ar·ca·num (är-kā'nəm)
n. pl. ar·ca·na (-nə) or ar·ca·nums
- A deep secret; a mystery.
- often arcana Specialized knowledge or detail that is mysterious to the average person: "knows the arcana of police procedure and the intricacies of litigation"
- A secret essence or remedy; an elixir.
I make no apologies for my design skills but I do have problems visualizing in 3D without a drawing. Ellen and I had a big meeting yesterday with our builder Leon, his project manager Keith, and our tile guy Sam from Quality Tile Works in Durham. I don't have much construction experience and it is a little intimidating sitting in these meetings with my architect wife and a builder with 30 years experience. 
They get heavy into some amazing design or construction detail and ideas start flying faster than I can keep up and then Ellen needs to draw one of her amazing quickie sketches to bring me up to speed. The issue of the moment was our desire to have this beautiful Spanish mosaic tile by Tau Ceramica (US source Mid-Atlantic Tile Distributors) called Corten (looks like Corten steel)
at the end of our master shower wall. We were discussing the best way to deal with the unfinished edges of the tile without Sam having to fabricate a bullnose. There's the glass shower door, Corian shower base, GWB wall, shampoo/soap insert all converging together. Leon blurts out "We could Schluter it." Ellen and Sam look on knowingly and I find yet another manufacturer of arcana that I was quite content not to know about even a day before. Schluter makes all these widgets and trims and it turns out Leon is talking about using a tile edge trim protection strip--specifically we decide on the Jolly Profile
Next task is finding the perfect color to match the Corten tile--yet another research project I didn't know we had to do.
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