Bathroom Floor

Several years ago I came up with the idea to tile the bathroom floor of the Lily house.  I decided to use cut-up pieces of paint sample cards for the tiles.  You can purchase dollhouse-sized tiles to use but I wanted to try a more economical method.  I took a wallpaper sample with me to my local Home Depot to help me choose which color to get.  I picked out six different colors to use to make tiles.  Each set of three colors were different shades of pink and green.  I took several sheets of each color to cut into tiles. 

Once I had the paint sample sheets I began to make the floor.  I chose a thin sheet of cardboard to use as the floor.  I made a pattern by first laying the sticky side of contact paper onto the bathroom floor of the dollhouse and cutting it to size with an X-acto knife.  I then pulled up the contact paper off the floor and stuck it onto brown wrapping paper. After making sure that the contact paper was stuck smoothly to the paper, I cut away the excess paper and was left with a pattern to use to cut the cardboard to the correct size.  I put the pattern on the cardboard I had chosen to use as the floor and drew around the outside edge of it with a pen.  I lifted off the pattern and then cut around the lines with scissors.  Once the floor was cut out, I tested it in the bathroom to check the fit.  The cardboard fit and then I painted it with several coats of white acrylic paint.  The white paint on the cardboard was going to be the tile grout. 

Then I began the arduous task of cutting the paint sample cards into tiles.  Each card had the color number and name printed on it.  This made part of the card unusable, so I didn’t cut those parts into squares.  I saved the names of the paint samples in case I found later that I would need more.  Each paint sample card had it’s own Ziploc bag.  Also when the paint dried on the floor I put that into a large Ziploc bag to keep it protected. 

As it turned out it was a good thing that I did that I put the floor into the bag because this project took very long to complete.  I started out by first cutting the paint samples on a self-healing cutting mat into thin strips that were ¼” wide using an X-acto knife.  When this was completed I then cut the strips into ¼” squares.  This was a tedious process and I found could only be done in small segments at a time due to the fact that it required me to sit still and make repeated cutting movements.  Finally in 2011, I finished cutting the paint sample cards and was ready to start gluing them onto the white painted cardboard floor once I had come up with a pattern.  I spent some time playing around with colored pencils testing out different color patterns on graph paper.  After awhile, I came up with a good pattern idea. 

Using the pattern I had made on graph paper as a guide I began gluing the paint sample tiles to the floor being careful to allow some of the white to show between the tiles.  I used the Easy Flow Tacky glue for my glue and thinned it out on the cardboard using a plastic card saved just for this purpose.  It took about a week for me to finish gluing all the tiles to the cardboard.  The floor tiles weren’t perfectly aligned, but they didn’t look terrible.  Looking at my own bathroom floor I could see imperfections in it and so I was satisfied with my work on this floor.  Thankfully, I had gotten enough tiles so I didn’t need to get any more paint sample cards.  To fill in blank spaces at the ends instead of cutting the tiles to fit into these empty spaces, I glued larger tiles to fill the space and let the excess of the tile overhang the floor.  Once those parts were filled in, I set the floor aside to dry completely.  When it was dried I turned the floor over and using scissors cut away the excess tile so that it was flush with the outside edge of the floor.

 

When the floor was completely tiled, I tested the fit in the dollhouse bathroom.  I was happy with the fit and tested out how it would look with the furniture in it by putting the sink, bathtub, and screen in the room.  To ensure that the tiles would stay glued to the floor, I decided to paint it with clear acrylic varnish.  I had done the same thing with the kitchen floor and was pleased with the results.  I painted the floor with two coats of the clear acrylic varnish. 

When the varnish was dry, I cleaned the bathroom floor with Endust as a way to remove the dust and any dirt that might be there.  Then squeezed a bead Easy Flow Tacky glue onto the floor.  I spread the bead glue into a thin glue layer with a plastic card and then put the tiled floor on top of the glue.  I pressed the floor firmly into place and covered it with waxed paper to protect it was being marred by anything during the drying process.  Then weighted the floor down with small books, a dumbbell, and a small brick. 

 

I let it dry overnight and the next day, removed the objects weighting the floor down and the waxed paper and then needed to move the furniture and other accessories into the bathroom. 

Mound Cemetery Visit

Previously, I posted about wanting to visit an Illinois cemetery where many members of the Yockey family are buried.  Prior research had shown that many of my husband’s ancestors are buried in Mound Cemetery near Hunt City, Illinois.  I had also used the internet to determine the exact location of this cemetery, which was just south of Hunt City in Jasper County.  I visited this cemetery while visiting Illinois this past September.  On Ancestry, I had even found a picture of his grandparents’ headstone.  This picture gave me an idea of what I would need to look for once I got there.

Unfortunately I had a cold when I began my Illinois vacation, but I was determined not to let this stop me from doing the research that I had planned.  Before traveling to Illinois, I had done a GoogleMap search for driving directions to Mound Cemetery.  After looking up where Hunt City was on a road atlas, I calculated that it would take about 2 hours to get there by car.

My husband and I mentioned our planned visit to the cemetery to my husband’s mother and she told us that she had taken photos of many of the graves in that cemetery a few years ago and had put them in an album.  With her permission we borrowed the album for the trip.  I studied it beforehand and found more pictures of graves that belonged to my husband’s ancestors.  The one grave that I was very interested to find was for John M. Yockey and his wife Emily Riley.  I didn’t see that in the album my mother-in-law had made.

On Tuesday September 12^th in the early afternoon before starting out, I packed up my sleuthing kit, which included a camera, directions to the cemetery, the photo album, and because of my cold-a couple of packs of tissues.  I had never been to this part of Illinois and was surprised by the hills and numerous trees that encompassed the landscape, as we got closer.  When we were more in the vicinity, the trees became less numerous and gave way to a rolling prairie of cornfields and a lone pumpkin patch.

We followed the directions that I had printed out, but by this time we were both in need of a rest stop and unfortunately there wasn’t one to be found.  The directions seemed to be wrong, but it seemed as if we should have been in the general area of the cemetery.  We decided that we needed to take a break and headed into the nearest town, Newton to use the restrooms and eat a late lunch.

Over our lunch we reviewed the directions and the road atlas.  The only conclusion that we could come to was that the directional street names (North, East, etc.) were wrong.  We started back out on the road and headed back to the same area that had given us problems earlier.

This time when we came to what should have been listed as E 2100^th St. in the directions, but according to Google was N 2100^th St. there was a sign that said Mound Church and Cemetery, Burl Ives gravesite and memorial.  I knew that Burl Ives was buried in Mound Cemetery before heading out, but didn’t imagine that there would be a sign about it nearby.  I think that our distraction over needing a restroom contributed to our not noticing this sign on our previous visit.

We turned onto the road and over the next ridge was a church, but no cemetery nearby.  My husband felt that this might be the area where the cemetery was, but I didn’t think so because the name on the church didn’t say it was Mound Church.  I pointed this out to him and he drove down a road that we had passed on our way to this church.  Again, over the next ridge was a church and this one had a cemetery.  In fact, it was the Mound Church and Cemetery.

We parked in the gravel driveway.  I grabbed the camera and we went in.  The cemetery was pretty much surrounded on three sides by cornfields.  I walked around with my camera and spotted the gravesite and memorial of Burl Ives almost immediately.  My mother-in-law had helped me to draw a map of where my husband’s grandparents’ (Courtland M. and Nora R. Yockey) grave was located in relation to the church and Burl Ives’ grave. I was able to find their grave and took a picture of it.  I tried to locate other graves, but went back to the car to get the photo album my mother-in-law had made to try to find the others I was looking for.

Using the photo album and wandering around the cemetery I was able to find my husband’s great grandparents’ (Jasper and Zona Yockey) grave.  I took a picture of that but was still missing my father-in-law’s younger brother, who died as a baby and my John M. and Emily R. Yockey’s grave. 

By looking at the pictures in the album I was able to determine that my father-in-law’s brother was buried next a large square topped stone.  Near this stone was a tree.  I realized that the tree in the photo might not be there now.  My husband had now joined me in my search for these graves.  He agreed with my suspicions about the tree.

We were standing a few rows away from the church and propane tanks which were behind it.  Off in the distance I saw what could be the tree stump we were looking for.  As we walked toward it, I found what might be the two headstones I was looking for. 

The grave for my father-in-law’s baby brother was now tilted slightly on earth that had bubbled up slightly.  Possibly this was due to the tree being removed?  Next to this grave was the grave for my husband’s great-great grandparents, John M. and Emily R. Yockey.  The stone was nearly illegible because the engraving on it had eroded most of what written away.

I took photos of both headstones.  My husband came up with the idea to shoot a video of how to get to these gravesites.  We started at the entrance gates to the cemetery and my husband made a video of me talking and leading the viewer through the cemetery to the graves of Richard Yockey (my father-in-law’s brother) and John M. and Emily R. Yockey.