Afters and Before

We've been busy, huh?  

Just kidding, these pictures aren't real.  Pretty cool though, right?  Seeing an "after" picture before you've actually done any work is like eating dessert before dinner! We were lucky enough to meet a man named Dan Doughtie who works at a plant nursery in Hendersonville called "A Growing Concern."  Using Photoshop, he designs a landscape for your house and that's exactly what these pictures are.  Now we'll be able to take our design back to the nursery, buy our plants and plant them at our own pace.

Here are a few pictures of what our house actually looks like as of this afternoon:

Goodbye hunter green!  What's that?  You don't remember the hunter green?  Let me refresh your memory...

Before

After

Before

After

Now if landscaping were only as easy as Photoshop. Here's a close-up of our front porch with a new lantern and a bench:

The molding around the door is still unpainted and the rest of the trim needs to be painted too.  Let's take a look at what the back of our house looked like just 6 months ago:

Before

After

The paint made a huge difference, and check out our new light fixture!  It's still not glamorous by any means, but we have some pretty awesome plans in the works that will completely transform this space!  But for now there are more pressing matters, such as that sad looking roof.  We're in the process of choosing shingles right now (who knew picking a shingle color could be such an arduous task??) and Eric will be installing those along with some help from a friend at church who owns a siding/roofing business.

Happy Memorial Day!

Sal

Half a Bathroom, Whole Lot of Awesome

Why is it so much harder to manage your time the less you have to do? Example:  When we were gutting our bathrooms, not only were we working full time, doing our part with the renovation, and running to Lowe's every 5 seconds, but I managed to update the blog four times within that same week.  Up until today however, we have made a point to take a break from home projects and all I want to do is watch re-runs of "The Office."  Subsequently, I haven't shared any pictures of the finished half bathroom.  So here they are!

This is a far cry from where we started:

Bleck.  Let's get back to the "after" pictures.

Here's a close up of our (free) pedestal sink that we got from Craigslist and the Mother of Pearl mirror.

Like the full bathroom, we still have a few finishing touches including painting the baseboards, framing the window (not pictured) and add shelving.  

There are so many reasons we are in love with our new bathrooms:

1)  They're awesome and they look fantastic.

2)  They're clean, structurally sound and are not leaking!

3)  We can actually use the half-bathroom in our bedroom, so our house has essentially gained a bathroom.

Today we painted the house! We got 2 sides done today, and we're going to attempt to finish it up tomorrow.  I'll post some pictures when we're done, I promise!

Sal

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