Thursday, March 21, 2013

Timelines are not really a thing for contractors...

 The last time we left you we were working with our contractors to get some of the basic framework done in the room. We have officially his the wall and are now trying to push through to the other side, back into productivity. The contractors, no matter house nice they were, took FOREVER to do thier work. To the point that Parker and I steped in and started framing out the wall ourselves. How is that for learning curve!?

Anyway here is what they did in the bathroom. First we had the contractor take out the framing beams in the ceiling so the ceiling would be flush the whole way through. Now we just have to patch it up. Then we had to have another two studs added to the attic so we could patch up the ceiling and also frame out the new wall. This was a giant pain in the butt and poor Parker spent a lot of time hanging out in the fiberglass insulation. And you all know how much we love fiberglass!

 Then we had the contractor frame out the new wall and hand the new door. here is the door and the framework. We actually learned a lot about the process and decided in the future (if we ever have to) we could totally do this our selves.

 Then we had him build our new 4 by 3 foot shower pan. It took him a while to get started and we ended up buying him the easy frame tools that you just bud in after setting them up. If we would have known he was going to go that route we may have just done this ourselves too. But we were glass to not have to lay on the floor for hours figuring this all out.
As you can see the shower pan came out great! We are finally starting to see things move along here. So last night Parker and I started to hang the cement board backer for the shower. Typically you hang the cement board and the sheet rock horizontally across the studs. But since the studs were exactly three feet and so was the width of the cement board we went vertical for one of the sides of the shower. I hope it works out ok. This stuff is super heavy and hard to hang. I do not want to have to undo it all.

Speaking of undoing it all, check out the other wall we finished last night. Looks great except we forgot we were putting an inset int he wall and have to cut the cement board to fit it. So I guess we are going to have to undo the backer board! UGH!!!!

Tonight our friend is coming over to help with the electrical, and then we are going to work on the cement board. We will show you an update when we have it!


Friday, March 15, 2013

Sticky situation and floor leveling = late night

Next up for the bathroom is to rip up, clean, seal and level the floors. Parker and I started on the floors the night before. We found it to be fairly easy to rip up the tiles that had not been walked on a lot. The stuff that had been tore into shreds and was a pain to get up. We eventually got it all up and there was this horrible sticky glue under it.

I had read you would need to scrape and wash the floors before doing anything else. So Parker on his day off to care of scraping everything up. I then got home and hand washed the floors with basic soap and water. Then we applied the primer. Here you can see I used a bucket and an old paintbrush to apply it. It looked like milk when it was wet. As it dried it became clear.


 It took much longer for it to dry than we thought so we had to stay up very late to get the next steps done. As you can see in the back left coroner of the picture below there is the shower and then the drain covered by a green bucket. Well there was a big hole in the slab of the house that our contractor asked us to fill in before he built the shower pan. So Parker and I got at it.

 Here is Parker filling in the hole. It was a pretty easy process. And the cement set in 40 minutes. Great stuff.

 So, here is the bathroom in the morning. We were super tired when we did the leveling of the floor so there are not many pictures of the process. Basically you lay this play dough  type stuff on the ground and spread it out and it fills in the holes where there may have been bolts and stuff in the foundation. It makes it much easier to lay tile later on. So we thought it was worth it. Mixing it was really hard but once we got it down it was easy to work with. I definitely think it is a two man job though.

Above is a picture of the floor, holes filled and leveled. We cant believe how much better it already looked! Little did we know our contractor and plumber were going to come in and rip it up the next night. More on that later though... UGH.


Here is an updated list for those who are keeping count!

·         Move Parker’s closet to guest bathroom
·         Move bathroom to guest bathroom
·         Hang tarps and lay carpet protector down for demo
·         Buy bagster and other demo products
·         Cover vents to dust does not get everywhere
·         Remove medicine cabinet and other electrical fixtures
·         Remove light from wall
·         Remove mirror
·         Take out toilet
·         Take out bathroom vanity and sink
·         Rip up flooring
·         Remove door and frame
·         Remove fiberglass shower
·         Remove crown bolding (save for later)
·         Take out wall, cut half wall next to toilet
·         Call plumber to move plumbing for new shower and sink
·         Build new wall in bedroom (contractor)
·         Level flooring
·         Buy tile for floor and shower
·         Hang sheetrock
·         Hang hardy backer board for tile
·         Build shower pan (Contractor)
·         Move electrical outlets and lights
·         Lay floor tile
·         Lay shower tile
·         Grout and finish all tile
·         Paint walls (do a beadboard?)
·         Bagster pickup
·         Install new toilet
·         Install new lighting and fan
·         Install new vanity
·         Install new mirror
·         Rehang crown molding in bedroom
·         Install all new shower fixtures and faucet in sink
·         Finishing touches
·         Drink a beer (or bottle of wine depending on our mood) 


Thursday, March 14, 2013

Friends make everything better!

Here is where we kind of had left off from our last post. Demo chaos. We spent a lot of time cleaning and ripping out more drywall and cleaning more. On Sunday we did more of the same.
After a few more hours or demo on Sunday Parker and I got smart and lured our friends Pete and Corey over to the house to help us finish out the last bits of the walls and framing. Many of you dont know Corey but she is basically the same person as me. So when I inticed her with the promis of swinging a sledge hammer and using a power tool and food she was in! I gave her a wall and she made quick work of it, and I mean quick! 

It took her all of 15 minutes to take this baby down. Look at her go!Her husband Pete was loving using the power tools as well. The two of them, with thier fresh arms, took down the rest of the demo in a quick session of 30 minutes.


This is what the bathroom looked like the morning after they left. The floors are still down, but pretty much everything else has been taken out.
As you can see from this picture we had some old insulation in the walls behind the shower. Our contractor suggested we go ahead and replace it since we have the walls open and the insulation was pretty torn up. So Parker and I picked up some 15p fiberglass insulation from Lowes and got to it. This project has by far been the easiest part of the process. New insulation comes with tabs on the edges and is pre-cut so you can make it fin in abnormal sized stud spaces. It took all but 20 minutes to take out the old and put in the new. Here I am nailing up our new insulation behind where the shower will be.
After getting everything in the walls we are now ready to take out the ceiling framing beams and update the electrical wiring and do the floors. On to the next!

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

You all know I love a good list!

A list update for you all just to give you an idea as to where we are at:

·         Move Parker’s closet to guest bathroom
·         Move bathroom to guest bathroom
·         Hang tarps and lay carpet protector down for demo
·         Buy bagster and other demo products
·         Cover vents to dust does not get everywhere
·         Remove medicine cabinet and other electrical fixtures
·         Remove light from wall
·         Remove mirror
·         Take out toilet
·         Take out bathroom vanity and sink
·         Rip up flooring
·         Remove door and frame
·         Remove fiberglass shower
·         Remove crown bolding (save for later)
·         Take out wall, cut half wall next to toilet
·         Call plumber to move plumbing for new shower and sink
·         Build new wall in bedroom (contractor)
·         Level flooring
·         Buy tile for floor and shower
·         Hang sheetrock
·         Hang hardy backer board for tile
·         Build shower pan (Contractor)
·         Move electrical outlets and lights
·         Lay floor tile
·         Lay shower tile
·         Grout and finish all tile
·         Paint walls (do a beadboard?)
·         Bagster pickup
·         Install new toilet
·         Install new lighting and fan
·         Install new vanity
·         Install new mirror
·         Rehang crown molding in bedroom
·         Install all new shower fixtures and faucet in sink
·         Finishing touches
·         Drink a beer (or bottle of wine depending on our mood) 
So we have a lot left to do. But we have gotten a lot done as well. We are cleaning up from Demo tonight and posting some more pictures of that process tomorrow. Then we are off to work on the floor and start building everything back up! 

Day Three or So...


SO now that we got the vanity out of the way we needed to get those pesky walls out of the way too! Parker and I kicked off the weekend with some help from Jason and some demo!

He and Jason removed the mirror from the wall. It shattered everywhere. Side note, there is no good way to remove a mirror that has been liquid nails'ed to the wall.

Then Parker and jason got started on removing the toilet from the bathroom so we could then replace the floors. I showed him a few "How To" websites and he and Jason were left alone to thier own vices as I had a very important hair appointment to get to. When I got back I saw the toilet in the garage... BOLTS STILL ATTACHED!!!

The boys apparently did not like to read directions and just ripped the thing from the ground. BOLTS and ALL!!!

Here is a shot of the aftermath. Just a hole in the ground. Broken flange. And a heart patterned rag stuffed in the hole. Done and Done.


Then I was left alone for most of the day Saturday to rip out as much as I could. Let me just say that this beam and the reciprocator saw and I were about to have words.

By the way I am going to work on getting better pictures and rotating them as I go. I am sorry they are not great quality. But we are learning as we go on all of this!

Monday, March 11, 2013

First Days if Demo

After Parker and I did some initial demolition of the baseboards and other basics we were ready to get started with the big stuff. The bathroom vanity being the big stuff. This vanity looks nice, but it is super impractical. It had to go, but we also want to try and sell the parts so we were doing our best to save the materials.

First we pulled it out and saw that the water shut off valves had been pulled off. So turning off the water to remove the whole unit was not going to be as easy as we had thought. Here is why. In order to remove the vanity from the wall, we had to detach the faucet from the wall. In order to detach the faucet you have to turn off the water. In order to turn off the water we had to be able to get behind the vanity. And around and around we went.

Finally after a few hours of fussing around with everything we deduced that we were going to have to shut off the water to the house from the street. We borrowed a water key from a friend and then found our water access opening on the street. Problem there is that the nob to turn the water off has been broken off. So we called around and found out we can turn the water off through he city access in another hole. So we did. And we then replaced the water shut off vales! Parker did a great job. Clearly he has grown in his plumbing skills.

So then we ripped out the vanity and moved it into the garage. It is listed on Craigslist and we are hopping to make enough to buy our new vanity with it. We are on  a tight budget here people. Here is a great shot of Parker removing his first door jam. We thought that was hard. Little did we know how hard it was going to be to get the fiberglass shower out of the bathroom! UGH!!!! More on that soon!




Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Finished backyard planter

Here ia how that yard work came out from a few weeks back. What do you think!? We love it!




Tuesday, March 5, 2013

So Parker and I are getting started on our huge list of items to get done in our master bath. I wanted to share with you some inspiration I have for the room. I am going to affordable, clean, cool tones and modern with traditional mixed in. Does that confuse you enough? So to give you an idea of what we are thinking here you go:
Source: houzz.com via Christine on Pinterest
We have found some tile at the RE store that might help save us some money and it is pretty darnd close to what we had planned on getting anyway. We have some leftover paint in "Cucumber" that I am hoping might work in the bathroom on the walls. I am actively searching for a vanity, I have not found anything that I love that does not cost a fortune naturally. So there you have it. What do you all think? I think it is going to look awesome!

Monday, March 4, 2013

Bathroom Remodle - We are crazy!



Parker and I are about to begin our biggest project to date in our home. We are going to be renovating our master bathroom! We are both so excited and ready to tackle this project but we are well aware of how much work it is going to be. So we are proceeding with caution.

Before we begin the juicy detailed posts of everything we are doing in the bathroom we wanted to give you a rundown of where we are starting off.

We have a partial wall and the vanity in the master bedroom. Parker’s closet is directly behind that sink. So getting ready in the morning is never fun. Then add in the door to the toilet and shower and you have a really tight space.

On the other side of the door is out toilet and small stand up shower. Small is an understatement. This shower is so tiny I can barely lift my arms to wash my hair in there. It is horrible. The fan in the bathroom does not work very well so it always seems damp and smelly in this little room. I almost never go to the bathroom in there anymore because it is just weird.

So you ask, what is the plan? Well we are gutting it. We are building a new wall in the master bath, knocking down the wall and door, expanding the shower, leveling the floor, tiling, handing new sheet rock and taking out Parker’s closet. Not in that order of course.

Here is a mockup of the new floor plan we did on floorplanner.com

 Pretty great right? Well it does not look like much right now but we think it is going to be awesome.

We have already moved Parker out of his closet (he is now using the guest bedroom closet) and we have moved all of our bathroom items into the guest bathroom. We will be living out of that bathroom for the duration of the project.

How long will the duration be? Well we think it is best not to set tight timelines, but we plan on being done by April. All going according to plan that is.

Here is our checklist for our big bathroom remodel:
·         Move Parker’s closet to guest bathroom
·         Move bathroom to guest bathroom
·         Hang tarps and lay carpet protector down for demo
·         Buy bagster and other demo products
·         Cover vents to dust does not get everywhere
·         Remove medicine cabinet and other electrical fixtures
·         Remove light from wall
·         Remove mirror
·         Take out toilet
·         Take out bathroom vanity and sink
·         Rip up flooring
·         Remove door and frame
·         Remove fiberglass shower
·         Remove crown bolding (save for later)
·         Take out wall, cut half wall next to toilet
·         Call plumber to move plumbing for new shower and sink
·         Build new wall in bedroom (contractor)
·         Level flooring
·         Buy tile for floor and shower
·         Hang sheetrock
·         Hang hardy backer board for tile
·         Build shower pan (Contractor)
·         Move electrical outlets and lights
·         Lay floor tile
·         Lay shower tile
·         Grout and finish all tile
·         Paint walls (do a beadboard?)
·         Bagster pickup
·         Install new toilet
·         Install new lighting and fan
·         Install new vanity
·         Install new mirror
·         Rehang crown molding in bedroom
·         Install all new shower fixtures and faucet in sink
·         Finishing touches
·         Drink a beer (or bottle of wine depending on our mood)

WOW I am exhausted just thinking about all this work. You will notice, we left of one HUGE item. The shower doors. We are actually going to leave the shower open for a few months and save up for the shower doors. They cost around $1200 and will be amazing when we get them installed. But we just could not come up with the money right now. So instead of going into debt for the bathroom we are just going to take our time!

Our entire budget (sans doors) is $3000. We shall see what we can do for that! Wish us luck!