Also considered the keracolor sanded grout for the floors. Matching caulk: https://www.lowes.com/pd/MAPEI-Mapesil-T-10-1-oz-Charcoal-Silicone-Caulk/1000138785 **Here's the bigger question, weep holes: Now I have been reading about folks installing weep holes so water can drain from behind the walls and prevent mold. Should we not be sealing the corners and all the transitions with caulk and include weep holes? Also read about folks grouting just the bottom to let water drain, I'm flat out just confused about this. We have large shower tiles (https://www.lowes.com/pd/Anatolia-Tile-Hudson-Brilliant-White-Glossy-8-in-x-24-in-Glossy-Ceramic-Wall-Tile/1001038722) and hexagon floor tiles (https://www.tileshop.com/products/black-hex-porcelain-floor-tile-10-in-680185#product-detail-details1). I planned on purchasing this mortar thinset for the shower and floor as well. (https://www.lowes.com/pd/MAPEI-Large-Format-Floor-and-Wall-50-lb-White-Powder-Thinset-Medium-Bed-Morta1000698138) Any major objections to the thinset and using it for both walls/floor? I genuinely appreciate any input. As a complete novice, I have been trying to read/research as much as I can to be knowledgeable. I understand the contractor is a resource but he generally says grout is grout, get what you want/prefer. TL:DR: The tiles have been bought but I wanted to clear the other variables before purchasing the grout, thinset, caulk, and make sure the tile is installed correctly. Caulk and leave weep holes or just caulk? Avoid grout in the corners/niche's? wedi showerproofing behind tiles. Thank you in advance. Edit: forgot to ask about sealing the grout, seen mixed bag on this. Is it recommended to seal the grout even if it says you don't have to? Seems like its an easy enough thing to do for extra protection against discoloration/mold. Update: contacted wedi through messenger. They said, TCNA guidelines call for 1/4” space between all change of planes, where tile meets tile. They are to be caulked, no weep. This included the built in niche as well.
I had just gotten back from boarding school and decided I wanted to take half a tab on Thanksgiving to make me more sociable and to bond with my family more. I got 6 tabs the night before, it was supposed to be 7, but I didn't care. I hadn't tripped in so long that I decided to just let it slide because I was so excited to finally do it again. I went back to my room after getting my tabs, and cut one of the tabs in half, and then the 2nd half in half in case I wanted to increase the strength later. I went to bed since it was 1 AM and I had to be up at 9 to get everything ready for Thanksgiving. These were gel tabs by the way. Day 1 9:30 AM My dad woke me up, and to my surprise mostly everything was already ready. I put half a tab under my tongue and just let it dissolve into nothing like usual. I helped clean the house, and made sure everything was in order. 10:30 AM The tab started to hit me and I felt a little lighter than usual, and the feeling of breathing felt so refreshing. Colors were slightly more saturated than usual, everything sounded very clear, and things looked sharper. I decided to take a shower and the hot water felt amazing going down my body. I looked at the floor and saw the usual patterns starting to appear on it. My bathroom floor is a very bland beige tile floor that has strange texture to it. The parts that go down slightly into the ground seem as if they brighten up and become the same elevation as the rest of the tile. I close my eyes and see a flat black. Usually when I close my eyes I see a few colors swirling around, a very tiny pattern in the center, and some visual fuzziness. When the blackness starts, I call it "setting stage" for the fractal patterns. I get out of the shower, get dressed, and realize my aunt is here. I help her get her cooler and chairs out of her truck, and put them on my pool deck. I ask my dad how he wants the chairs set up and he says, "Just put them by the tables but not right next to them. The foods gonna clutter the table, you know what I mean?" I just didn't respond for a second, and then realize he asked me a question. I quickly correct myself and nod. This makes me feel a little frightened, but I get over it realizing he didn't really notice since he was busy cooking. I decide it's fine, and stupidly take the rest of the tab knowing I'm not going to be the center of attention. 11:45 AM The rest of the tab hits me super hard. I didn't realize how powerful my guys new tabs were. This one tab was probably the best acid I have ever had. Some more of my relatives arrive at my house and I help them unload their things. I try to help with things that obviously only need one person and realize how strange I'm acting. I decide to pass it off as nervousness to be back if I'm asked about it, which I never was. I go back in my room to watch YouTube, and just seclude myself for a while. I feel terrible for doing it, but the conversation outside is dull and awkward anyways. I wouldn't have helped one bit. 12:30 PM My aunt comes in my room to talk to me, and I pull off acting sober. Around her it's easy, I always feel like I can talk to her about anything so talking to her on acid is just like talking to a best friend. I just feel comfortable around her. She tells me that the crab is ready, and I go outside to eat some. The palm trees on my porch are shimmering, and look as if they're vibrating. The forest just outside my porch forms kaleidoscope patterns in the trees and the clouds turn into these strange triangle patterns. Much like the kaleidoscope patterns in the trees, but different. My uncle tries to engage me in a conversation, and it becomes awkward very quickly. I don't know him very well anyways, and decide its for the best since I'm gonna be super weird if I try to talk more. I realize how cool it is outside, and then it suddenly feels hot. I start to sweat just slightly, and look to see if anyone else is too. It's just me, and I decide to eat a crab to look normal or something. I eat a single crab and the flavor is amplified so much that it doesn't taste very good anymore. I usually like stone crab a lot. I go back into my room, and the A/C cools me down again. I realized how much my attention span had deteriorated as I zoned out thinking while watching a video about plate tectonics. 2 PM My dad asks me what I'm doing and I show him this video of a baby meeting her dads twin. He says I should hang out with the family and I agree with him and hang out with my aunt. I help her cook mashed potatoes and engage in a deep conversation with her. We talk about how my new school is, and what I could do with the opportunities it will give me. Usually I would think this conversation was very mundane, but I was just happy to talk to my aunt and make her happy. My dad walked in with a huge sirloin tip and the aromas gave me chills. I had never smelled anything so delicious before, but I couldn't eat it yet. My other family members came in with more food and I set up another table. It seemed so complex to do for some reason, and this made me nervous again. I made myself a huge plate since my appetite was returning, and immediately ate the sirloin tip. It was so incredibly juicy, and the steak sauce paired with it created an extremely succulent flavor that had never been present in the sirloin tips my dad had smoked before. My other aunt also created a dish that had a variety of seafood, peppers, and shellfish in it. I decided to try it since I had been told about this before we ate, and it tasted incredible. Everything I ate had a new taste to it, the things I had considered to be rather dull in flavor had transformed into a unique delicacy. I adored the texture of the chunky mashed potatoes and gravy me and my aunt had made, and the way it felt when chewing it up. I decided to start a conversation by commenting on how good the food was. I felt like I had more control again, and that I wasn't going to look strange, and I was right. We all started talking about many things, and joking with each other. I felt so happy to have started this, and talked a lot. I joked around with my little cousin whom I usually don't like, and saw how much he grew since I last saw him. It made me feel old, even though I'm only 16 years old. It showed me how fast time progresses, and how fast things can change. 3:30 PM I decided to go back to my room, and watch videos again. Nobody bothered me for a while, and I let myself come down from the trip. I thought intensely about my family and what they meant to me. Even though so many of my friends have come and gone, they've been there through all of it, and I have the nerve to drop acid around them? The realization made me feel like a shitty person, but I can't take the molecule out of my brain, so I made a deal with myself to never do it again. No matter what I think, LSD will not help me socialize. It can help me bond though, but I should do that sober. These thoughts have stayed with me ever since then. 7 PM My dad comes into my room and asked me why I was being a hermit. I just said I didn't know, and then he asked me what I was watching again. I wasn't watching anything so I just showed him my laptop. He just looked at it and said to get ready to leave with my aunt if I didn't want to go hunting. I packed everything I needed, and the rest of the tabs. I started drawing, an activity that I usually consider to be very boring. I started drawing a monster, and an apocalyptic world behind it. My aunt called me to leave, and I put my stuff in her truck and left. The car ride was pitch black, and I watched the Closed Eye Visuals change over and over again. I started getting strange visions of the Nine Tailed Fox from Naruto, and wondered what it meant. Then I saw the sharingan flash before me. I get Naruto related hallucinations quite frequently, I just really like Naruto. 8 PM I got to her house, and started playing Fallout 4. I felt like I was in the game, and felt as if I was actually murdering people when I killed super mutants that were trying to kill me. I stopped playing and just played something else instead. What led me to take 3 more tabs is beyond me, but I did it anyways. 9:30 PM The tabs hit me like the Fat Man hit Japan. I resumed playing Fallout earlier and decided to just explore. I began to notice that it felt as if my body was going into the game, and just let it happen. I was my character now, I lived in the Commonwealth. I took in the nuclear destruction that stood before me. A vision of what it once was flashed into my head, and it made me feel very sad. The city of Boston, once the biggest city in the Commonwealth, was reduced to a radioactive pile of concrete and steel. The animals native to the United States are now horribly mutated, and some even live off of the radiation that destroys us. The feeling of dread turns into courage, and I venture deeper into the wasteland to discover its secrets. I suddenly slam back into my body, and realize what happened. I look at the table, and see every dot creating a massive mandala pattern and then turning into a blob then back into a united form. The colors connecting them were new. I had actually never seen these colors before, but I would describe them as any color you'd see in a mop bucket. They seemed dirty and organic. I looked back up to the monitor to take in the visuals. I hadn't realized that I ventured into the city, and I also hadn't realized how intensely the visuals were affecting the game. The skyscrapers that still stood were swaying in a manner similar to the palm trees earlier, but more intense. They also grew bigger, shrank, became wider, and got closer. So many things happened that I entered a trance like state. I stared at the screen for what felt like 30 minutes, but when I looked at the clock only 5 minutes had passed. I decided to just keep playing the game. 11:30 PM I entered a state that I had never experienced before. I was narrating everything that was happening, except it wasn't me doing it. I wasn't me, I was a being controlling my body. My body was just a vessel. I felt as if I could possess any living thing, and I felt as if I had transcended to a new world. I, for some reason, took the last two tabs. After all, if I wasn't in the world at the time, what bad could this possibly do me? Obviously that's a joke, but this didn't turn out to be a mistake. I stopped playing Fallout and started thinking. I entered another trance. The world around me was nothing, I didn't exist and neither did anything else. All that existed were my thoughts, and I was even unsure of them existing. I thought about everything. The concept of everything couldn't possibly ever be used in the right context because I thought how could we possibly understand how big everything really is? Everything became a metaphor for how little of everything we really experience. This is just one of the many things I thought about. Day 2 1:20 AM The next tabs hit me and my ego dissolved completely. I was laying outside, staring at the nearly full moon and clouds surrounding it. The light hitting the clouds created a mandala pattern that never ceased to exist, and it changed into many things. Faces appeared in the patterns and even massive geometric formations. At one point, a hexagon was formed in the clouds and the clouds in the hexagon went back into space, and the ones around it came at me. The points of the hexagon came down to earth and created a tower. Everything was alive. The earth was the mother of everything on it. Even simple blades of grass had back stories, and lives. When I thought back on this later, it showed me how I'm not the center of the universe. Everyone has lives and things going on, I just focus on mine. I sat up eventually and took in every little thing around me. I felt the grass, smelled the air, looked at my aunts beautiful yard covered in flowers, and listened to the chirping that accompanies night time. I felt an appreciation for every tiny thing in this world. I regained my body, even though I really had control over it the whole time. I climbed up a tree and felt as if I had the Byakugan from Naruto. Like I said, I experience things from Naruto a lot on acid but I experience this one every time I trip. Basically, I feel a huge sense of spacial awareness. I become hypersensitive to any change that happens. A vision of whats behind me appears in my head and changes according to sounds I hear, lights that appear in front of me, or if an animal flies past me. Usually this vision is very detailed and accurate, and I've used it to my advantage when sparring another person in boxing when I'm tripping. While climbing this tree, it amazed me (This part is very difficult to explain, but I'll try my best) how I can use the space around me to move around, and place my hands and feet in the correct positions to move. I ascended to the top of the tree and I felt as if it had sentience. I went down to the bottom branch and carefully balanced on it while holding the branch above me and tested how strong it was by walking to the middle of it. I felt my primal instincts coming out, and just let them. Nothing too significant happened as a result. To a person observing me, it would look like I was just climbing the tree, yet it felt like so much more. 2:15 AM I went back inside, and ate pretzels. They tasted so extraordinary that I couldn't stop eating them. I realized pretzels are really only bread and salt. I wondered how something so simple could taste so good. It still amazes me actually. I watched this show called Primal, a movie about the adventures of a caveman and his dinosaur. This show has no words, and we must interpret what is happening for ourselves. This show felt like a godsend for me. This show was so interesting to me that I watched it for the rest of the night. The relationship between the caveman and his dinosaur was beautiful to me. They depended on each other to survive, and the caveman saved his dinosaur multiple times from dying. There was one point where he cared for him for days while he recovered from a nearly fatal injury. This created a feeling in me that I really can't explain. My ego dissolved again, and I watched the show while eating pretzels. I didn't think, I only observed. I didn't even notice the visuals even more, but thinking back on it they were very intense. Depth shifted so many times, the size of the room grew bigger and smaller over and over again. The walls seemed as if it bled color. The closed eye visuals even started appearing on everything in my field of vision. ~4? AM I decided to try to sleep. The chair I slept in was comfortable, but I felt the need to shift my position so many times. My breathing felt constricted, but every breath felt like a blessing. As I drifted off into sleep, it equated to death. For some reason, it didn't scare me, and I let it happen. It was the end for me, and I was okay with it. I watched fractal patterns dance as I departed from life, and then it finally happened. 9:15 AM I woke up still tripping. I felt reborn, and ready to take on anything that came my way. I went to the bathroom and watched the floor change into intense reds and pinks. Then an intense feeling of fatigue hit me. I finished what I was doing, and went back to sleep again. I woke up around 12 and the trip had ended.
Beauty & Elegance of Carrara Marble Tiles and Mosaics
Elegance, luxury and timeless! That is what comes to minds of design professionals when they think about Carrara marble. The most popular Italian marble named after its region. Carrara has a light grey background and light bluish grey veining with a pattern usually soft and feathery which makes it looks so rich and prestigious. Its neutral tones are what makes it so universal and can add life to any space by its presence. https://preview.redd.it/48oumfd9kpf61.jpg?width=1100&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e4786a134033d8d4cf52a7c359dbafb58b49490c
Truly Timeless
One of the most popular marble yet classic, that never goes out of style. Carrara marble tiles speaks pure elegance and comes in many different styles to meet everyone’s needs. Due to its durability and timeless beauty, it still exists and keeps adding to it’s range from tiles of all sizes 12x12, 18x18 and even large formats. The marble mosaic patterns and styles are endless, because of the dense characteristics of a marble, waterjet designs are easy to create, with blends of other marble and metal inserts. Carrara tiles does not limit itself to any style, it adds its beauty to all kinds of homes whether your home is traditional, modern, contemporary, transitional or mid-century.
Same yet different
Carrara marble gives place a stylish look. But due to its numerous kinds of patterns and textures from polish to matte to honed or satin finishes it brings things to life. It also comes in various shapes Arabesque, Herringbone, Subway, Hexagon, Penny round, and modern waterjet designs with insets of other material like metal and other naturals stone tile material. The diverse range is impressive and overwhelming. This sleek marble just not limit itself to tiles a wide variety of mosaics tiles available can be customized to fit the look you are going for and feel of your home.
Bright white and versatile
The Gorgeous white marble adds brightness to any place. It’s monochromatic colors can trick eyes and enlarge spaces visually while the bluish grey veins still maintains the interest. This light color marble is perfectly suitable for tight spaces as it creates an illusion and makes the area looks open and large. The Carrara marble tiles with glossy finish are reflective and allow light to bounce around the room to give the radiant timeless look.
Applications
A great choice for both wall tiles and floor tiles. The Carrara tiles are not limited to any application, from fireplace surrounds to shower surrounds it is very versatile. The decorator Carrara tile patterns can be used for both wall and floor tiles. Care needs to be taken about high traffic areas and the care of maintenance of the tiles. Browse the wide variety of Carrara marble Mosaic Tiles that will bring your imaginations to life at this Wholesale discount tile outlet and factory direct prices.
Preparing for new home construction and trying to make decisions on master bathroom design. Pictured is the layout, but we will have white cabinets, a rectangular drop-in tub and there will be a seat in the shower. I want to use black hexagon tile somewhere. On the shower walls only? If so, what to do with shower floor, bathroom floor, and tub surround (ours will be tile all the way up to the tub, no apron like in the picture)? Or would it be better to do small black hex on the shower floor and larger on the room floors. Then white subway tile on the shower walls and the tub surround? Crazier idea: Wood look tile on the floors, black hex on shower floor, white subway tile on shower walls and tub surround. Wish I knew Photoshop. This is the only room that's threatening my marriage! https://preview.redd.it/csp230lem5a61.png?width=976&format=png&auto=webp&s=04b3240989ad913ff051811d7db1616b05109565 https://preview.redd.it/a2kgc2hfm5a61.png?width=882&format=png&auto=webp&s=fee60bd3e5dce5355a22ca7c53d668bb644805e5
Going insane: Matching white floor and wall tile (shower)?
I’ve spent the last six months and $150 on samples trying to find a basic white tile that comes in both a shower floor appropriate shape (e.g. hexagon, penny) and a shower wall appropriate shape (e.g. subway) and have somehow come up empty! Between Wayfair, Home Depot, Lowes, Floor & Decor, and The Tile Shoppe only one store (Tile Shoppe) carried a floor + wall line in the identical glaze/color and of course they had the matching samples in store but the floor tile was discontinued/zero stock. No problem—I’ll just order a bunch of separate floor and wall tiles and surely two of them will be close if I acquire enough. Aren’t there really only a few “big tile” manufacturers behind all these product lines anyway? Apparently not... across 25 different tiles there are no two that match. This one is cool white, that one is warm. This one is super polished, that one less so. Even from across the room I easily see the differences. Where am I going awry? I see images of properly matching white floowall bathrooms all over the place!
https://preview.redd.it/99vl8d91upd61.jpg?width=1414&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3b8dc85ed1faa79f0bc516604852314aac26349d Pebble mosaic tiles are mostly made from natural stone pebbles, the tiles are a collection of pebble shaped stones laid carefully on a mesh by skilled craftsmen. The tiles are shaped in interlocking patterns for easy installation and design layout. Pebble tiles come in a variety of colors and designs. These tiles are a great way to capture the beauty of outdoors in you space inside. The pebbles are polished, textured, flat, raised bumpy and more. Applications of Pebble Mosaic tiles Mostly used in bathrooms, they can be used as wall tiles and floor tiles. They help you achieve modern, traditional, and also a more rustic look depending on the colors and the pattern you select. The rustic look of some pebbles from the riverbed connects you with the nature, these tiles can be used for outdoor applications. Most popular uses are for Pool Pebble Tiles, Shower pebble tiles, accent walls, featured walls and backsplashes.
One of the main advantages of using Pebble Tiles is to have an installation without showing the seams, the layout of the tiles can be done in a way that the seams are not very visible as you pay multiple tiles and make your unique design. Another advantage is that textured pebble tiles are slip resistance and a popular choice for shower floors.
The new unique designs of the pebble tiles that are making statement are tiles shaped as Hexagons, they are easy to install and in many cases the pebble tiles does not require a saw to cut the tiles. Natural Stone Pebble Tiles require sealing like any other natural stone tiles to look great for years. You can use color enhancing sealers or regular sealers to give you a matte and dry look as stones outdoors. Layout the tiles on the area before installation and plan your design for easier installation. Explore the imported pebble tiles at a discount tiles online warehouse at factory direct prices.
Preparing for new home construction (North America - Texas, USA) and trying to make decisions on master bathroom design. Pictured is the layout, but we will have white cabinets, a rectangular drop-in tub and there will be a seat in the shower. I want to use black hexagon tile somewhere. On the shower walls only? If so, what to do with shower floor, bathroom floor, and tub surround (ours will be tile all the way up to the tub, no apron like in the picture)? Or would it be better to do small black hex on the shower floor and larger on the room floors. Then white subway tile on the shower walls and the tub surround? Crazier idea: Wood look tile on the floors, black hex on shower floor, white subway tile on shower walls and tub surround. Wish I knew Photoshop. This is the only room that's threatening my marriage! https://preview.redd.it/sw39abugn5a61.png?width=976&format=png&auto=webp&s=2aa439ecdeb19dc7990ed166d461fe0803bfdb90 https://preview.redd.it/wp1zidugn5a61.png?width=882&format=png&auto=webp&s=b6d122c00ad5879d3cc8d34b3a20338aa9ef8465
Facebook serves as an echo chamber. When a conservative visited Facebook more than usual, they read news that was far more partisan and conservative than the online news they usually read. But when a conservative used Reddit more than usual, they consumed unusually diverse and moderate news. Comments || Link
Religious schooling hampers economic development and innovation. Areas of France with religious schooling during the late 19th century and early 20th century were slow to adopt technical curriculum, focusing instead on religious content in curricula, hampering economic development. Comments || Link
All apes and African and Asian monkeys exhibit the same amino acids as human ACE2, and likely to be highly susceptible to COVID-19. Urgent actions have been undertaken to limit the exposure of great apes to humans, and similar efforts may be necessary for many other primate species. Comments || Link
According to NASA Uranus has a lower Surface Gravity than Earth 8.87 m/s2 versus 9.80 m/s2, but its diameter is 4 times that of Earth and its mass is 14.5 times greater. Comments || Link
Tesla battery researcher shows new test results pointing to batteries lasting over 2 million miles "Most impressively, the batteries show very little to no capacity degradation when they are discharged between 25% to 50% of their capacity, which is actually how most people use their cars." Comments || Link
How a cold plasma powered personal “air curtain” could offer COVID-19 protection. University of Michigan engineering researchers are designing one. Comments || Link
TIL Prairie dog language is complex. They don’t just have a call for “danger”: their calls differentiate human, hawk, domesticated dog, coyote etc. and specify size & color. One study found that they can communicate “Here comes the short human in the yellow” (vs the tall human in blue) to each other Comments || Link
TIL that after a BBC investigation found that Facebook failed to remove images of child abuse, Facebook responded by reporting the BBC to the authorities Comments || Link
TIL To promote the Smurfs (2011) movie, Sony temporarily painted the traditional "pueblo blanco" town of Juzcar, Spain to a bright blue. The residents were so happy with the increase in tourism afterwards that they elected to keep the change permanently. Comments || Link
Jagshemash. My name Borat. My new moviefilm is streams in Amazon. Please you will watch then spray me with questions. I strong, I have survive syphilis 17 time, I can take whatever you want pump on me! AMA! Comments || Link
I've had the same giraffe shower curtain since I moved in a few years ago. At 26, I thought it was time to get a more serious curtain. Comments || Link
Had shower retiled, pinholes in grout and sharp edges on tiles
Hi everybody, Like the title says, we contracted with a company to renovate our master bath. Part of that was re-tiling the master bath shower. The tile guy finished up on Friday, and advised us to let the grout set for 24 hours before using the shower. The shower looks great but when we were looking up close we noticed dozens of small holes, about the size of a pencil point, in the grout. Is this a problem or not? I think they applied concrete and redgard under the tile. Related, the floor tiles are small hexagons, about an inch wide, and made of glass or porcelain. Some are chipped or broken, probably during installation. Some of the edges are pretty sharp. Can we like...sandpaper those down, or is that something we should get the contractor back in to fix? The contractor is coming to look at the shower and handle some sink work tomorrow, so I want to make sure to raise all appropriate questions. Thanks!
We have some 12x24 subway tiles in the shower. I’m thinking woth a hexagon floor already, would be cleaner just to reuse the shower tiles for the backsplash(cutting down to 6x24). Anyone seen these two match before? Is it weird looking?
Imagine, for a moment, that much of the Bible is true. Some of you will need to apply more suspension of disbelief than others, but for you Westerners at least, it shouldn’t be too difficult. After all, we live in a world saturated by Christianity –from the holidays we celebrate, right down to the words of our nations’ anthems. Of course, I don’t mean the details of all those Bible stories are true – just most of the broad, overarching concepts. There was a tower of Babel of sorts. Eden existed. Human beings used to live ten times as long as they do now. That sort of thing. And God is omnipresent, in a way. We know that because we tested for the existence of him, with science. We created many different environments and scenarios, observing and recording everything we could – no matter how irrelevant the data points seemed. Exactly how we did this isn’t important. The key is what we did with that information. Because it follows that once you know how to detect the presence of God, then you can probably divine a way to block the sight of God, and render yourself invisible to his gaze. And that’s precisely what we did.
We knew our money came from a religious organisation, presumably some sort of megachurch operation that sucked money out of the devout, and funnelled it straight to us. Whoever was running it all certainly knew what they were doing, because our labs and offices were easily the nicest I’d ever worked in. But you’re not really interested in all that. You want to know about the thing we built; the thing that could block what I christened ‘God Particles’. It was ugly on the outside, this edifice. Inside its huge hangar, it was a sprawling mess of coolant pipes, humming fans, and ceramic hexagonal tiles the size of trampolines. It formed a dome in the centre of the vaulted space, encircled by backup generators, and the console desks that monitored the functions of the structure. The ceramic hexagons had been one of my major contributions to the project, my own invention. They looked dull, each one thick Palestinian clay on the outer surface, but the inside was banded with pure iron, then bronze, silver, and finally a layer of nanometer gold. I could tell you where I got the idea, but if you know your Bible well enough, you’ll already have figured it out. There was only one entrance to the dome; a hexagonal doorway in the west wall that contained a kind of airlock setup, where people needed to wait for just over eleven minutes before they were allowed to enter the godless interior. The consequence if you didn’t? I can only describe it as a sort of ‘spiritual decompression’, where if you leaped directly from one environment to the other, the sudden lack of – or return of – G particles, would send you into a kind of spiritual shock, not unlike decompression sickness. And inside the dome itself? Well, that’s where my story truly begins.
At first, the space was a curiosity; a huge, empty dome with an inner shell made of pure gold. The project director hadn’t liked the gold, and asked for it to be painted white, which made the place eerily directionless and infinite; the floor lighting bounced off the stark whiteness and homogenised everything. An area of space free from God didn’t actually seem very useful, at the start. We considered hiring it out to politicians, so that they could make plans free from the sight of God, but nobody was interested. It seems politicians have never cared overmuch about morality. We experimented with growing plants without the presence of G particles, which didn’t change their physiology or development in the slightest. Some of us worked in there, hoping that being free from God might inspire us to wild scientific breakthroughs, but no such thing happened. The only effect we could discern, other than the spiritual decompression, was that people who spent more than three contiguous days inside were prone to headaches when they came out of the dome. Everyone was wracking their brains for potential applications, but it took the only woman on the team to realise how the dome could be utilised. That woman was me. I was twenty-eight then, my body in perfect working order. Like the others, I spent my scheduled time inside the dome, experimenting, trying to find a real use for the unique environment I’d helped create. But I possessed one piece of human physiology my colleagues did not. A womb. For our comfort, bathrooms, showers and a kitchen had been set up inside the dome, and it was by sheer coincidence that I realised it – when I was in there, menstruation stopped completely. In fact, it stopped the very moment I set foot inside. I had found the point of difference that would lead to our breakthrough.
Humans were the only animal that experienced the effect, I discovered. No other animal has our unique cycle of endometrial buildup and shedding – reproduction is quite uniquely cruel and onerous for human women. From my childhood Bible readings, I recalled the story of the expulsion from Eden, and mankind’s great punishment. Adam was sentenced to toil in the earth until he returned to it, and for her part in the betrayal of the serpent, Eve’s lot was to bear terrible pain and suffering in childbirth. So did being free from God inside the dome mean that women were also freed from the horrors of childbirth? Since this was a uniquely human problem, human testing was the only way we would find out. Being young, and already so invested in discovering the answer, I volunteered to be the first test subject for a Godless pregnancy – with the help of another one of the researchers, who was more than happy to provide the required genetic donation. Quarters were created for me, my home for the duration of the pregnancy. A private room was built inside the dome, with sufficient comforts to keep me from going crazy for the next nine months. Once it was confirmed I was pregnant, all other work stopped inside the dome. I was made the priority, with doctors constantly hovering over me, monitoring, measuring, pricking my fingers for haemoglobin counts, and making me pee into an endless array of sample jars for testing. But all of us had seriously underestimated what would happen to a pregnancy inside the dome. After 28 days, the experiment came to a shocking end.
It was so abrupt and painless I hardly registered anything was happening. One moment I was sitting on the end of my bed, pulling on a shirt. The next, there was warm fluid spreading under my thighs, and an odd pressure in my pelvis. The foetus emerged intact, barely bloody, a perfect human in miniature. And rather than being a fatal miscarriage, as I initially assumed, the baby was whole and alive – it was just small. It was taken from me immediately; prodded, swabbed, injected, sampled. It was an ordinary baby girl, all organs fully formed and functioning, all Apgar scores 2, but barely one quarter the size of an average newborn. She was so little I could hold her in one hand, like a warm, pink doll. But when she latched to my breast and began to suckle, it was clear that her appetite was that of a regular-sized baby. She gained rapidly, making up for her premature birthweight within a matter of months. We named her Eve. Of course we did. What else would you call a baby girl born outside the sight of God, and therefore without original sin? Aside from the abruptness of her gestation, she grew as normally as any other child. I think many of us expected something mythical or miraculous, or catastrophic; that she would grow to be an adult before her tenth birthday, or have some other kind of extreme abnormal physical development. But she was as ordinary as could be, given the circumstances of her upbringing within that godless environment. Before Eve was five, a second woman was brought into the dome, to birth a second child – a boy – to be both a companion to Eve, and a future donor of genetic material when she was old enough to bear children. It seems strange to me now, to talk so clinically about it. We were all so detached, so invested in an outcome from our project, that we barely considered Eve human. It was as if being hidden from the sight of God meant that the things that we did to her didn’t matter. That she wasn’t truly one of us. But even so, I did care for her, as much as my duties allowed. She was still my daughter, even if I’d only carried her inside me for a month.
Our first inkling that something was wrong came with Adam’s initial stirrings of manhood. Eve had always been a wonderful child; polite, compliant, rational, and calm. Conversely, Adam was wild, unpredictable, and prone to rage. The first time he hurt her, he was disciplined into contrition, and we thought the matter done with. But he hurt her again almost immediately, without any regard for the consequences. It quickly became clear to his caregivers that he had a pathological need to harm other people, and Eve was the only target over whom he had any physical power, so the decision was made to separate them permanently. The dome was divided into two areas; Adam’s more like a prison, and Eve’s more like a home. Eve, despite her isolated upbringing, was intelligent, social and inquisitive. She devoured whole books in single days, and even read my papers on the dome’s construction and the research we were doing. I thought it important that she understand what we were doing; that if she was aware, then there would be a certain amount of consent when she was deemed old enough for the second phase of the project. And I felt vindicated in that choice when the day came for her to be inseminated, for she seemed perfectly happy to comply – but then again, she was always compliant, no matter what anyone asked of her. The male researchers had wanted Adam to impregnate her naturally, but even at sixteen years old, he was almost too violent for his handlers to keep under control. I refused to allow him anywhere near Eve, because the slightest glimpse of her – even a mention of her – would send him into a berserk frenzy, harming others and himself with a determination that was disturbingly inhuman. In the end, the sperm sample was extracted via needle aspiration while Adam was sedated. Eve’s pregnancy began in a laboratory, her harvested eggs fertilised under a microscope, then implanted into a womb that had never shed blood; but was healthy and functional as all her other godless organs. What would happen next, we had no idea.
As the first few days of her pregnancy progressed, we collectively held our breath, concerned that the implanted zygotes would be rejected by the smooth, vascular walls of Eve’s uterus. Our concerns were misplaced; her gestation was even more successful and abrupt than mine. We hadn’t even considered performing the first ultrasound, as Eve was just one week into her pregnancy, when she knocked on the door of my small office inside the dome to tell me she had birthed three children. And that all three displayed the same tiny size and perfect development as she had when she was born. The frenzy amongst the researchers and doctors was immediate. I was not permitted to actually see the triplets for weeks, but I was handed the reports and read through the data in the interim, just as fascinated as everyone else by these miraculous humans, gestated and born in a single week. They were sexless, these grandchildren of mine; fused labia and a urethral outlet the only external ‘genitalia’ in evidence. No internal structures were present, no ovaries. No undescended testes, no uterus. But other than that, they were incredibly heathy – and grew at a phenomenal rate. The miraculous predictions we’d initially had for Eve, that she’d be an adult before she was ten years old? We should have saved those predictions for the second generation. Eve named the children, for the three wise men who had visited Jesus in his manger - Balthazar, Caspar, and Melchior. The staff at the research facility began to refer to them as ‘the triplet boys’, even though they were truly neither sex. I finally met them when they were six weeks old, each the size of an average six year old, chattering and playing with their mother and each other. They regarded me with obvious intelligence, listening attentively to Eve as she explained that I was their grandmother. When Melchior asked after his grandfather, I explained that a fellow researcher had donated genetic material, just as had been done with their father, for their own creation. “Can we see our father?” he asked me, after I had finished explaining. I kept my tone matter-of-fact, but told the truth. “Perhaps when you’re older. Your father has behavioural issues that we were never able to fully address.” I didn’t see any point in lying to the child. After all, the information wasn’t presented negatively; and we still maintained our efforts to try and deprogram Adam of his psychotic rage and eventually allow him to interact with other people. “I look forward to meeting him,” Melchior told me, before turning back to the board game he was playing with his brothers.
Three months later, the boys had matured into what we considered adulthood. Their development had essentially followed the pattern for eunuch boys, gleaned from accounts of the castrati singers from previous centuries. Deprived of endogenous sex hormones, the triplets grew tall, long-boned, fine featured and oddly androgynous. There had been talk of experimenting on them with sex hormones, to alter their physiology more male, or more female, but these ideas were discarded. These children would be the control group, to compare to their future siblings. There would be time enough for such experiments - Eve was already pregnant with the next batch of zygotes, unfrozen and implanted, now that we knew the children were able to grow to maturity without any known complications. There were some other curious anomalies with the triplets that we could not explain. Their lungs were almost thirty percent larger than regular male human lungs, and their blood needed far less oxygenation. Red cells were present, but their blood was dominated by plasma and platelets, rendering it an odd red-gold colour. Consequently, they were hyperimmune, and when the facility came down with the winter ‘flu, they were completely unaffected. Pathogens virtually dissolved on contact with their tissues. They were also very strong. Their long bones and wide pelvises gave them a stability and leverage that would perhaps have been frightening if we weren’t scientists - it was most easily explained by regular physics. We were planning some treadmill experiments, as we suspected they probably also processed lactic acid at an accelerated rate. But we didn’t get the chance to start that program. When they were just six months old, the triplets rebelled.
In hindsight, I shouldn’t have given Eve unfettered access to the experiment data, because that meant she knew as much as any of the researchers. And being a calm, rational, and patient teacher, she had imparted this knowledge virtually verbatim to her three sexless children, who were ferociously intelligent information-sponges. The morning of their rebellion, the alarms on Adam’s cell blared briefly, then turned off. We assumed it was in error, as Adam often had ‘episodes’, and nervous guards would fairly regularly trip the alarm in panic. Twenty minutes after that, I received an urgent call from a breathless junior researcher, babbling about the retribution of god and his angels, the last word stretched into a prolonged scream. Shortly after that, the line went dead. Several panicked calls later, we organised for an armed emergency security crew to assemble near the research facility. They entered the hangar first, and with extreme caution. Inside was bedlam. Everything that could be smashed or broken had been - including the staff who had been on duty. They lay in the shattered glass of the consoles, on top of the torn cabling, their smashed bones and ruptured organs spread about them in macabre parody of what had been done to the machines. The dome itself had been completely sealed, the bodies of Adam’s captors dumped outside in a discarded heap of mangled flesh – the sole survivor screaming and shaking in the middle of the mess, not from his wounds, but from sudden spiritual decompression – his soul being burned by the abrupt return of God to his system. At first, I thought perhaps Adam had intended to use the staff as hostages, to bargain for his release, but when we ascertained that the dome had been disconnected from everything – including air and water – that made me believe otherwise. That seemed the action of someone irrational; without air, everyone inside the sealed dome would be dead within a few hours. But of course, they never intended to be in there that long. The heat on the ceramic surface of the dome manifested first as a ruddy glow, then grew more palpable as the air inside the hangar started to heat up. A few of the team had followed the security team once it was clear there was no immediate danger, and as we shucked off coats and sweaters, the hexagonal tiles started to turn yellow, then white-gold, with the rapidly rising temperature inside. When the dome shuddered like a living thing, I began to realise what was happening. The dome, although that’s what it appeared to be, was less a dome, more an egg. The whole structure was an oblate sphere, half of it buried – containing generators, cooling tanks and other equipment needed to maintain the structure. It had to be a sphere. G particles came from everywhere, so had to be blocked from every direction. As the dome began to shake, it also began to sink. The others thought it was going to collapse, but I knew better. It wasn’t destroying itself; it was sinking into the earth. And I was soon proved correct; within minutes it was gone, only a gaping crater full of rubble to mark its descent into Hell.
With the experiment so abruptly shut down, few of the survivors really knew what happened. But while everyone was gaping at the crater where the dome had been, I availed myself of the security footage still resident on the undamaged servers. It was poor quality, as storage space was still at a premium in the early 2000s, but it was good enough to show me the start of the sequence of events inside the dome on that fateful morning. Their rampage began with the disposal of the guards assigned to Adam’s cell. The triplets picked the men up with their long arms, and casually dashed their brains out on the walls, barely testing their inhuman strength. When they freed Adam and took him to Eve, there was no violence. The children’s parents embraced briefly, then began talking to their offspring. From there, the cameras began to blank, one by one, as the triplets methodically tore the whole facility to pieces and murdered the staff who had been on duty. I couldn’t bring myself to watch all the footage of what my demonic grandchildren did to my colleagues. Demonic is exactly the right word, I believe. When we blocked that dome from the sight of God, when we created beings with souls untouched by him, we didn’t just recreate what could have happened in Eden if the serpent hadn’t been present. Instead, I believe we created a scenario that was much worse – the totality of God’s plan had been revealed, and the serpent took full advantage of that. You see, the big problem with Lucifer’s fall was that he only took a third of the angels with him when he fell. Even a brilliant strategist couldn’t win with those odds, and so he lost, banished to his pit of fire. But if he’d had the means to create a soldier every seven days, a soldier who could rip a grown man to pieces at just six months old? Well, then he’d have a good chance of winning – especially if he also had the technology to hide his gathering advantage from the sight of God. When I finally thought to look into exactly who was funding our ill-fated research, I found it wasn’t some megachurch-styled operation after all. After chasing paper trails until I was nearly crazed from the labyrinth of money laundering, the only origin I could find for the cash seed that had started all this was an abandoned master blacksmith’s forge, and a name. Wayland. Whoever - or whatever - Wayland might be, I’m confident now that they were in the employ of the Enemy. And that with every week that has passed since that dome sank into the bowels of the Earth, Lucifer’s army grows another Fallen stronger. And there isn’t a damn thing that God can do about it. He doesn’t have a clue there’s anything wrong.
Continuing I wrap the six road flares, now spray-painted brick-red and stickered with the appropriate manufacturer's labels, with black electrician’s tape into a hexagonal cross-section, closest-fit bundle. I have a black plastic project box that contains a battery for ‘long-lasting power’ or so the manufacturer claims. An Arduino board that I programmed the other night that runs the wee little speaker and set of blinking LEDs I had mounted on the box. From the box sprout a pair of tightly coiled lengths of demolition wire. Not detonating cord, but just insulated copper wire. These attach to the blasting cap and blasting cap super-booster from which I’ve taken the time to extract all the explosives. I have to admit, it certainly looks authentic; but there’s a small problem. The aesthetics don’t hit me properly. So, I decided to hot glue a cheap-ass Casio digital watch, removed from its band to the large blank spot on the black box. I run a few more coils of tightly wrapped demolition wire, to give it that more earnest and decidedly homebrewed look. Perfect. A faux time bomb that could fool anyone. Smiling, I set it into a drawer of the desk in the portable office. Once all the glue, paint, and mastic dries, I’ll shift it to its permanent home. That done, I wander outside to see how things are progressing. I walk over to the whiteboard to see what sort of ideas they’ve cooked up in my absence. “Hey, Rock”, Yogarasa asks, “What do you think of this?” as he points to the red-lined ship’s schematic. “On, no”, I reply, “I’m JAFO here. Just Another Fucking Observer. Let me know when you guys come to a consensus.” “Right, Rock”, he smiles, “Will do.” I fire up a heater and wander around the job site. I may be in JAFO-mode, but I do make a few comments on personal safety. I note how some jobs they’re attempting could be done with a bit more care, introspection, and attention to Safety, Health, and Environment. “Damn”, I think, “But that’s a big fucking boat.” I’m standing down on the sand, under the prow of the ship. It’s well and truly beached and the farthest point frontwards of the boat, the bow, is easily 50 or 60 feet above my head. “Gonna take come real cunning and cuteness to chop up this little dinghy”, I think to myself. “ROCK!” I hear my name. I’m being paged. I ease over to the whiteboard. They have a list of items necessary for the job they’re proposing. They have a set of procedures as well. Now they have to sell me on the project. “OK, I’m here. What’s the deal?” I ask. Vik takes the initiative and tells me they want to cut the forward 150 feet, or 45 meters, of the ship off in one fell swoop. There are three station keeping bow thrusters in the hull at 50 meters back, so those will not only be safe, but more exposed for reclamation. Lots of copper, zinc, and other saleable metals there. The front 150 feet of the ship, if cut off flush, will relieve everyone of dealing with all those sharp angles commonly found at the pointy end of the front of the boat. It will be easier for both the explosives mavens and the torchbearers to work on a 900 surface, rather than having to futz with all those pointy front end bits. Initially, I agree. I ask for the more detailed set of schematics for the ship. I want to see what needs to be cut through in order to remove the bow of the boat. On the surface, it seems like a good idea. There’s only a helipad on the front deck of the ship, and below it appears to be a large ballroom or something similar. Whatever it is, it isn’t a fuel storage bunker or anything like that. Basically, they want to cut the bow off where the forward sheer meets the forward perpendicular. “OK”, I say, “Sounds like it might work. What next?” “Tour of the craft”, Sanjay says, “We need to get a licensed master blaster on board to take a look at what we’re up to.” “And when will this be transpiring?”, I asked. “As soon as you finish your cigar?” Vik asks. In the forward-most bow of the ship, it is indeed an empty storage area. No telling what was here previously, but whatever it was, it’s gone now. Come to find out, it was crew quarters. They’re modular and were removed before the ship was beached. They are now in service on some other sea-going vessel; second-class. There are several watertight chambers that can, or could have been, electronically and/or pneumatically closed if they ran aground or walloped a whale out on the high seas. I check and see there are no hydraulic lines. Those pose special problems, especially if check valves are over-ridden and lines are not de-energized. I’ve seen what 5,000 psig hydraulic fluid can do coming out of an outlet no bigger than a pencil point. Besides mashing them in the jaws of an oil rig’s power tongs, it’s a good way to lose body parts quickly. Electrical cables jump, spark, and short out. Pneumatic line spit accumulated water and pffft! themselves out fairly quickly. Hydraulics will cut you in half rather than say Good Morning. Of course, all of these will be triply checked, but there’s always one rogue line stuck behind a bulkhead or tucked behind some flashing that you never count on. That’s why you have three different people check three different times. Up on the foredeck, I’m looking at the specs supplied with the schematics. We’re going to be dealing with some 40 mm thick deck plate. That’s treated, hardened, tempered, annealed, and nasty 1.5 inch thick marine-grade high-carbon steel. That shit’s a tough customer. Most carbon steel is not well-suited for marine environments, however, there are several marine-grade carbon steels available. AH36, DH36, and EH36 are all examples of commonly used marine-grade carbon steels approved by the American Bureau of Shipping. These grades will have slightly more alloying elements such as manganese and chromium compared to their ASTM grade counterparts, which helps achieve higher strength and more corrosion resistance. There are also marine grades of alloy steel as well. Grades MD, ME, MF, MG, and others can provide the strength that normal alloy steel is known for, and have also been approved by the American Bureau of Shipping for use in shipbuilding applications. Here. We’ll be dealing with EH36, 40mm thickness, nominal. Also referred to as Mil-S-22698 Gr Dh-36. It contains carbon, manganese, silicon, sulfur, and chromium, for toughness. We’re going to need some test coupons before we tackle this job. A coupon is a small sample of the material under test that has been prepared in such a way that its failure mechanism will be representative of the larger production pieces. Just FYI. “Sanjay,” I ask, “How are you with a K-12 unit?” Since the boat is going to be scrapped anyways, we’re standing next to the keel with a gas-powered 3.5 horsepower unit that drives a carborundum wheel up front at amazingly absurd rotational velocities. Sure, EH-36 marine steel eats carborundum-diamond sintered disks like candy, but the K-12 will allow us to cut some samples of the hull material for blasting tests. This is a job for the younger crowd. Let them experience the pure joy of holding on to a bucking, snorting, spark-flinging hunk of cranky high-velocity machinery. Let them experience the delight of the screaming whine of high-speed carborundum upon high-carbon steel, even while wearing hearing protectors. Let them revel in getting absolutely covered with metal filings and carborundum schmoo from the cutting marine steel and rapidly spinning, eroding, decreasing-diameter saw blades. Fuck it. I’ll be in my office. I need a cold drink as it’s all hot and dusty and real out there. I’ve got my feet up on the desk and actually catching a quick cat nap when I hear “THUNK!” Five of my guys covered head to foot in black cutting residue, toss several 36” x 6” lengths of what was, until recently, the lower hull of a very expensive, indeed, cruise ship on the desk. “THESE DO?” I am asked in a rather pointed manner. I am endeavoring to stymie snickering at the situation. “Told you it wasn’t all skittles and beer, Gents.”, I note. Picking up a coupon, I give it the once over. “They could be a bit wider, but I guess these’ll have to do.” I’m sitting at a desk with a large cold drink and five of my guys are standing in front of me with less-than-amicable looks on their faces, sweating and definitely needing a shower. “Yes?” I ask. “Well?” they reply. “Hmmm?”, I hmmed. “What?” they query. “¿Que?” I query. “WHAT DO WE DO NEXT?” they ask in unison. “Oh, I thought we were having a contest to see how long we could keep conversing in monosyllables,” I replied. “OK”, I smirk, “We need to test these against various explosives and see the results. Which ones do you think would be applicable to the whole job, not just the task at hand?” “What do you mean?” Vik asks. “Well”, I reply, “Seeing what DOUBLEHELIX liquid binary does to these coupons would be a hoot. But since it’s not terribly applicable to the job of cutting the nose off that scow outside…think about it. Liquid binary. Curved ship’s hull. How to affix to the hull? Contain energy how?” “Ah, yes”, They reply, “I see.” “Good”, I say, “So?” “Obviously C-4, that’s a given”, Vik says. “Yes, good”, I note, “And…?” “Primacord?” came one query. “Are you asking me or telling me?” I reply. “Telling?” came the response. “Yes. Primacord. Of course. The heavy stuff.” I add. “What else?” “PETN? RDX? Dynamite? SEMTEX? Sprengkörper DM12?” came some more answers. “Yes to all”, I replied, “But remember the job. Any idea how much it might take of these explosives? You have your Blaster’s Handbooks. You have your measurements. Have you done your calculations?” “Not yet.” They reply. “So, why are you here, stinking up my office?” I growl. They know I’m messing with them. The all vacate. At least I know I’ll have half an hour or so to plug the numbers into my blaster’s computer. But first, a refreshed drink and a new cigar. Priorities, mate. Priorities. OK, it’s time to bone up a bit on shaped cutting charges. Dynamite and other solids would work well, but there’s be all that futzing around with affixing them to the hull. Could use blasting putty, i.e. ‘Elephant Shit’, to affix them to the hull and contain the blasts for a few microseconds, but that would be a real pain in the cojoñes. I want ‘quick and dirty’ here, as I need to haul ass in the next couple of days. So, moldable explosives it is and I do believe a ‘cut along the dotted line’ approach would work a treat here. But first, we have some coupons to play with. Truth be told, I’m interested to see what some of the more exotic formulae explosives will do to 40mm thickness EH36 marine sheet steel. I tell my guys to go get hosed off, pneumatically or hydraulically, and we’ll call it a day. Can’t foul Mr. Maha’s Magic Bus with you guys looking like nasty bag ladies in downtown New Delhi. Besides, I need to write some reports, as does Sanjay. Later, as I finish up an entirely fictional expose on Goodgulf Greyteeth, noting how his team always wears brown shirts and how he’s always going on about his CEO-furnished dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, strong regimentation of society and of the economy. I mention the picture of Mussolini he has on his desk next to the covered up, though not very well, copies of the manifesto and other works of the far-extreme right. I mention the Luger Pistole Modell 1900 he keeps in his middle desk drawer. I fail to mention it’s actually a cigarette lighter. I also write up and time stamp a real report. I’ll need these for later. Sanjay is really getting into the spirit of things, He’s noticing how I absently greet everyone with a “Hello, Comrade” early in the morning. He makes note of my subtle change in demeanor, the more and more I talk about Best Korea and how “they might not be all that bad”. He notes with alarm how I mentioned what I thought the crew would do on the final exam as “from each according to his ability”. Sanjay also notes the current growing obsession I have with referencing my time spent in Russia; even before the wall fell. I caution Sanjay not to lay it on too thickly nor too quickly. I’ve got stories of the Rodina and anecdotes that paint me red as a Peter Pirsch fire engine . The funniest part will be a certain couple of agents going slowly collectively crazy over my supposed behavior because *they *did my background checks all those years ago and professed that I was as All American as Jack Armstrong. Between Gulfy and me, a certain couple of sneaky agents are going to be sweating their collective asses off. Either I’ll call their bluff and spill the beans before I leave, or I might just pull some sort of palace coup and declare Alang a new country. Hell, we’ve got enough soldiers and plenty of armaments. I always wanted to be a sultan… With that done, I’ve reviewed Sanjay’s real report, which I am time-stamping and archiving on my encrypted drive which documents all my duplicity. Hell, I really don’t care at this point; I’m off to Academia and a DSc. They kick me off the proscribed roles and they lose all that wonderful intel. They take as the well-intentioned poke in the snoot and we’ll have a better understanding that you don’t really want to fuck with a future double Doctor of Petroleum Geology and Detonics. Have people surreptitiously reporting on me? Yeah, let’s just see how that’s going to work out for you… After all that, I retire to the drawing-room and partake of an eminently drinkable potato juice and citrus over rice. I have a couple of fresh cigars thanks to Operator 214 and the evening Times. For what more could I possibly ask? “Holy fuck!”, I snort, “UREE is up 3 and 1/3rd!” The next morning after a quick ignoring of phone calls from Virginia “Sorry. The party you wish to contact has gone bush. Please leave your name and number…” and a quick breakfast of Greenland coffee and clotted crumpets, we’re back in the field, gathered right by the soon to be noseless bulk of the Scandinavian cruise ship. “Right gents”, I say, “We have here a selection of steel coupons taken from the ass of the boat behind us. Recall that a coupon is a small sample of the material under test that has been prepared in such a way that its failure mechanism will be representative of the larger production pieces…which means we are assuming that these hunks of steel represent what will happen to the rest of the boat when we upscale.” There are noises of agreement. “In your field notebooks, which I will grade before I leave, “ I note, “I want some ideas why this is and is not a good idea. Always list what you think are good reasons for a course of action. Also, perhaps, more importantly, list reasons why it might not be such a good idea. The scientific method, gentlemen. Multiple working hypotheses. Like I ‘ve always said: “Don’t believe everything that you read and don’t’ read everything you believe”. Make space there for your Doubting Thomas to bloom.” Further noises of agreement. “OK, scribble your notes and let’s get after its wild ass.”, I say, “First will be 60% Extra Fast dynamite. Make notes, make predictions. Who do you think it’ll do to this heavy, marine steel?” I set a coupon on the sand and place a single stick of 60% on top of the coupon. There are immediate objections. “You’ve not contained the blast in any way!” Vik objects, “It’ll just blow and do nothing more than push the coupon into the sand and scorch it a bit. 90% of the energy will be lost.” “Quite right!”, I say, “Well noted. So what do we do about this lamentable situation?” “Elephant shit!” was the universal cry. “OK”, I reply, “Make it so.” They do and hand me the trailing leads. “OK, Safety Dance”, I say. “Really, Rock?” I hear the objections. “There’s no one here but us.” “That we know of”, I reply, “Look at it this way. We do it and it costs us nothing more than a couple of minutes. We don’t and suddenly the coupon goes ballistic and tears a hole through someone’s head that we didn’t know was taking a leak behind that dune over yonder…” “NORTH CLEAR?” “That’s better”, I smile. Fire in the hole cited thrice, and we’re set to go. I’ll handle Captain America here, this is for learning, not just fucking around. “KA-BOOM!”. Lots of noise and smoke. And a flat steel coupon turned into a hotdog bun. “Look at that. Plastic or ductile failure mode.’ I note, “Is this what we’re looking for?” “No, we need brittle fracture”, one of my acolytes remarks. “Exactly.” I reply, “So. Now what?” “Double the amount of explosive?” was one suggestion. “That’s a lot of Elephant Shit.”, I remark, “Or we could see if other sorts of explosives give us different results.” “Or we could see if other sorts of explosives give us different results.” Another wag answers. I want to save the C-4 for a bit later. We try PETN, RDX, SEMTEX, and Sprengkörper DM12. PETN has an in-built high brisance; that is, it tends to shatter objects. It reduced the coupon to shards, many of which were projectilized. Not a good choice for mass employment on something like this ship. RDX has a lower degree of brisance than PETN, but failed to shatter the coupon, nor did it initiate any fractures. It warped the shit out of the coupon, twisting it into an Escheresque shape, like a Klein Bottle. SEMTEX resulted in very similar outcomes, as it is a combination of PETN and RDX. Sprengkörper DM12 had some promising results, as it did initiate cracks in the coupons we were testing. It also had a bit of high brisance, and the edges of the coupon spalled off into nasty little high-velocity projectiles. Which left us my favorite, C-4. We had several coupons left, so I sent one of my crew over to the torch patrol which had shown up right after we began, and had then torch a series of holes, channels, and rifts into a couple of different test pieces. We tried a blop of C-4 just mooshed down onto a coupon. It resulted in a very nice floral pattern. A hole in the center and the edges curled up skyward. Then we tried rolling some C-4 ‘snakes’ and laid them in a cross-work pattern. That worked well, loads of fractures in the coupon. We had some obvious reinforcement of the detonic pattern as noted in the interference patterns on the scorched steel. We were getting closer, but I wanted to take them step by step. Now we took the coupon with a hole brazed through it. I made a dumbbell of C-4, split it along the long axis, so it had C-4 on both sides. It split that coupon like no one’s business. Then we tried a coupon with a channel cut into it. The same sort of idea, C-4 on either side, set, charged and primed to detonate simultaneously. Worked a treat. Split that coupon like a prize Blue Point oyster. We were getting close. We tried several other C-4 configurations until we ran out of test coupons. I laid them all out on the sand and asked my guys which one that we should use. C-4 was the obvious choice. There was some discussion where we could just burn some holes in the hull, wire them up and shoot it off that way, or would channels be more efficient? After some little lecturing on failure modes and fracture propagation in marine high-carbon steel, it was decided that a series of 3 foot-long channels would be torched or cut into the hull of the boat and puttied both sides with shaped-charges of C-4. I agreed. “Now”, I asked, “How much will we need for the job?” Grumbles and groans. I left them to their mathematical devices as I caught a personnel basket and went up to the foredeck. There was a wooden floor covering marine steel. This would complicate matters a bit until remembered we had a concrete saw. This would make mincemeat out of any flooring; tile, marble, wood, or linoleum. Problem solved. Now we just needed to get the thing up there. Well, wouldn’t you know it? It just fits into a personnel basket. It looks like I have my afternoon spoken for. I receive a call on my cell-phone telephone. I shut down the concrete saw, turned off the water, and got away from the miasma of shredded hardwood, zipping xylem and phlowing phloem to see it’s the personal secretary of Goodgulf Grayteeth, one Achilles Starace. “Yes”, I ask, shaking the cellulosic cuff off my hardhat, gloves, and boots, “I may help you how?” “Um, yes, Doctor. We have a package here from Sinter’s Printers. It is addressed to you, but no one was available at Outbuilding #2 to sign for the delivery.” “Outstanding”, I remark, “Hold it. I will have a duly-authorized deputy of mine come over to relieve you of the package. He will invariably be wearing a pair of orange coveralls, and well, overall, an offhand orange motif. You may feel comfortable releasing the package to his custody. “ “Yes, Doctor.”, he replies and rings off. I walk over to the side of the ship and see a bunch of orange-clad ants scurrying around. I key the mic on my radio and call down to them. “Hey you! You! Yes, you! There behind the outdoor heads. Stand still, Laddie!” I say. “Whaddya want, Rock?”, comes the reply. “Who wants to earn a break by running an errand for me?” I ask. Somewhat stilted silence. “Cigars or booze?” came one answer. “Nice. C’mon. I’ll pay you.” I replied. Nothing. “You can take my bike,” I add. Instant radio chaos. “OK, Vis.”, I reply, “Keys are under the seat on the bike. Go to Goodgulf Greyteeth’s office, and see his secretary, one Mr. Starace. Take the package from him and put it on my desk in the Barn. Take a cigar out of petty cash. Then return. Got it?” I could barely hear him over the roaring putt-putt-putt of the Enfield’s motor. “Well”, I muse, “There’s another issue handled.” I return to sawing apart the monstrously expensive, now kindling, hardwood floor. Not much call to reclaim it. It’s all salt-water eaten and nasty. Too bad, nice patterns. On one side of the boat, I’ve got the torch patrol in the personnel baskets. Sparks flying everywhere. On the other side, I’ve got the K-12 crowd, sawing away with sparks flying everywhere. Good thing I told them to start at the bottom and work their way up. Be a bad thing if we weakened the superstructure too much and the whole bow came crashing down on someone’s head. I decided to just cut a square hole in the foredeck, one large enough to admit a scissor-jack. If we’re going to putty both sides of the bow with C-4, personnel baskets will work a treat on the exterior. Interior? Hell, we’re not Spiderman. Scissor-jack delivered via crane. Well, there’s the whistle. It’s 1700 and I need to drop by the armory for a few bits and pieces before dinner. I get the crane operator to hoist me out of the hold and back down to terra firma. My bike is right where I left it, although the gas tank is suspiciously lower than it was when I parked it. No matter. Gas is really cheap when you’re not the one paying for it. Much like most everything else here in-country for my stay. I go to the bunker and do the required access dance to obtain entry. I fill my backpack with several dozen brick-red road flares, demolition wire, the copper variety, and the packing box from a case of Du Pont 60% Extra Fast Dynamite, broken down along the dovetailed connectors that make the crate. They also go into my backpack. I spy several half-full boxes of blasting caps and boosters, so I consolidate them into a couple of full boxes and the empties go into my backpack as well. Nice little wooden boxes, finely crafted. They will make someone a most excellent gift. I take my time locking up and fill out the inventory. I make notes for the warehouse foreman to order an excessive number of cases of C-4, spool after spool of Primacord, some more det cord, demo wire, and initiators. This cruise ship will be a huge job, may as well lay in a healthy supply of stock. Besides, I have an inkling that someone besides the warehouse foreman is taking notice of my ordering and usage activities. I fully intend on giving them something to read and worry about. Yes, I sprinkled a little radioactive tracer, metaphorically speaking, around the job and home site. I have been watching the old scintillation counter, again, I speak allegorically, closely. Looks like I’ve found a sheep in the meadow, a cow in the corn, a dog in the manger a Balrog in the woodpile. Yeah, things here are all not as they first appear. So it would be remiss of me not to give them all something to talk about. I take my time locking up and leave a voice-note for the warehouse manager to create the order and send it out posthaste. We’ll use much of the C-4, and other ancillary equipment, stock on the bow shot. Once I leave, it’ll be up to my crew to take over-ordering and keep stocks up to snuff. Besides, there are one or two items I’d hoped can be delivered before I depart in a couple-three days’ time. I motor back to the Raj, taking the scenic route if that’s the term for any vista along this grubby stretch of beach. I am relieved of my motorcycle at the garage entrance, and I shoo the porter away as I am fully capable of carrying my backpack to my room. In my room, I stash my backpack and notice that my mini-bar needs replenishment. I take all the unusual bit and bobs out of my backpack and store them in one of my empty, and lockable, aluminum luggage cases. I close my backpack and stick a post-it™ note, scribbled with an arcane language I just made up, on the dusty canvas. It’ll stick if undisturbed if you follow my meaning. I call the Majordomo and explain my angst. “My mini-bar is almost empty and I have much work this evening…” He immediately apologizes and says he’ll take care of the matter personally. I figured he would. I explain that I’ll be in the library or bar while he rectifies this most egregious situation. I set up a few more field craft booby traps and lock the door behind me. Sanjay saunters in with the package from the printers. He was changing in the Barn and saw the package on my chair. He thought it’d be best for me to hang onto the tonight rather than to tempt fate. I thank him for his forethought and think “Tempt fate? Whatever do you mean?” I have another couple-five post-work cocktails and figure that I’ve given the Major enough time to take care of my mini-bar situation. I say “Spokoynoy nochi” to Sanjay and head back to my room. Well, the good news is that my mini-bar is stocked to the gills. The not so good news is that someone here has a very bad and sloppy case of nose poker-inner-itis. Every one of my little traps had been sprung., and it’s not that just casual wandering around this room or even cleaning and stocking a mini-bar would have set these off. Someone was deliberately looking for something. Evidently it wasn’t my print of Das Kapital or my ‘autographed’ copy of Quotations from Chairman Mao that I leave on my desk, taking care to change the pages daily. Nor was it my field notebooks from Best Korea which are written in a very arcane and indecipherable code known only to me. But I do know I never ‘break the backs’ of my notebooks. Pages tend to work their way free over time if one does that. I am scrupulously careful with my notebooks. But wouldn’t you know it, several have their spines broken, just like what would happen if someone was trying to photocopy 2 pages at a time, quickly, surreptitiously, clandestinely, on a slow xerocopy machine. “Good luck with that”, is all I can think. Then, a bit of deviltry pops into being. I smile, pull out a new field book, use an old, old, old, and simple encryption code; one so easily broken that it can hardly be considered a code. I spent many hours in the Jacuzzi creating a work of incredible Red fiction, making certain to spill a little of my drink, drop in a cigar ash or two, and get it splashingly wet in places to simulate the appearance of age. Oh, someone’s going to have the finding of a lifetime tomorrow as I conveniently forget to lock the center drawer of my desk… Before retiring, I call Es and make the near-fatal mistake of asking what she and her mother bought that day shopping. 45 minutes later, I am able to shoehorn in a word edgewise and tell Es that if Rack or Ruin or both call to chat about me, she’s to let on to nothing. Well, nothing more than the well-coached program I tell her about called “DM Part 1”. It’s just a little chain yankage via an injection of deliberate misinformation to a couple of agents who should have gotten this out of their systems long ago. They should really know better than to try and sandbag a Doctor of Geology and his wife; especially when the wife’s mother was a resident of Berlin back in the 1940s. Yes, she’s in on the ruse as well. The next morning at breakfast, I’m handed several notes that I have some missed phone calls. Not surprising, I was either on the phone, in the Jacuzzi, or had disconnected the phone, and turned off my satellite and GSM cell-phone telephones. As expected, Rack and Ruin are clamoring to talk with me. Unfortunate that I’m so busy these days. I’ll get around to calling them in a couple of days or so. Sanjay arrives and as were chatting about today’s bill of fare, blasting-wise, Mr. Kanada our redoubtable Majordomo, drops by. We say a casual hello, and I return to my conversation with Sanjay about the merits of Kim Jong-Il and how nice I found Best Korea. I also mentioned that Soviet Russia really go a bad rap in the press. It wasn’t all that bad… Once Mr. Kanada was out of earshot, I let Sanjay in on the jape. He knows I’ve burned him enough to have him classified as ‘well done’. He is now a trusted auxiliary in this program of considered propaganda. He finds it now, that we’ve stripped away all façade of reality from it, hilarious. I mention that I’ve been poking the snoots at the agency this way for decades. He’s surprised that they haven’t responded with massive retaliation. I explain that I know where a lot of bodies are buried and how many closets have skeletons. Metaphorically, of course. Anyways, it’s going to be a busy day. Lots of priming, setting, and charging of a couple of tons of high explosives. No, we don’t sensu stricto need all that firepowerful pyrotechnics, but since it will be my last blast before I depart, I am planning something of a show. We are rumored to have some company and national dignitaries in attendance tomorrow for the inaugural of the new blasting class, so I want to make this a show to remember. At the barn, all my guys are dressed in their PPEs. I take this time to dispense the Certifications of Completion of my ISEE-sanctioned and accredited course and practical exams. These are the golden ticket for this batch of two dozen out of the much and mire of the legions of torchbearers. They are now certified to handle explosives, well, most of them are, and all will be after a bit more tutelage and will use that knowledge and experience to make much shorter work of the hulk of various watercraft that wash up along these shores. 25 certificates later, I had planned a blast of a party, but instead, we’re in Mr. Maha’s Magic Bus headed to the beach. We’re preparing for a different type of blast, and the party will follow immediately after. I have Sanjay take 18 of the guys and split them into two teams, an outside and an inside team, who will load and prepare the channels which we’ve cut into the hull of this old boat. Sure, we needed some torch and saw work, but only a slight proportion of what would be needed if one were to just make these cuts with a torch crew. The outside and inside guys will collaborate in placing the C-4 in the channels and holes we’re prepared. Between channels, we’ll alternate with a row of C-4 on the outside, a filled channel from both sides, and a row on the inside, down and around the entire prow of the boat, alternating as we go. That way, we’ll maximize the amount of bang we’ll receive per unit volume of pyrotechnic employed. That will keep Sanjay hopping for a good portion of the day. I have my six guys come over to the whiteboard whilst I have an early morning smoke and explain what we’ll be up to this fine, humid morning. I have a list of items that I need from the armory. I scrounge a one-ton pickup truck and tell Luke to take the one-ton and ride to the dispensary system and obtain the items on the list. I tell them that they are on point to both open, extract the necessary items, record, and close the armory as per procedures. I won’t be here forever, so I have to trust them to do as I had taught. I have the other four commanded a crane and personnel basket along with an oxy-acetylene welding set. It seems most of these guys can handle welding as well as cutting with torches, so I instruct them to weld four 2’ long pieces of ¾” rebar to the outside of the ship. I want a rectangle 5 meters high by 3 meters in width. I let them figure out there where and how I’ve got to get inside as there’s a shit-ton of wiring and circuits that have to be created and galved. The day progressed more or less as planned. The hull, where perforated, was C-4’ed inside and out. A quick inspection via the scissor lift on the ship’s interior provided a very nicely done job. I had Sanjay take a couple of guys and do the same due diligence on the C-4 outside the hull. I began wiring in the appropriate scrub-circuits. These are basically the gross outlines of the circuits you’ll use to fire the pyros. I ran a huge loop of det cord around the inside of the ship’s bow, as I wanted it protected from the humid salt air overnight. I had Sanjay spray the exposed C-4 outside the bow of the ship with a special black tar-based preservative as he and his crew inspected the placement of the stuff. I had a sheet of marine plywood scrounged and set up as a whiteboard in the dark belly of that boat. I drew my schematic wiring diagrams and after a while, I even ran out of different colors of pens to demote different sub-circuits of the plan. For insurance and back up purposes, I had my team go along and weld 4” diameter pipe footings in strategic places. These were normally used to build shades or awnings by bolting the pipe footings to thick wooden planks on the boat and using simple cold-rolled low carbon steel pipe as mainstays and uprights. I also had my guys whip up a load, that is, as many as they could before the end of the day, lengths of threaded 4” pipe. Normally called ‘nipples’, these were 2-3 foot length of pipe, as noted, threaded at both ends. On end screwed into the pipe footings I had welding in strategic places and the other end accepted a 4” pipe cap. These might sound like pipe bombs in the making since I plan to fill them with various potions of my own creation, but they are more like downward-firing pipe cannons. The caps have much more mechanical strength and bearing capacity than the 3.5” hole of the pipe footing. When fired, the caps would remain intact and direct the rapidly detonating or deflagrating pyrotechnic downwards. Sort of a vertical shaped charge. These would come into play later on in the show. We set, primed, charges, and wired all day. Finally 1700 hours rolled around and I told everyone that I had a few bits and pieces left to do and that I could handle it alone. True, I could have used some extra hands, but the time I’d waste explaining what I was doing would consume any time saved by their help. I did bribe a crane operator to hang around and drive the personnel basket as I’d be the one inside it giving him the signs of which directions I needed to go. We had a couple of hours before dark and that’s when I’d have to quit. So as soon as everyone departed to the barn, I was in the basket and on the radio. I had 7 spools of det cord and a big job in front of me. That the crane operator was well paid and paid good attention to my directions meant we finished well before darkness fell. To Be Continued…
[LF] Antique Bed (Black), Diner Neon Sign (Pink), some Fossils, and more! [FT] Anything in my catalog of furniture, bells, extra fossils
Edit: I am monitoring this thread on and off, but trades are still open! Please note that I will not accept blind PMs without commenting on here first, and I will PM you after confirming interest in a trade/sale in the comments below! For purposes of actually being found via the reddit search function, I'm going to list off everything currently purchasable in my catalogue below, and every item I want. For purposes of quickly scrolling through, please use Ctrl+F for "Looking For" and "For Trade" to quickly get to each list! Please ask about my color variations! I've listed color variants below only for items I want and a small handful of clothing that I have, I would need to go through my whole catalog again to get color variants for items I have. I'm fine with cataloging instead of outright swaps. I can also offer bells for whatever you've got. [Looking for]:
There is a shower tile floor for every budget. Tile costs vary widely, ranging from budget-friendly ceramic and porcelain tiles up to the highest-end marble and detailed mosaics, not to mention that a small shower enclosure will require less tile and cost less than a large walk-in shower. Not every tile is suitable for shower floors. To help with your search, we have complied some of our most popular shower floor tiles. Or view the entire collection of products for shower floors. 10-Pack Marquina 8-in x 8-in Polished Natural Stone Marble Hexagon Marble Look Floor and Wall Tile. Model #20-802. Compare; Find My Store. for pricing and availability. 7. Floor & Decor's COVID-19 Update Learn More. Shower Systems WOOD & LAMINATE Floor Preparation Materials Underlayment Wood Adhesives Installation Tools View Details Bianco Carrara 1 in. Polished Marble Hexagon Tile. Sample Compare 70b94b57acb9ad9fc5f00f18f5. This can be used to your advantage even inside the shower. So you may want to think about installing a hexagon shower tile floor to add some extra safety and a classic touch at the same time. Walls. Even though it is seen way more often on the floor, hexagon tile can really work wonders on walls, and that means backsplashes in particular. Large hexagon shower floor tile.Natural pebble stones a niche can be an excellent spot to showcase natural materials such as pebble tile. More importantly, smaller tiles are difficult to clean: The size is a matter of personal preference, but there is a simple rule of. Where to Use Hexagon Tile Shower. Any type or size of hexagon tile can be used in a shower to make it absolutely stunning. White hexagon tiles are a great choice for a bright and fresh look – and they’re always a classic. But any color adds style – bright looks bold, while gray and beige are more calming. Often, hexagon tile in the interior is used on the floor where it looks in its place, elegant and exquisite. White hexagon tile is rather popular on the floor of the bathroom where it creates an interesting pattern that attracts attention to the floor area. The white color will add spaciousness while the hexagon pattern will make the floor unique. Shop our large selection of shower tile and shower floor tile at Floor & Decor. Floor & Decor's COVID-19 Update Learn More. Join Our Fast-Growing Team! Apply Now Adessi Opal White Hexagon Porcelain Tile Size: 11 x 13 Hex Tile Floors. Hexagon tiles are often used for covering bathroom floors because tiles are very durable, water-resistant and hex tiles can easily make a cool statement. The most popular idea here is to decorate a bathroom in neutral colors and add a contrasting hex tile floor in navy, black, dark grey or any other color, and contrasting grout can help you to highlight the tiles.
I created this video with the YouTube Slideshow Creator (http://www.youtube.com/upload) hexagonal tile floor, hexagon tiles ,hexagon floor tile ,hexagonal fl... Let me know what else you need to know!! Installing tile in the shower and main floor and it looks amazing!!Follow me on social media!!Youtube www.youtube.com/c/ralphbucciTwitter http://twitter.com/... Although this shower floor I used the Schluter Kerdi system with the proprietary drain grate assembly, I take the same approach to install any shower floor. ... Although this shower floor I used the Schluter Kerdi system with the proprietary drain grate assembly, I take the same approach to install any shower floor. ... How careful planning and precise cutting is the only way to get the bathroom tile floor that you will be proud of. Shower floor installation. How to install mosaic tile on a shower floor. The mosaic tile in this shower floor is of a hexagonal shape, but the method I use h... Today's video shares quick tips for how to tile a shower floor. We share tips and tools that make this a lot easier no matter what your skill level. The link... Hexagon shaped tiles were very popular years ago, but faded from use for quite a long time, except for mosaic hex tiles. Today it seem hexagonal tiles are co... In this video we share hexagon tile floor tips for curbless showers. Hexagon tile looks awesome but it can be royal pain in the butt. Bathroom Repair Tutor -...
