Our story so far: As reality has caught up with this blog about converting a 126-year-old Methodist church into our home, I’ve run across a few odds and ends that occurred after I wrote about the subject initially. That’s how it goes with a real-time memoir. Sometimes stuff happens after publication. So this week, I’m sharing a few little stories that will ultimately be integrated into the relevant location in the memoir. Think of this as the time in the novel—especially a mystery novel—when you page back to reread a few passages to remind yourself about what’s going on. Here’s a little more for the story in Chapter 20.

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The tiler I met at the post office, You-Can-Call-Me-Al suggested we buy our tile from a Big Box home improvement store so if he ran short we could easily and quickly resupply him. So the tile I chose was off the shelf. Only our nearest Home Depot did not have enough of the shower floor tile on its shelf, so I ordered the twenty-four tiles we needed from the warehouse to arrive Monday.

They didn’t arrive Monday. And it didn’t arrive the following Monday either. By now, You-Can-Call-Me-Me-Al was assembling the foundation and waterproofing for the shower. He couldn’t begin tiling until he had the shower floor tile. The entire project was about to come to a standstill because the warehouse couldn’t deliver on the promise.

Tyler bawled out the store manager who ultimately offered us a 20 percent discount on another choice of tile. But we didn’t want another choice. Some pointed questioning led us to discover nearby Home Depots carried the tile but none of them had the volume we needed.

But a brief trip to Minnesota to visit family during a rare spring blizzard offered up an answer. I visited four Home Depots in the Twin Cities metro area to piece together enough square footage to keep You-Can-Call-Me-Al in tile for the duration of the project.

Our timeline was saved by mass production and suburban convenience.

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Tomorrow: Shampoo is ugly. Read why here.