Another Nameless Update

I've been busy, so here's an almost pictures only update. Things I still need to do at the other house...

Indoors:
- Quarter round trim in the laundry room.
- Whatever other cleaning up I find I missed and feel like doing

Outdoors:
- Landscaping in the front yard (3 small bushes)
- Replace some missing bricks between the bottom of the house and the ground

Also... get someone to replace the broken a/c. Of course the outdoor unit is at the end of its life, but the indoors part is in great shape. Too bad they don't make R-22 air conditioners anymore or I'd be able to reuse it and replace only the outside part. I'm sure the a/c people will track all kinds of stuff in from the attic that I'll get to clean up.

On with the pictures!

A view of the back of the house...

New flooring, paint, and blinds int he laundry room.

Another shot of the new... everything in the laundry room.

Updated view of the front of the house. I wanted the vent at the top/center of the house to be maroon, but didn't notice that it was white until just now. Guess it wasn't that big of a detail after all. The view has changed since I took this picture because the bushes are now gone. A long time ago when this was a bad neighborhood people planted bushes next to the sidewalk, kind of as a way to fence in their yard without actually having to build a fence. It doesn't look very good and I'm replacing them with small, normal landscaping next to the porch.

More shots of the bathroom. They probably would've come out better if the lights were on.

Again, the bathroom...

Completed view of the vanity area.

Here is where I need to replace the missing bricks. I already dug out a trench to fill with concrete, so the bricks I put in there should be able to stay where they belong. Who knows where the ones that were there went...

Mid-Month HUGE update!

Whenever I go for a while without posting it's usually for a good reason. In this case it's because I was busy getting so much accomplished. Not long after my last post the bathroom looked like this:







Not bad, but not exactly finished either. Today I'm much closer to that goal. The flooring and loads of other details are in, and it looks like this





The baseboards are still missing... not exactly missing, but not installed. I cut them to size and painted them, and they'll go in on Monday when I have my truck and air compressor on site again. They'll go in much easier if I can use air tools to attach them to the walls than if I have to hammer and then set a bunch of nails. That's the last detail needed aside from blinds for the larger window before everything on my list for the bathroom is complete.

Here's how the seemingly-neglected closet came out. I cleaned up and reused the wood from the original long shelves to make the new ones. It looks like it's always been there, which is pretty much what I was going for.



Today I started the process of really cleaning up everywhere where work is complete. This area reminds me of my first house, which had the same sort of landing and turns that this staircase has. They were made about 80 years apart from each other. Someday the railing will be wood colored again, but that day isn't today.


One of the three bedrooms... not the most exciting thing to look at.



Another bedroom, equally as uninteresting as the last one was





Once upon a time this site was for the house we live in, but by now I'm sure less than half the posts go with that place. Since things are wrapping up at the downtown house it's time to make sure I have everything I need when I resume the foundation work at our place. I went to Lowes and came back with a lot of stuff. It took two trucks and a trailer to move it all. Just because the truck is 42 doesn't mean that it can't move things around.



The cinderblocks were a little heavy...



Here's the mountain they made with the car included for reference. The highlights of the trip were... about 84 cinderblocks, 42 cinderblock tops, 15 80lb bags of concrete, 23 2x8x8s, and 10 sheets of 3/4" plywood. I was a little tired after unloading everything.



The stack of cinderblocks felt more like this...



Except, that still looks like a stack of cinderblocks. It really felt more like this



I'm hoping to finish up with the downtown place soon so life can return to normal again. It should happen in a few days, at least.

Shower Complete... Almost

Today I spent about half the day working on the shower. It's almost complete and already it looks loads better than before. Tiling a room that's nowhere near level is a real challenge but the shower is coming out better than I expected.



The blue tape is there to deal with a small problem called gravity. The diamond pattern really doesn't work well when one end is open (rather than against a wall or a window frame) because our friend gravity tends to pull the tiles apart. The blue tape is doing a remarkably good job of holding everything in place long enough for the thin set to harden. I stopped where I did purely because I got to a point where I really couldn't build much any more until things dry. On the wall on the left in order to build I need to take the tape off, which would make a mess of things. On the other wall I was able to put in the mosaic, but can't have anything weighing it down until after that area dries so one row of tile was all I could do.


Snowy didn't do much to help out today... he mostly got in the way by lying down where I wanted to walk.

All tile work should be finished after a quick trip over tomorrow, and on monday the grout should be in. That'll leave only the flooring and a couple of very small details left in the bathroom. After that I can start taking care of the last few odds and ends, and start moving tools home every day since they'll no longer be needed here.

Creative Title!

I've managed to make a bit more progress within the last few days towards finishing up the bathroom.

The shower area has been waterproofed completely. I took this before removing the spout to the tub, but everything looks pretty much the same. Redguard is kind of a pink color before it dries.


Most of the work involved with getting the window back together is done. The sashes are back in but I ran into a problem getting the trim back on. Once upon a time the walls were plaster and lathe until someone reworked the bathroom more or less 30 years ago. Under the trim it was a bit thinner than everywhere else on the wall; much thinner than modern sheetrock. When someone reworked the bathroom they left the trim in place and ran shetrock up against it, so now the trim sat nearly flush with the wall. It looked terrible.

Because that wall is sheetrock, if I wanted the trim to sit the way it originally did I'd have to remove it all and put plaster back up. That's not about to happen. My only other choice is to put the trim on top of some sheetrock, but that leaves a gap between the window frame and its trim. Tomorrow I'll cut some filler pieces to fill that gap, and finish them to match the window trim.

This is what it looked like when I left. At least the window sashes are back together and they go up and down freely. All four weights are attached for the first time in decades and it actually works pretty well. I still think that reworking old wooden windows can come out a lot better than buying new ones, as long as they were decent quality to begin with.