The soil report arrives!

I had e-mailed the firm on Tuesday and was told the report had been mailed last week and that several attempts had been made to fax it to the municipal office, but had failed. The secretary told me she would telephone the office. Finally, the report arrived in the mail today. The postmark dated August 18, Monday. Not last week, it turns out. And, there are several changes and some corrections to be made. I've asked for them to be done priority and mailed Priority Post. We'll see what happens.

We'd gone shopping on Tuesday night, to Big Orange, as we remembered seeing inexpensive slate tiles there a while ago. They had some Indian Autumn, but at $2.99 a sq ft. They had only 2 boxes left of the cheaper ones, $1.99 per sq ft. The clerk was very helpful and checked other local stores, locating one that appeared to have some 60 boxes. He even telephoned to verify, and it turned out they had about 40. The stuff wasn't flying off the shelves, so we said we'd come by the next night.

So, late this afternoon, we head out. It's all there, but it's not the best quality. It would be quite challenging to tile a walking surface with it as there are significant variations in thickness with some tiles being twice the thickness of others. Also, there are some other cosmetic issues, like round 'rust' spots that are very rough and would accumulate dirt that would be next to impossible to remove. But, for our purpose, a raised hearth and backing wall, they are fine. Particularly since the price is not $1.99, but $1.69 a sq ft! We make an on-the-spot decision that this is the tile we will use on the other side of the wall as well, in our bedroom, and buy 100 sq ft. The best price we had found locally was about $4.10. We do try to source locally as much as we can, but when we're looking at saving more than half the cost, it's not a tough call. We check every box, exchanging all broken tiles, and there are several. I never realized slate was so heavy, or so dirty.

Of course, we round out the purchases to make sure we can take advantage of the no-payments-no-interest. We now have our own Ramset, which will be very handy as we'll be relocating several partition walls in the house.

Once we got home, I selected 5 tiles with different looks, washed them and gave them two coats of sealer. Can't wait to see how they look under natural light.

ETA:

Not bad at all. Even though it will mean more cuts, I think the running bond will handle the edge irregularities better than the typical style. I picked a grey thinset, but don't know it it's dark or light grey. I'll bring some of the leftover colorant I have, just in case. Now I can't wait to get started!