April 2016, Part 2

 Flooring and more!

All of this is a continuation of the hardwood I put in two years ago. I ran it into the bedroom and staggered the pieces some in order for it to have a natural flow when I was able to move on to this area. Great idea but still hard to actually do when it came to doing the bedroom

You can slide in new flooring but there's nothing really stopping you from adding it in just a little crooked from the other room. It took a lot of laser shoots but after a while I was able to get things going.

I didn't say I got things going quickly - these two pictures were taken seven hours apart! At least I had a little company.

I stopped here for the day, so not bad! Two days later and we're ready for someone to come in to sand and finish!

All of the small, cut pieces that take a long time to do are in and I have an appointment set for the end of the month. Looks like I'm going to make it!

The last thing accomplished is that all of the details for the bathroom have finally been decided. Lighting, doors, vanity, everything. Maybe not the vanity lighting because that involves three vertical LED strips that may be difficult to deal with and what kind of lighting they'll put off is a little unclear.

First Half of April

 And We're in the Home Stretch!

I'm running out of time until the baby gets here but there's still so much to do! No clue how much the project will slow down, so my goal at this point is to get the place to be as liveable as possible because we may be there for a while. Hardwood flooring has been ordered, so I worked on putting up drywall before it got here

The layout of the old shower is starting to disappear

It should be a little more clear how big this niche wall will be. I wanted to keep it as small as possible in order to preserve the openness of the new bathroom.

Less than a week in and the wood is here! Drywall and paint in the bedroom need to happen before I can start putting this in.

Goodbye old doorways, goodbye dents and dings

The new closet off the master bedroom is really taking shape now. Walls in there are insulated and drywall caulked to the studs to try and keep the family room noise out of the bedroom.

Just how much painting have I done in this place?!

And goodbye blue paint. I really liked this color back in San Antonio and it did a great job covering up awful things like that Barney purple in the family room, but its time had come. Moving on to bigger and better things now.

A few months ago I mentioned the subfloor wasn't rotten once I got far enough to the southwest corner. It's much easier to see here with the bedroom completely cleaned out. Now, how much flooring can I get done???

March Madness!

 And Now for Something Completely Different

In March I flew over to visit my parents. They kept a lot of baby stuff from when I was one and it's about to become really useful, also I wanted to bring over some furniture from a store in Austin. Plus they recently redid the hall bathroom at their place. It's the one my brother and I used, and as luck would have it the exact same layout the hall bath over here has. Free vintage vanity and countertop that's an exact fit for my place? Yes, please!

Yes, it does come with drawers.

Countertop is exactly the same as it was when I was growing up, sink is too.

This is the terrible hall bathroom, which has been getting a lot worse lately. The tile is in bad shape and the only surface to set anything down on is on a pedestal sink.

Terrible choice for a bathroom like this, unless you just hate counter space and any form of storage whatsoever. The framed mirror doesn't really work either. It's too small. Fiberglass shower is discolored too. It's unclear from what because it's not like any light gets in here. It's embarassingly dirty, and we have to keep a baby gate there to keep the dog out of the cat's literbox (don't ask).

So we had an office

If there ever was a good time to change the color of the bedroom to something that isn't super strong, and in bad shape that I have zero touch up pain for it's right now.

I have a shade of white that works with everything already picked out, and have it in a huge can, so let's just go with that. And since we're now doing before/afters, here's the bathroom with an ACTUAL vanity in there.

It's not like it's perfect, but it's SO much better! And the bathroom is actually functional for the first time. We've just been using this and the tiny shower from the original master bedroom for the last however many months now.

Countertop space, plus cabinets to use for things... what a concept. I didn't really have much of an opinion on pedestal sinks before moving here but at this point I absolutely hate them.

Back to the ACTUAL project that's going on

Plumbing going in. Not that it's useful for anything at this point, but it's definitely there at least!

This is looking at the bathroom from the bedroom side. Wires getting a little more there.

 And we have a bathtub! Can't exactly use it for anything but it's there at least.

Framing for the small wall between the shower and vanity is starting to go in. There will be a niche built in so things actually have a place to go instead of just lying around on the floor.

A little bit better view of how things are coming along. Framing is going in for the tub surround and I'm trying to make it as beefy as possible because I want the tub surround to carry into the shower as a built in seat. It'll make a lot more sense when more of it is installed. It's all based on pictures I found online, much like a lot of other things in here and the half bath. The shower layout is exactly the same as some promotional stuff from Grohe, the maker of all of the shower hardware that's going in.

And now there's one month remaining until the baby gets here. Not a chance this room will be done but that doesn't mean I should stop trying to hurry now.

Framing February

 Finally Building Something...

Two part post, I'll start with the easy stuff

Bathroom hardware started coming in, and here's the rain head. It's huge, and heavy enough that it has a support chain to make sure it stays up in the ceiling where it belongs!

This is just an example of some of the fun places I get to run wire through. It's every bit as tight as it looks. This was taken above the server closet, adjacent to the family room which should be pretty clear because it's the only part of the house with spray foam insulation. I try to do as much work as possible up here when it's in the colder part of the year.

It's Framing Time

The later part of February is also where I started installing things rather than demoing everything out. 

This is the view from where the shower will be. Yes, the old track lighting is still in there... haven't quite figured out where the new lights will go yet. This is looking towards the water closet and where the hamper will go up against. The doorway to the left will lead to the closet.

View looking into the water closet. This wall will pick up insulation to try and keep noise out of the bedroom.

Looking back the other way from inside the closet. The shape of everything is really starting to come together.

Here's the view from the shower looking back towards the bedroom. The new doorway is visible along with where the old one was. Getting rid of the corner tub freed up a whole lot of wall space!

And finally what it will look like entering the bathroom from the new doorway. That is, without all of the stuff that actually makes a bathroom so it still takes just a bit of imagination at this point.

Only two months left until baby gets here... It's looking like Cinco de Mayo might be his birthday.

February Fun!

Welcome to the Third Trimester...

Clock's ticking but I was able to move fast. Demo was complete and surprise, the subfloor wasn't rotten out here! My only guess as to why is that this is the southwest corner of the house so it must have just been a little warmer and drier here. Still need to stiffen up the floor joists though, so that means a bit of work.

You can see where the closet used to be. Red chalk lines made, time to cut and get in there.

Don't mind me, just making holes in the floor to do stuff. Same as always...

The Fun Part, For Real!

The joists and subfloor are now taken care of and it's time to talk about moving forward.

A few things are going on here. The lines for where the shower and corner tub were are easily visible, along with the two locker room style shower heads the place had. There's going to still be a bathtub, but one that isn't jetted and is just straight. The corner type waste a ton of room and there's a lot that I'm trying to pack in here.

The shower will continue in a straight line from the tub and be in the same corner as the old one. For all of the things done wrong in the old bathroom they did get the location for these and the vanity right. The new one will be in the same place the old vanity was, but it will be the floating type.

This view is looking through where there will be a bunch of walls. the old. closet and bathroom/hallway wall outlines are still visible. The opening to the family room will be walled off and the short hallway becomes part of the new closet. Water closets are a great thing when you have more than one adult sharing the bathroom and I miss the one we had in San Antonio every time I had to yell "I'm in here!!!" when I heard footsteps getting close. 

The space the half bath used to be will also become part of the closet. The washer and dryer are moving back in from the garage. It's another one of those things you miss every time you have to traverse the entire house just to do laundry. It really is a good place for it because there isn't a whole lot else you can do with the space when there's a window in there.

The entrance to the bathroom will also be moving. With the corner tub gone it can go over to the right, and the plan is to build in a hamper about where that door frame is. That's yet another one of those things that I miss like crazy all the time. There will be space for light and dark laundry to be washed along with tons of shelf space. This idea is a lot more original than most of the other things I've come up with, which were heavily influenced by homes I've toured, a couple of resorts in Mexico, and gardenweb-now-houzz.com.

Lots more to come, next time with actual building instead of tearing things up!

Welcome to 2016!

January, it'll be easy, she said...

It's a brand new year so let's get it started right by finishing as much of this project as possible before the baby shows up! At this point it's beyond clear that it will NOT be done by then but maybe we'll have something... functional?

What goes on in the bedroom gets posted online?!

At this point as much as can be done in the bedroom has already happened. Subfloor is done up to the beam under the floor so that's kind of that for now.

Life pro tip: If you keep a compressor in the bedroom, or anywhere indoors during a project, either unplug it or turn the switch off so it won't kick in at midnight when enough air bleeds out for it to need to fill up again. It's not a fun way to wake up, especially when it's 5 feet away from the bed.

Wrecking out the bathroom

I REALLY hated this bathroom the entire time we've lived here, but I also wanted to wait as long as possible to start demo because the thing is kind of useful. The closet and hall to the half bath areas were the easiest areas to start with. Here we are on the 21st.

Looking into the closet, this was my side... corner... whatever.

And from the closet into the hallway that leads to the half bath.

I've always been careful taking out walls because I really don't like doing drywall work on the ceiling and this helps keep that to a minimum.

And the fun begins...

Three days later and there's a lot going on. I took out the floor tile which was the easiest demo ever! Anyone who remembers the San Antonio place I lived in a few years ago will remember what a nightmare it was to get all the tile up because it was all on a concrete slab foundation and installed really well. Over here it's exactly the opposite. Poorly installed on joists that aren't installed right and aren't substantial enough for the length spanned. It pretty much just came right up. 

The fun part was with the vanity because the white plastic pipe from the shutoff valve to the sink came apart. I try to shut off the water at the little valve and that immediately breaks because that was also trash. I had to cut off the entire house and cap the water line to the vanity to stop the leak.

Walls for the closet came out too because hey, why not? Next the shower...

Here's where we end the month. I was able to take the glass block from the shower apart without very much of it breaking, so Habitat got a giant pallet of the stuff. It lives on, hopefully as something less awful. And surprising to no one, ever, the shower leaked into the wall. Grout isn't waterproof... backerboard isn't waterproof either... liners also aren't when they don't come up very high and have nails poked through them. It mostly just messed up the insulation. No real damage inside the wall, but an awful lot of tiny black ants became homeless.

December 2015

 The end of another year...

December 2015 was a really busy month! Demo tends to be like that because changes come so quickly. Of course the room needs to be cleaned out and everything that was in it has to go somewhere...

 

 

That's fine... didn't want to get too used to this area being finished and not a giant train wreck anyway I guess.

 

This area was 13 years old but moisture had already turned the plywood a weathered shade of gray.

Wrapping up December 2nd, and half the subfloor out by the 3rd.

December 4th and it's out for most of the room anyway. There's the beam I made a couple of years earlier, done from entirely underneath the house which was every bit as terrible as it sounds!

This room always had a hump in the floor an here's why. Whoever built the addition didn't use joist hangers in here either, so the joists settle while the beam doesn't, and there you go. Hump in the floor. In here they settled 1/4" which doesn't sound like much but was very obvious even while the flooring was still in. I took a bit of a break for a family trip to Mexico and came back to install the floor joists with actual hangers and sister in wood to stiffen the floor up while it was all open.

 

Rounding out the year, the subfloor is starting to go in and it's time to start thinking about all of the fun places accent lighting can go in the ceiling. The project is moving pretty quickly, which is a good thing because it looks like that baby due sometime this spring will be a boy!