Wall 2 wall

At long last, an update on the bathroom project.

I think the last time we checked in, we had just installed the new underlayment. After that, for many weeks, we worked on the walls. I had no idea you could do that much work on walls. We:

Put in new drywall (blue board, in this case). This involved

• quite a bit of jigsawing (measure once, cut twice)
• tons of tiny particulate matter settling on every surface of the house, repeatedly
• nailing and screwing
• seam taping
• joint mudding, smoothing, sanding, also repeatedly

We then primed the walls with something that smelled approximately like horse pee and reeked the house out for hours.

Next, the extremely exciting adventure of using the industrial compressor gizmo to spray texture on the walls (mostly in an attempt to hide my very bad drywall taping and mudding job). This machine was:

• huge
• heavy
• deafeningly loud (esp. in small bathroom)
• sprayed texture frickin’ EVERYWHERE (my job was to scrape/sponge it off of every place it wasn’t supposed to go, including the closet door in Carol’s office, like eight feet away)
• burped the liquid texture five feet into the air when turned off

Carol preps the texturizing machine

Carol spraying texture on the walls

Texture Warrior

At this point, we were forced to take a break from the project and go on a cruise for ten days. When we got back, we painted. Three times. With three different colors. Then we really started cooking: last weekend Carol installed the new light fixture, we put in the new medicine cabinet, and Carol got one of the recessed cubbies installed:

Et voila.

Next installment (so to speak): At Long Last, Floor.

Floored

So exciting! We got the new underlayment installed yesterday. We used a cement board called Hardibacker (only ate two jigsaw blades cutting it), lots ‘o drywall screws, and thinset mortar. We now have a fresh new dry level floor! Also picked up the vanity at Lowe’s today and purchased the floor tile. Tomorrow: getting serious with the drywall.

Carol contemplating placement of first underlayment sheet

Gooping on the thinset

I luvs a woman with power tools.

The lovely new underlayment & patched shower wall

Underlayment laid, glued, screwed, and joint taped

Peace on Earth + blown-up bathroom

Just a couple of pics on this Christmas Eve:

Nowhere to go but up, from here ...

Let sleeping Vizslas lie

 

The Nose Knows.

All is vanity

I am so excited because we found a gorgeous vanity at Lowe’s yesterday for our new bathroom. They had the vanity top in stock so we brought it home, but the stand has to be special ordered and is due here December 31. This is what it looks like (although ours is a dark brown, not black):

We’re both fans of the open storage idea, so we’ll use the bottom shelf for a wicker basket and towels, and will install a medicine cabinet in the wall to take care of the toothpaste and etc. Getting rid of the big cabinet that’s in there now and replacing it with this should help make this little bathroom seem a bit more roomy. We’re also thinking about this tile for the floor:

 

It’s pretty neutral, and light-colored, but has some earth tones in it that should work with the bathtub and tile bath surround, which is a sort of beige-y pink. The tile is porcelain, which was recommended to us because it’s tougher than ceramic. It has a neat natural stone kind of look to it, which we really preferred to the perfectly shiny tiles that look so manufactured. So today we’ll be getting busy on taking out the old vanity and sink, and peeling tile off of the walls, and prepping the floor. I’m secretly leaning towards maybe putting up white wainscotting on the walls, halfway up, but that’s just a thought at this point.

Adios to “The Blender.”

Wednesday evening we took the commode out of the bathroom. I’ve always hated this toilet. It just never had any … oomph. It was known unaffectionately as “The Blender,” because it just kinda mixed stuff up without doing much of anything else … We were looking at toilets Monday night at Lowe’s, where we purchased new plumbing fixtures and backer board to replace the wet drywall we’re tearing out, and I noticed one model that claimed it could flush a bucket of golf balls. I can’t decide if that’s exciting or disturbing.

The Blender

 

"But where did my water dish go?"

 

 

Isn’t this special.

You know, 99.9999% of the time indoor plumbing just rocks. It’s the best thing ever. Then there’s the other .0001% of the time. You know. When something, unbeknownst to you, starts leaking and by the time you realize it — by the time the bathroom carpet, say, is suddenly a bit spongy — your drywall has become wetwall and you have a surprise remodeling opportunity on your hands. Stay tuned. This is going to be a multi-part story.