Bathroom...Check!

"Put a fork in me, I'm done."

     -Every single high school English teacher in America.

Luckily for us we've been done for a couple weeks now, I just haven't gotten around to blogging about it until now! Let's just get on to the before and afters, shall we?

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

There are still a few things we need to do: 

1) Shorten drawers of the vanity and put them back in (the vanity is currently drawer-less)--  The vanity used to be a dresser that lived in our bedroom, so Eric had to do a lot of cutting and adjusting to make it capable of housing plumbing.  I'll post more detailed pictures of the vanity once that's done.  

2)  Crown molding--   Nothing about our 43-year-old house is perfectly square, including this bathroom.  Consequently we couldn't tile all the way up to the ceiling, because it would look really bad, so our contractor just put some wood to act as a buffer and we're going to go back and embellish it a little bit.  Again, more pictures on that once it's done.

3) Floating shelves over the toilet--  On which I'll probably put some white towels, baskets, apothecary jars and things like that. 

This was a huge undertaking, and we are thrilled to be finished.  The before and after pictures are impressive, but the before and after experience is even more striking.  Whereas before our bathroom experience involved spongy floors, the smell of mold, peeling walls and a leaky toilet, now I feel like I'm in a spa!  

The half-bathroom is also finished, but I think I'll put that off for another post.  For now, let's just bask in the glow of our newly remodeled bathroom.

Ahhhhhhh.

The Final Stretch

Can we talk about the blog's new look?!  A couple days ago was the first time I even considered clicking around on my Blogger homepage long enough to select a different template, and I'm happy I did.  I think I also changed the settings so comments can be left without having to log into Gmail, so we'll see how that goes.  Moving on...

It has been 8 days since we embarked on our bathroom renovation and we still haven't showered.....

At home, I mean.  

But we're getting there!  If everything goes well, our full bathroom should be functional on Thursday! This is where I last left you:

And then this happened:

And this is where we are currently:

The only thing left for our contractor Dan to do is grout the shower and the floor tile, install the toilet and some other final touches.  Then we'll be ready to paint and install the vanity (Eric and his dad are building our vanity as I type this!), mirror, light fixtures, accessories, etc. 

Here's a picture of the half bathroom as of yesterday:

You can see the new pedestal sink, toilet and tile floors (these are the same floors that are in the full bathroom).  It's nice to actually be able to use this space, and very handy since it's currently our only functional bathroom.  Today I painted this room, but that will have to wait for another day because it's not done drying...and because we don't have a light fixture and it's too dark to take a picture!

The rest of this week is going to be very busy, but it's nice to be able to do something!  And hopefully tomorrow will be our last day of showering at the YMCA! More later...

Sal

Bathroom Anatomy 101

It is seriously only Wednesday?  Wow.  Here's the rundown:

Eric stayed home on Monday and continued demolishing the full bathroom while Dan, our contractor, started tiling the half bathroom.  That's where we'll start our pictures.

So far, so good.  He started discovering a good bit of rot, but we were totally expecting rot.  

Oh man, but this was bad.  And as you can see in the bottom picture, it went under the tub, which was an issue we had filed under, "It could happen, but we really hope it doesn't because that's a cast iron tub, dang it!" And you know the only way to remove a cast iron tub, don't you?

There is no such thing as salvaging a cast iron tub, you just have to bust it up and remove it in pieces (that jagged white thing is part of the tub).  We were sad to see it go, but we also had come to terms with the fact that it might have to happen before we even started.  So we shed a single imaginary tear and moved on.

That white rag you see on the left hand side of the top picture is where our toilet is supposed to be.  My co-workers and I had a good laugh about this picture as we imagined what it would be like to be sitting on the toilet and suddenly fall through the floor into the crawl space.  Seriously though, it could have happened. 

All of the sub floor had to go.  Then, once we exposed the joists, Dan decided that most of the joists had to go as well.  And yes, you're looking into our crawl space.

We knew going into this renovation that it was going to be pretty bad, but walking into your house and seeing this still makes your stomach churn a little bit! The good news is that we're done pulling stuff out and stuff is starting to go back in, including new and solid joists and sub-floor.

 Although this job has taken a little longer than we were expecting, I'm happier with my bathroom looking like this and knowing that there is no more mold and that our house is structurally sound.  

So how do you keep this from happening to your house?  Hire a professional to install your toilet.  The previous owners of this house were big on DIY, but perfectionism wasn't one of their strong suits.  Here's a picture of our half bath toilet's wax seal:

Although sort of gross looking, that wax seals the toilet and keeps any water from leaking out.  

Here's the toilet from the full bath:

It's no wonder that water was rushing out under our floor every time the toilet was flushed.  We're not sure how long this toilet was leaking, but you saw the results.  

And just for the fun of it, here's a picture of our junk pile:

More later...

Sal

Out With the Old

It's been a tiring, but very exciting weekend.  The contractor is coming tomorrow and Eric has been doing his part to prep the bathrooms which will save the pro some time and save us some money.  Remember the half bath?

Yikes.

I particularly like the way this picture I got with my cell phone captures the....fluorescent-lit-zombie-horror-movie-inspired je ne sais quoi:

As they say.... Hashtagnofilter.

We were even lucky enough to discover a perfectly preserved piece of original 1971 carpet:

History, people.  

Uncle Lawrence even stopped by and we put him to work.

At this point I think he was wishing he hadn't stopped by!

With the half-bath gutted, Eric turned his focus to the full bathroom today.  Here's a reminder of what our bathroom used to look like:

And this is how Eric spent his afternoon...

And just in case you're not overwhelmed and grossed out yet, here's a rundown of some of our bathroom's worst features...

Damaged walls and wallpaper residue (and a light fixture that's hanging off the wall)

An outlet that would break straight out of the wall if you pull too hard (or if you just use it at all)

Grout? What's grout? Oooohh, you mean rust!

With the slightest nudge...

GOO!!!

I don't show you these pictures because I want you to lose your appetite and have nightmares, but I think it will make the "after" pictures that much better if you understand the seriousness of our bathroom situation!  Although I'm afraid the true horror lies underneath the floors in the form of wet and molded sub-floor.  More on that tomorrow! 

Sal

Ebony Fields Forever

It's Spring.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Yup, that's it.

Let's say it at the same time...

HOME RENOVATION.

Something about the warm weather and having a little extra cash in our pockets from tax returns has made our "to-do" list turn into a "doing" list in a hurry.

To start, we got a great deal on a couple of Adirondack chairs with a matching table off Craigslist:

We've already gotten the chance to hang out on our newly-furnished patio, grilling brats and making s'mores with some dear friends of our's this past weekend.

We've logged approximately 15 hours of manual labor over the last few weekends pulling up ivy, digging up tree roots and chopping down trees (okay, a tree....okay, a small tree).  Here's what the front of our house used to look like:

I realize that this picture doesn't show the tree that used to occupy the right corner of our house, but I included it as a reference since this is the only "before" picture of the front of our house that I've shared here.  Here's another "before" picture I captured on a snowy day where you can see the Occupy Tree:

Notice the progression of the ivy from green and lush in the first picture, brown and dead in the second picture and non-existent in this "after" picture:

Here's another "before" angle of the ivy that was threatening to overtake our house:

And because it wasn't enough to just have to yank up ivy that was over a foot deep, these too were concealed within...

The landscaping is nothing special yet, but even a blank slate makes me feel happy and relieved.  Happy because the ground is ready to plant hydrangeas, and relieved because I no longer dream about ivy creeping through the window and strangling me in the middle of the night.  Let's move on, shall we?

If you couldn't tell from the picture above, allow me to point out the obvious:  We've picked a paint color!

The name is Valspar "Ebony Field" and when you look at the color chip, it is exactly how the name describes it-- Black.  But on the house it is the most beautiful shade of charcoal, which is exactly what I wanted.  At first we had selected Valspar "Semi-sweet" but found out very quickly that paint dries lighter outside on the side of a house, so we had to select a shade darker to get the desired effect.

If you remember from this post, "Ebony Field" was not one of the initial paint options.  But once we had a sample blob of each of the those colors represented on the house, my dad said it best when he said, "Brown makes this house look dated."  So we made the decision to go with gray and attempt to bring out the gray/black vein running through our mostly sand-colored brick.  The next step will be to pressure wash the whole house and then we'll be ready to paint!  And once the house gets painted we get to paint the front door red.  We'd paint it now, but we don't want to have a Christmas house!

And finally, here's an update on the kitchen:

To say that I'm in love with my exposed shelves would be an exaggeration-- you can't be in love with shelves.  But I'm super excited to welcome them into our kitchen and I'm astounded at what a difference they make in terms of storage.  Keep in mind, we will be losing almost the entire right side of our kitchen's upper cabinets, so increasing storage elsewhere is key.

I can't stop looking at them anytime I'm anywhere near the kitchen.  I love the crisp white color, along with our white dishes, and it's going to look even better once our cabinets are white.  The corbels do a great job of balancing the look of our large, heavy dishes and are also extremely functional--adding an additional carrying capacity of 205 lbs each (and if you've ever seen my plates, you know we need all the help we can get).  

We also have some new lighting.  Here's a before picture of our kitchen with our non-functional and non-attractive lighting:

It's hard to see, but over the sink there was a long fluorescent light behind a frosted plastic cover.  

After (these pictures were obviously taken before we installed the new floating shelves):

Eric actually installed three new recessed lights:  One over the sink where there used to be a long fluorescent light, one in the center of the kitchen, and one in the mudroom/back door area.

Here's an angle from the back of the kitchen looking toward the backdoor area, where you can see the third recessed light:

We've done a lot...but we haven't even scratched the surface!  The biggest project we have done to date will happen in just six short days!

Both of our bathrooms.  And I know it's actually going to happen this time (I know I've teased in the past), because we've hired a professional and he told us he's coming on Monday. But to build the suspense just a little bit (and to keep this post from getting any longer), I'm not going to go into further detail now.  I'll try to post more frequently with it being such a large project that way I'm not just dumping the finished product on you like I normally do.



Ohmanohmanohmanohmanohman.  [Excited]

Until next time!