Bathroom decorations

We have now decorated the bathroom with maps of the continents!  We cut them out of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannic that we got for $22.50 at that estate sale.  The complete set was falling apart and Will's father owns it as well, so we can cannibalize the maps and images inside and still have all the text and a complete set (though in Edinburgh).  We framed them with Ikea frames and up on the walls they went.  They loo great and it is very interesting to see what the world looked like in 1911: Africa was still divided into colonies, for example.  This little clip also gives  quick tour of the bathroom.

Bathroom/Hall Reno DONE

Newly painted hallway, with one less door on the left. 

 IT IS DONE.  We about killed ourselves trying to get it finished and the upstairs all cleaned up and presentable.  Will's cousins from Dubai arrive on Sunday, bringing 4 friends, so all the bedrooms need to be ready.  And of course all the bedrooms are covered in construction dust.  But, that is not what you want hear about or see.

We have created a new corridor/closet area in the back of the house before you get to the back bedroom that just makes sense now.  No longer are there random cupboards barely hanging on the wall.  It is a fresh, smooth wall (that we get to decorate now!) as well as one double-doored storage closet and a single closet for the back bedroom.

The bathroom itself looks amazing.  It is huge!  It is bright!  It is spacious!  I admit that I am a bit anxious about how it will wear, because I don't trust the workmanship of the contractor.  It just means that we will have to be diligent about possibly regrouting and definitely resealing the tile on a regular basis.

First impression through the doorway

Shower stall, complete with rubber ducky

Linen closet and the back of the bathroom door

Pedestal sink and a fun Ikea cart that adds color and shelving for guests' stuff

an organized linen closet (we will see how long that lasts)

The tub, with Daffy Duck

Our DC shower curtain, that has both our house and my condo on it. 

We just are dumbfounded at the new amount of space in the bathroom, the look, the fixtures. We are just really pleased with the results. It is truly an incredible difference.  And what is even better: we did the finishing work, so we feel that this is really our bathroom; that we can take credit for some of the transformation.  And, even better than that: it is the last major renovation project in the house. (knock on wood). We still have to paint a few rooms, replace a carpet, maybe refinish the floors upstairs. That list of "to-do's" is nothing like it was a few years, even a few months ago. 

The bath. 

And, lest we forget what it used to look like, here is the bathroom BEFORE.  So glad that it doesn't look like that anymore. 

Progress is Made

Tonight Will and I have made huge progress in redoing the hallway as well as finishing up the bathroom. We painted the hallway. We were able to cut and paint the trim pieces that we picked up from Smoot lumber yard, which is the oldest continuously running lumberyard in the United States. It was very cool.  A place to match 100 year old trim or get quality solid wood doors.

I think the funniest part of the night was Will working Jamie's nail gun and fancy miter saw that cuts the corners. Will pointed out that any fool can do trim and I added with these tools, absolutely.

I also was able to regrout the tub. We feel it is better to be safe than sorry. I hope that the grouts match. I do know that it looks great with the tile. Not bad for a first tile job!

On tomorrow's docket is trimwork in the hallway and painting at least 10 doors. Then the cleanup begins! Just in time for houseguests this weekend.

Painting the wall in the hallway

adding more grout to the shower/tub stall

Trim down, adding caulk to seal the edges. 

panoramic of the freshly painted hallway

Bathroom Saga Continues

Sorry for the delayed update on the bathroom, it has been quite a crazy train over here.  Last Wednesday, Luis, our contractor, walked out.  Ultimately we are thrilled, but at first we were quite angry.  True, we were going to fire him last week, until Will noticed the water intake line to the toilet was there.  We got him back to finish that and he stayed for the remainder of  last week.  He was here on Monday and Tuesday.  But Tuesday, there was an issue with the radiator.  He couldn't get the rad installed flush against the wall again. He blamed us (Will, since he was home at the time); the wall not being straight (though he has just leveled it and put tile on it); and the floor not being level (though he had last week gone on and on that he has put new 2 x4s down to level it).  

Will figured it out that the pipes coming out of the floor and moved and it took the plumber to convince Luis that it was easy to take up one tile, twist the pipe back towards the wall, and relay the tile.

medicine cabinet in place

Once he left for the day, did Will realize that Luis had reinstalled the radiator without cleaning it and he has used regular trim paint to coat it. So, years and years of dust built up in the ribs of the radiator added to the 3 1/2 weeks of construction dust were just painted over with the primer and trim paint.  He didn't even bother to use the special heat-resistant paint he requested we get for the radiator!  And yes, we had asked him before he started the job, during the job, and right before he installed the rad, it just take it outside and hose it off. He kept saying that wasn't a problem!  Sure thing!

So, Wednesday morning comes and Luis walks in, telling Will that this will be his last day and that Will will pay him when he leaves. Will is insistent that won't happen as he and I haven't really gone through to make the punch list.  An argument ensues, in which Luis accuses us that we will be constantly calling him back to fix little fiddlely things; that none of his other clients are this picky; that this house is worth x amount of dollars, so what is a few thousand more for us to give him.  On and on.

But what really did it was the radiator.

Will said that what we wanted was for him to take it off, take it outside and hose it down-- and now have him strip it with the wrong paint that he just applied and use the proper heat-resistant paint, and reinstall it.

Jamie measuring for the door stop

Absolutely not. So, Luis packed up his tools, his men and off he went.  He left probably with 90% of the work done (about 2 more days) and a couple thousand on the table.   Quite astonishing actually.

Since then, Will and I have been finishing the bathroom, and finding even more things that aren't quite right with the workmanship.  We also decided that we might as well redo the upstairs hallway and back closet area since we had new walls ready to paint from the bathroom remodel. The hallway requires scraping the old walls and ceiling of the wallpaper used to help hold the plaster in place.  Patching the walls and ceiling.  Primer coat of paint on everything: walls, ceilings, trim, and doors.  Wall paint in the closet area.  That is where we are at the moment.

What we have found in the bathroom? Well, for one thing: Luis created a new door frame for the linen closet in the bathroom.  He built it.  From nothing.  He created it.  Not trying to fit an opening into a random wall; he created the whole thing.  What did Will and my cousin Jamie (who came over with all the equipment in the world) discover when hanging the door? That the top of the door was 24 inches wide but the bottom was 23 inches wide.  ONE INCH difference!  On a door he built!  How in the world can you call yourself a contractor/handyman/carpenter and not be capable of building a square door?!?!?!?  It is really unbelievable.

Jamie's tools that he brought over to help: you never know what you will need.  

It made Will and I very happy that we were made him walked on the last day.  We are under budget for the bathroom and can say that we actually put some work into it.  Turns out to be a lot of work, but that is because we are working on the hallway now too.

nail gun and compressor-- for the trim work that we have to install

Figuring out the exact length 

Will installed the lock on the bathroom door, once it was hung

Adding the cover plate over the hole for the locking bar

The linen closet hung.  They sheared off the lower half of the door to make it fit. 

wire shelving in the linen closet-- Will installed this too.
We have to go back and get the right length of brackets for the last shelf. 

In the back closet area-- the newly built wall with a fresh coat of "Devonshire" grey on it.  Trim work to come. 

Hallway all primed and ready for paint. 

properly hung bathroom door with working handle and fancy lock.

Ceiling of the bathroom with the Ikea light

The alcove for the shampoo-- not the best tile job for sure.
Don't worry: Luis's guy did finish all the tile before walking out. 

Light fixture above the mirror.  And yes, we do have a sink installed, just not in this photo. 

The mess that is the hallway with the repainting and
Stirling trying to figure out why there are sheets covering the floor and stairs. 

The amount of scraping and patching the ceiling was pretty major,
but the plaster underneath the wallpaper was pretty solid.

Ceiling: done.  

Shower still done with the shower head and curtain rod, plus a nice hook for a robe. 

Even More Progress

 Today we have a color on the walls and water in the toilet.  

There is water in the bowl!

The color is "carriage house" from Pratt and Lambert and it looks really nice with the tile.  Another great thing about painting is that the nasty turquoise colored ceiling is gone!  It is a proper white ceiling-- and it makes the whole room feel fresh and open.

The worry with the grey is that it can be too brown, too green, too purple, or too blue.  This color seems to lean towards the blue grey, but it works really well with the varying colors of the tile.

The linen closet is painted and the trimmed out and now you can tell that it doesn't go all the way to the ceiling.  While this was not my choice, I do think that it will be a nice feature.  We just have to figure out what is going up there: a plant? a statue? We also have to figure out who will dust up there.



The alcove has been tiled with the thinset and left to dry before installing.  I think that they will cut the hole for it on Monday, and finish tiling the shower.  Grout will be applied on Tuesday for that wall and I guess on Wednesday, we will get the shower head and tub faucet.

The toilet is a Kohler toilet, in the Memoirs style.  It looks very pretty and even though there is water in the bowl, no one has flushed it yet.

 

And in the stairwell, the hole in the plaster has been patched with drywall and spackle.  Drying for the rest of the weekend, it will be ready for sanding on Monday.  Sigh. 

 

Moving Forward

Well, after several phones, meeting in person, and an intermediary, we seem to be back on track.  Things are not comfortable, but things are moving again.  The biggest issue of no water supply line to the toilet has now been rectified as well. Not by tearing out the newly tiled wall-- oh no, why would you do that?-- but by tearing a hole in the stairwell wall to get access to the pipes and drill into the tile from behind.

Yeah.

T-joint from the new cooper for the sink with the newer cooper for the toilet.

Our newest hole in the wall

So, it seems that we have made progress instead of tile replacement it is plaster repairment, which the contractor claims is easier.

Also, the insert came for the alcove and they have begun tiling that inset.  Tomorrow--yes, they have worked every Saturday for three weeks-- they will cut the hole in the shower for this and place it into the wall. 

alcove insert with some tile set

Is it over yet? Stirling asks

In the meantime, the grout has been done all around the tiles: the floor, the tub, the walls. It is looking quite nice, but since there is no vapor barrier, I am worried about it.  We will have to be quite diligent in resealing the tile yearly.

grouted tub area

grouted floor

 We also have progress in terms of the finishing work: door jams, trim, and mantels.  They have taken over several rooms of the house upstairs and at this point, if working on the weekend means that they finish one day sooner, than I think I can handle the mess that is the 2nd floor.

newly created mantel

doors hinge

closet area leading into the back guest rooms

middle guest room

front guest room

hallway

hallway trim

grouted and silicone sealed in the corners!

water supply line for the toilet

shower stall, minus the alcove

pencil tile

now this wall looks correct: water for the sink AND the toilet