September 2016, Am I Done Yet?

Sometimes Things Don't Go Quite Right

I managed to get the doors in along with all of the tile except for the piece by the door before the end of the month. Can't do those without the little reducer piece to make the transition from bedroom to bathroom flooring (bathroom is a bit higher). Tile is grouted anyway, but the color isn't what I wanted it to be so I'll need to go back with a stain to basically paint over all of it.

I've also been slowed down by an utterly soulless person who works for the city of Charleston who prioritizes grass height over being able to take the baby to a relative who's dying in hospice three states away and fulfill her dying wish. She was lucky enough to be able to make the drive solo (this is her relative) in time. But that's not what this site is supposed to be about, so back on topic...

The washer and dryer were in the garage since the late 1970s and I think something went wrong with the plumbing at some point because its all a big mess back there.

Seriously this is a train wreck! Nothing good is happening here, and at one point I found a squirrel who wandered into the open washing machine and couldn't get out (protip: welding gloves are too thick for a squirrel to bite through if you need to catch and release one). So I moved them indoors.

This is SO much better! Less walking, washer and dryer don't get all dirty, at least 80% fewer squirrels trapped inside.

There's a little bit of a challenge going on with the hamper. Nothing on my end, it's that the cabinet guy who did the kitchen 2 years ago isn't in business any more so I get to find somebody else. Easier said than done I think.

Mid-month, doors are finished, decision has been made to go with IKEA cabinets for the vanity because it's just too much and takes too long to have someone make something custom. Like 12 weeks long! We have everything we need for the closet at this point except for the actual frames because they're too big to haul home in our car. There's a place that picks things up from the IKEA in Charlotte and brings them back that we used for that. They mostly do that + assemble it for people but they're perfectly happy to just pick them up and bring them to their place a few miles away for about half of what actual IKEA delivery runs.

I spent some time working on baseboards and painting in the water closet so now we have a room that looks kind of done. Nice to have a toilet in the bathroom after so many months!

And the end of the month... we have a vanity! Closet frames start going together tomorrow but that'll have to be a different update because that'll be October...

The Rest of August - Tile All the Things!

 Wow I'm Tired!

It's been a great big weekend but the floor is in! Using really large tiles does help, and so does setting the pattern the day before because for me that can easily take an hour or more because I don't want any surprises. This is Saturday evening.

The little triangles are to help keep all of the tile at the same height and they generally work pretty well. Daltile tends to make pretty good tile and it was easy enough to get going. I like doing as many of the whole tiles as possible before moving on to the ones you have to walk back and forth to cut. It also reduces the amount of time you have to set up and take down the wet saw at the beginning and end of the day. 

Let's just jump to the end

 

We've definitely been using the half bath as an actual bathroom for a little while! No more sharing the terrible one in the hall with the cat.

 It's not done but pretty close. Just a few smaller pieces to cut that go off to the side underneath the hamper and in the closet. My plans moving on to the last week of August are to order all of the half bath fixtures, figure out how to run the exhaust duct for the dryer, hook up its wiring at the main panel, do the rest of the little pieces of tile, grout what I can, and start hanging doors. We'll see how well that works I guess.

August 2016, It's Almost Tile Time!

 All of the little things...

I said this was going to go fast! Ditra is the underlayment material that I'm using below the tile and it comes in really wide rolls so it takes no time at all to get the stuff in. This is a kind that's a bit thicker and has little gaps between the bumps that you can use to run the wire for the heated floor. It comes with instructions for how to do it and how close to run it to things like toilets and walls. It's just crazy how easy this part was to do. Start to finish it took only a few days.

You'll end up with a bit more wire than what you really wanted to heat the most, so the instructions say to just run out what's left into someplace like a closet. I had enough to run it a few steps in, so that's pretty good. 

Half of doing a good tile job is getting the pattern set right before you start actually sticking it to the floor. It takes a lot longer to do than one might think because rooms are never perfectly square and just the slightest change in the run can throw the whole look off. It's Friday night and this is where I'm stopping for the day!

Getting Rid of the Vanity, and Getting Ready for Tile!

 August already?

Yep it's August. It feels like this has been going for a while, but really I think this project has been moving along faster than the kitchen / family room fiasco. So the half bath...

This is what I talked about last time about making a sort of frame that the countertop material will go on. The hard part is that the room is just a little too narrow for me to make something that runs straight across it. It needs to come just a bit closer to the wall or else it's too close to the toilet. It's all the weird things like this that slow things down, but you can't skip any of it or else the end result really suffers.

Here's the tile that will go on the wall the mirror will be on. I think I'm going to run it horizontally instead of vertical like the picture from the last update because this room is smaller than that one. Vertical just didn't really look right.

And the old vanity, why in the world would I post about that thing again? Maybe looked ok if this is your style but absolutely terrible as something you'd want to use in the bathroom. We decided to try to clean it up and sell it, and managed to get $550 for this plus the mirror which wasn't even old like the main part was! The top was just too damaged from water, hair dye, and everything else to make look like wood again so I just painted it black. Looks great, best of luck to the guys who drove down from Myrtle to pick it up. We even got asking price for it thanks to the baby!

Thanks to all of the work going on, having to empty rooms out, and losing multiple closets things have become a bit of a mess over here. Just a peek at the really ugly side of things...

This is the den, which is pretty horrible on its own.

Next up I'm going to start putting in the floor tile. It's about to look a lot less like a construction zone in a few days!

Breaktime is Over - The Rest of July 2016

 Back to work

My two week break is over and it's time to get back to work. I focused on the shower and bathtub plumbing first. It's all in and tested, so next up is lighting. I just used more of the little fixtures that I've already used other places in the house for the shower, and another 4" Ecosmart LED just like the ones in the kitchen and family room. It's a known quantity an I like it so let's just use more of them

I also used the smaller, directional lights all over the place in the bedroom

I had some free time and decided to put up the wallpaper in the bedroom since work in there is pretty much done and nothing is going on that can hurt it. This time I went with actual grasscloth instead of the vinyl kind like I did in the entry and front living room. In here it isn't going to get bumped or damaged so why not? Rolls of this stuff were wider than the other kind so the job was done pretty quickly.

Not bad, I really like it! Goes well with our new roommate and his crib. This wallpaper was actually our second choice - the first one kept getting delayed.

 Don't forget the other room

 

I also worked on lighting in the half bath. It's starting to look like an actual space instead of some small, closed off area where construction stuff goes to hide out of the way. The tiered pendant lighting is another thing I saw online and liked. It would look a lot better except one of the lights doesn't work and I get to wait for a replacement to come in. The downside of LED lighting I guess. I also took care of the vanity plumbing so this room is getting really close to being ready for tile.

 

Speaking of tile, some samples came in and we picked a winner for what goes on the wall in the master bathroom. It's vein cut marble in 12x24". I've worked with stone before, but this will be the first time I've done marble. It seems pretty strong though and looked so much better than the other samples that were porcelain. The floor will be a 24"x24" porcelain concrete look tile by Daltile. I'm copying heavily from more pictures that I saw online. That bathroom had an actual concrete floor but I can't do that here.

Speaking of copying things, this is what I'm doing with the vanity in the half bath. It looks like a huge slab but is really just wood framing with countertop material on the top and front. There's no way an actual vanity will fit in the half bath. It's just way too small. Towel bar will also go where this one is. It'll do a great job hiding the plumbing. I also want to do a floating mirror like this but am not quite sure how to do it. Something else I get to figure out.

May-July 2016

I did say I was slowing down

After a month long break it was time to get back into moving the project forward again because there's still a long way to go. There was a little demo to take care of to remove the old half bath wall that was now in the middle of the closet, and to put up the new one. The opening to the former hallway-now-closet also needs to be closed off. Bathroom vent fans also need to go up but that's a lot less interesting to look at.

 

Let's get that wall put up and the new half bath toilet put in. "Where's the flooring?" It doesn't matter yet because this toilet is wall mounted. I need to do it that way to save space in the half bath. There isn't enough room for the regular kind, but I also wanted to give one of these a try.

I had to stop for a little bit because large trees do drop branches from time to time. In this case it's at the house downtown and I needed to go take care of that.

Always a good idea to have a door between the bedroom and bathroom! I still can't believe whoever designed the addition here in the 2000s didn't have one put in.

Happy 4th of July!

The closet is starting to look like a closet. Wiring is done, plumbing is done. I didn't want to have a wall box up there, but it was either have a connection there or completely re-run a long stretch of wire. It's high up in a closet. Not the worst place for something like this to go.

Old walls are starting to go away. I did reuse a ceiling light in the closet but this isn't exactly someplace you need to have something really good looking. Maybe I'll change it out later.

A perfect way to end the day

I get a two week break before jumping back in to this again, and when that happens it's go time through to the end!

Missed it by That Much!

I was so close to having the bedroom done by the time the baby got here. REALLY close, but he had other plans. The bassinet was ready for him at least. It's almost 90 years old, made by my grandma for her first baby, and has been used by who knows how many of my relatives (possibly including myself). None of them wanted it so it was passed along to me and I gave it a new coat of paint and a little bit of repairs.

Now the goal becomes getting the bedroom ready before the baby comes home.

Flooring is finished at least

I think he likes it! Or he just looks at me funny because of all the work I keep doing with the place. Maybe he wants food for sitting here and posing, who knows.

Recessed lighting in, flooring done, I move everything back in to the bedroom to make everything as friendly and done-feeling as possible. Construction is about to slow down for a bit

It's looking a little like home once again. I'll take a break from now until the middle of May before slowly getting back at it.