Low Man on the Totem Pole

I got a call from Rob this afternoon asking how far down they should lower the plumbing for the shower in the main level bathroom. [When we were going over the tile layout with Ian and Rex last week, we realized that they had plumbed the bathroom for a fixed showerhead rather than the handheld shower we purchased for that room -- so they needed to lower it to accommodate both the shower configuration and the tile design.] I told Rob that was a difficult question to answer over the phone, but I could come over later in the afternoon and take a look. He informed me that the plumber was there now and needed an answer, so I suggested he ask Ian, since he could address that based on the tile layout. Rob said Ian had gone to lunch, so I told him I'd be there in 20 minutes and the plumber would just have to wait.

When I got to the house, Justin was on the front porch cleaning our old door hinges with a foul-smelling, slimy goop. Justin is a college student who works for SAI as an intern, so he gets all the crap jobs that nobody else wants to do... but he's remarkably good-natured about it.
The plumber was waiting outside for me, but when we went in to the bathroom, it turned out Ian had come back from lunch and had already worked out the best placement for the shower plumbing with him. All I really needed to do was say, "Yeah, that looks fine." Good thing I dropped everything and rushed over there....
Since I was there, I took the opportunity to see what else was going on around the house. John was working on retrofitting our old doors for their new positions.
And later Justin helped him build a frame for the doorway between the dining room and the hall to the bathroom/bedroom.
Upstairs, Ian had laid most of the floor in the laundry room before discovering that one box of tile was a slightly different size from the rest. They are sending Justin to Architectural Ceramics tomorrow to pick up a replacement box so Ian can finish laying the floor.
And now we have an even more unexpected color scheme in the master bath: hot pink and lavender with white stripes and polka dots! Gaah! It turns out the hot pink stuff in the shower is a waterproofing material. Why it comes in hot pink is a mystery to me...
OK, I looked it up, and this stuff is called RedGard. It goes on bright pink, and turns a dark red color as it dries, so you can tell whether it is totally dry or still has a few wet spots. I guess that makes sense, but that still doesn't quite answer the question: why pink? I can't wait until the tile is installed and our bathroom has a nice, soothing sage green and white color scheme.

Since Rob seemed to be on an unreasonable demand kick today, he also asked me if I could give him my samples of the countertop material we'd picked out for the kitchen and bathrooms so he could hand them over to the Turkish Mafia. (I am NOT making this up!) My best explanation for that is they must be working with a countertop supplier who originally hails from Turkey, and he wanted to make sure they were giving us a quote based on exactly what we wanted by providing them with samples in addition to product names and descriptions. Beyond that, I'm not really sure what that was all about, but I ran home to get them and dropped them off at the house before heading to the farmer's market and the grocery store.

When I left, Rob was desperately trying to finish installing the trim around the window in the master bedroom before he had to leave to meet up with his Mafia buddies. And, of course, Justin was sweeping up.