Finished Bathroom!

So, now it's time to draw back the curtain — the shower curtain, in this case — on our finished bathroom: prepare to oooo and aaaah.

The bathtub is an extra-deep soaking tub, so that Jason can use it too, but we decided to keep things simple and not get anything with jets or other moving (and clogable) parts. The window is new, and not nearly as pretty as the old one (which is downstairs while we figure out where we want to use the stained glass) but is built right into the tile wall so there's no wood to worry about in the shower. It's almost a shame to cover the tile with rugs, but we got some incredibly soft little bathmats and our feet have been thanking us for it ever since.

The new toilet is a Jacuzzi, and is much smaller than the old one. We're liking it so far! The sink cabinet doesn't have as much storage space as a more traditional model would have had, but since the register from the furnace is underneath it we don't want to keep too many things in it anyway. I've already noticed it gets a bit warm in there now that the heat is on, and I may have to relocate the first aid stuff in the drawers.

I'm really happy with how the shelves turned out. The painted woodwork looks good with the wooden cabinets, and we're just really happy with how everything came together. It's a wonderful place to shower or to take a relaxing bath. (I haven't used the other shower since we've gotten this one!)

Less dramatic, but almost equally exciting is the new linen closet, which we've already stocked with stuff. The builder's shelves were a little far apart, but Target had these great cedar shelf inserts which the towels are on. Jason also installed an additional shelf waaaay high up in the top of it for things which we don't need very often. This is an in-progress picture when I was in the middle of organizing everything.

All, in all, we're very happy with how everything turned out, although we could have used a bit less drama along the way. The hall mirror has been replaced, and now we face the prospect of reorganizing the attic, but we can run the toaster and the microwave at the same time and we have a lovely, functioning bathroom. On to the next project!

Bathroom Remodel - Day 9

Apologies for the lack of updates — between the preparations for and the actual trip back home for my sister's baby shower I fell behind. But I kept taking pictures!

Look! Paint on the walls!

Of course, a contributing factor to my sloth was the apparently slow, incremental progress as the project was nearing completion. It seemed incredible that everything would be done in two days (rightfully so, as it turned out) because while things were finally coming together, there was a lot of detail work left to do. At the end of the ninth day of work they were still working on the tile in the tub surround and all of the cabinetry was still in the middle of the living room, but at least everything was out of its boxes.

The main highlight of the day, besides seeing actual paint on the walls, was the arrival of the electrician to install our new electrical panel. Technically the old one had room to put the GFI outlet in, but it was over 50 years old. There have been a lot of "while we're at it" side project tied in with this whole endeavor, and one of them was to get a new circuit installed in the kitchen for the microwave, so we can run it at the same time as any other small appliance. The kitchen had basically one circuit for all the wall outlets (including some of the wall outlets in the living room/dining room area) and we were tripping the breaker frequently. The electrician seemed a bit nervous about working through the 40-year-old 1/2 thick real wood cabinets in the kitchen, but he did a very tidy job with the outlet, which is totally hidden by the microwave anyway. We were less thrilled with the hole he left on the other side of the wall, and with the condition of the panel when we saw it:

Fortunately, the contractors were still there when Jason got home and told him the electrician would be coming back the next day to finish up.

Bathroom Remodel - Day 8

This morning I'm waiting for the electrician to arrive, so I have a little time to post yesterday's progress. Not too much visible progress happened in the bathroom, because they had to finish laying the floor tile and grouting it, but it's still kind of mess. They also started installing the wall tile around the tub.

I'm assuming that the stack of wood is to build the little cabinet, which is still just a hole in the wall.

The more impressive changes took place downstairs, where we have a "quarter bath" which we're pretty sure that Jason's grandfather made himself so he didn't have to come out of his workshop unless he absolutely had to. Somewhere buried on my other hard drive I have true "before" pictures of this room. Jason had already removed the ornate red wallpaper and painted over the dark red-brown paneling with something a bit more bright and cheerful (there IS a theme at work here!) but it's still in-progress.

To date, the only sink in this area has been the large utility sink right outside of the bathroom, which the washer empties into. The tub of this sink is in desperate need of a good scouring and is rather nasty to wash your hands in, particularly because the hot water comes out really hot. So as part of this project, we had a new sink installed!

Isn't it cute? That blurry shape in the lower right corner is Tinkerbelle, following the cat imperative to immediately enter any door which was closed a moment ago. Thanks to her expert hiding ability, she's managed to get herself locked into as many rooms and closets in year and a half living with us than Tony has in his whole life.

Just to give you an idea for the size of this bathroom, here's the closest I can come to a full-room shot without a fish-eye lens:

Just enough room for the little sink! And that's about it. And the plastic around the toilet is just to protect it from Jason's typically enthusiastic painting techniques. Our contractor tried finding a little corner medicine cabinet to mount over the sink but the smallest, simplest one he could find was way too ornate and huge for this room. We'll probably put in a mirror and some shelves or something when we finish decorating in here.

Well the electrician just arrived, so it's time for me to sign off. He's installing a new circuit panel (one that isn't 50 years old) and installing a new GFI outlet in the kitchen so we can use the microwave at the same time as anything else. Hopefully the work in the bathroom can proceed when the power is out!

If you don't want any more spoilers for the finished project, you probably shouldn't check back here again until next week: today they're finishing the tile and painting the walls! Then we'll be taking advantage of the Linens 'n Things going out of business down the street to accessorize...

Renaissance Faire!

On our one contractor-free day we wanted to get out of the house — the dust and disarray was getting to us more than a little. It was an absolutely perfect early-fall day, cool and crisp, and there was a football game in town, so we thought it was a good day to go to the MD Renaissance Fair. We were right. Absent was the usual huge crawling line of traffic trying to get there, and it was pleasantly uncrowded inside, a nice change from the usual throngs.

As usual, the main attraction for me is the shopping, and for Jason is the food, but we caught the joust and a few of the music and comedy shows. What with all our other expenses lately I managed to limit my purchases to a couple of yard ornaments for the garden, currently under the tarp on the dining room table until I have a chance to figure out where exactly to put them.

I took a ton of photos, as usual, but while my desk is tarped I'm in portable-mode with my laptop. I love my lil' 12-inch PowerBook, but I'm not doing any massive image work until I'm hooked back up with my bigger monitor (and my backup hard-drives). But this one jumped out of the quick scan — I'll have to see if any of my action shots came out worth anything.

Bathroom Remodel - Day 7

After a day off, work proceeded on Monday bright and early. They finished off the plastering —which isn't as obvious in the picture below but it looks a LOT better than it did before — but, as you can probably guess already, that wasn't the most exciting thing that happened.


The floor tiles went in today! Well, most of them, anyway. As you can see in the photo below, they ran out of the little decor tiles, which are a dark cranberry color with a crackled-glass finish. Jason is mostly glad that this part of the project is done because it means I will no longer be dragging him all over town in the quest for the perfect decor tiles. The overall pattern was suggested by our contractor, and we're already loving it.

Overnight they had to bar the room against the cats (and us) while leaving it open for the air to circulate, so they arranged this makeshift barricade:
Not too concerned about that, because the door is getting replaced too: the bottom corner is torn up from years of scraping against the marble threshold (and more recently, cats trying to claw it open because the PEOPLE keep trying to use the bathroom ALL BY THEMSELVES without the CATS, which is clearly both dangerous and criminal).

Our small team of contractors have been pretty responsive to requests like "please don't leave the doors wide open, because of the cats" and done a pretty good job of keeping the place clean, but we have noticed a certain "dysfunctional family" atmosphere in their working relationship. Jason in particular usually comes home from work when they're finishing up the work day and yelling at each other with no small vigor, generally about leaving on time. In the mornings I've been treated to our lead contractor dressing his crew down for the things they did wrong the day before. We've since been informed that ALL contractors seem to work this way, which is a bit reassuring, and so far any shortfalls have been made up for in spades. We have no complaints so far!

Tomorrow: finishing the floor, starting in on the walls.

Bathroom Remodel - Day 6

Saturday morning our contractor thought that they'd be doing the second round of mudding on the wall, but instead they were finishing up the first. We had to go take my car to the mechanic and they'd left before we got back, but I'm sort of assuming this means the wall tiles won't be going in until late Monday or, more likely, Tuesday. The floor has been skimmed to prepare it for the new tiles to go on, which are probably still getting installed on Monday.

The plumbing is all sticking out at what seems like weird angles from the walls.


The "new" linen closet is really taking shape and already serving as impromptu storage for the contractors, as we bid a "fond" farewell to the old crawlspace. A sheetrock patch is the only evidence that still remains where it used to be. But what, you may ask, is that big hole doing in the side of a closet?

Seen from the other side of the wall, you're looking at the future home of a nice little nook with shelves that will be next to the sink once its all finished. The linen closet will be a wee bit smaller inside, but that's one of the details I'm really looking forward to in the finished bathroom.

We're both starting to get really excited, as the bathroom is taking shape and all the pieces are coming together...

Bathroom Remodel - Day 5

OMG - We have walls! Walls in the bathroom! (The scary part is that, in this picture, they still haven't repainted the ceiling, which matches disturbingly the color of the greenboard...)

They were hoping to finish doing the first round of mudding the walls today, but didn't quite manage to get it all done. One of the guys arrived late because he had a flat tire and the other guy had to leave early. Since the original plan was to start tiling today, even coming in Saturday morning to finish the walls will probably mean the schedule has slipped at least a day.

They've been pretty good about cleaning up the clutter each day, but there's usually *something* out in the driveway overnight, waiting to be picked up the next day. Today it was leftover greenboard and sheet rock. It all brings out my inner photo geek...

Bathroom Remodel - Day 4

The plumbing has been installed and the tub is in place... it's starting to look like a bathroom again!

The electrician showed up bright and early the next morning. He installed the wiring for our new outlets with an actual GFI switch. Oooo, we'll be living the high life now!

We've been told that, while our circuit breaker panel had extra circuits available, we might want to replace it anyway because it's an older model, which is apparently notorious for not tripping the breakers properly. We wouldn't know about that, because we always have to go reset it every time we try to use the toaster and the microwave at the same time....

By the way, the big white box next to the electrical panel is the scarily high-tech signal box they installed as part of our FiOS service. It has an actual lantern battery inside it, to serve as the backup power for the phones if the power goes out.
The plastic on the floor makes an interesting bubble-wrap kind of sound when we walk on it, but Cody doesn't seem to mind.

Bathroom remodelling - Day 3

Not as much happened on Wednesday as everyone hoped. Apparently, the electrician didn't arrive when they thought he would. What are the odds of that?

However, they did get some more of the carpentry done, including installing insulation into the walls and framing out the opening in the wall where the old attic crawlspace.


In the attic they finished most of the details including installation of the attic fans and a handrail at the top of the stairs for the light switch, and painting the hatches.


Here's the downstairs hatch, along with the rarely-seen kitchen door which has come in very helpful in corralling the various pets and keeping construction dust out the den, where we can go to pretend the chaos upstairs isn't going on.

Bathroom Remodel - Day 2

Tuesday the workmen finished the demolition of the bathroom. As requested, they carefully removed the sashes of the old window so we can keep the stained glass. They'll be installing a new window but for now the old storm windows are still up. Thank goodness the weather has been cooperating since we can't run the AC while the demo is going on: it's cool and dry, perfect early-autumn weather!

It was very weird looking through the torn-up room. For one, with the tub removed we could look down and see through the little hatch in the ceiling of the downstairs toilet.

And we could also see the back of the shower in the other bathroom.

And then there were the strange things they found in the walls. There was a little pile of razorblades inside the wall just below the medicine cabinet of the other bathroom. The best guess is that Jason's grandfather slid the old blades through the seam in the wall when he was done with them, because there was quite a little pile. They also found this book in the other wall, which we're assuming had fallen in through the attic.

While all this is going on, boxes have been appearing in the living room full of all the new fixtures. There have been a few little snafus: "Don't panic," out contractor said, "but I got the wrong tub. I'll be returning it tomorrow and getting the right one." As if we could actually tell the difference!

In the meantime, the attic entryways have been completed, which we're very excited about.

They'd also removed the broken mirror, which makes the hallway look... strange. Just different from the far end, but it's amazing how much shorter it makes the hallway feel when you're closer to that wall.

By the end of the day, the toilet was still in the driveway, but they've done a pretty good job of cleaning up every night, keeping the floors covered while they work etc. By the end of the week we should be able to untarp the furniture in the living room.

Wednesday: the electricians arrive to do their thing, and some carpentry happens...

Bathroom Remodel Day One

I'll spare everyone the saga of how I dragged Jason to endless showrooms and tile stores etc. and just dive right in. I'll probably be a day or two behind the project, but we'll try to keep up with it.

The contractors showed up bright and early on Monday. I made sure all the animals were downstairs before they arrived, blocking off the kitchen with a board on one side and the seldom-used sliding door on the other, which we were going to do anyway to keep the dust out.

When I came home from work I saw this in the driveway:

Sure enough, inside the house all the fixtures had been removed from the bathroom. The light fixture was just resting in the wreckage of the medicine cabinet, and the tub had been hauled off to parts unknown.

Oh, and that hallway project?

Yup, we're having a pull-down stairway installed into the attic. Two of them, actually. The current attic storage is accessed through a crawl-space in a "closet" which we can't really use without blocking the attic entry. So we're having this entrance made into the half of the attic we couldn't use before, and another one made into the existing attic space so we can actually use that closet as a linen closet. We're at least as excited about this as we are about the rest of the bathroom. In fact, the lower entry was completely finished by the end of the first day of work, and this one might have been as well if not for...

Yeah, they broke the big mirror at the end of the hallway. They're replacing it, but apparently there was a minor accident when they were setting up the pull-down unit and someone fell out of the attic. Jason had come home shortly after it happened and they were still in a bit of disarry, I got the full story the next morning from one of the workmen. Thank goodness no one was seriously hurt, the guy who got the worst of it even came into work the next day. We're very glad we made sure our contractor is insured tho.

Tuesday's schedule is the rest of the bathroom demolition and finishing up the attic access.

The Return of the Blog Monster!

Yes, I'm back!

Why? Because finally enough interesting things have happened to us and our house to merit it.

That's not entirely true... things of relatively moderate interest have been happening all year, but now there's a bit of breathing space to actually document it.

What kind of things? Well, I've been doing a bit of travelling, both for work and in the interest of drumming up freelance work (not too much success on that score just yet, tho I'm currently working on one small job.) I was maid-of-honor for my friend Tracy, which was quite a wild ride. And we've been verrrrrry slowly getting things done with the house. I have yet to post the pictures here from my art studio remodel (although some pictures can be seen on my sketchblog, before and mostly-after). Our new cat Tinkerbell has fully taken over the house, although Tony has been tolerating her with more humor than previously.

Oh, and we're undertaking our first major remodeling project: a total renovation of the main bathroom. Being a bigger pair of stress-monkeys than usual lately, along with having no direct experience with this level of work, we've hired a contractor to do pretty much the whole project. He's also doing a couple other smaller projects for us which Jason is far more excited about than the whole having-a-fully-functioning-bathroom thing because it will give him more space to store comic books.

For future reference, here are the "before" pictures of the bathroom:

The bathroom is essentially unchanged from when we first moved into the house over two years ago. We didn't even bother changing the artwork on the walls. Why? Because we knew this room was on the hit-list and it's only a wonder it's taken us this long to get around to it. What's wrong with this bathroom?

• The tub was so prone to leaking we never bothered using it.
• The plastic (yes, plastic) tiles were falling off of the walls.
• The ceramic "baseboard" tiles along the floor were also falling off and had to be pushed back into place every time we mopped.
• The light shield was missing from the florescent tube (assuming there ever was one) and the tube itself was starting to fail.
• The nice, big medicine cabinet extended into the uninsulated attic, so everything in it got hot in the summer, with big mirror doors that didn't slide very easily.
• The glass sliding shower doors (which is a personal pet peeve).
• The bright green paint on the walls and ceiling which tended to make you look like you always had the flu and which didn't play nice with the mint green tiles (the photos are pretty much spot on - sorry dad!).
• No storage besides the medicine cabinet (and no linen closet in the house either).

Not visible in the pictures are:

• The small hole in the ceiling (dad may have thought we wouldn't notice that one, but the masking tape didn't fool us!).
• The scary, scary metal-coil heating fixture in the ceiling which had its switch bolted shut so no-one would ever think to use it.
• The outlets without an interrupt switch.
• The toilet with a scraped-up bowl from when we used a scrubber with wires exposed, and which recently started running spontaneously several months after we'd replaced almost all of its innards.
• The sink plug which I broke by pulling on the handle too hard one day.
• The door with the chewed-up corner, which periodically refused to latch, necessitating a hook-and-eye to ensure privacy from the far-too-sociable feline contingent.

Basically, it was a bathroom that hadn't seen too much more attention than a fresh coat of paint since it was first installed in the 50s.

The only nice feature in the bathroom is barely visible in the pictures: the stained-glass window that Jason's father made. Somewhere I have a picture of it in the daylight, where you can see the gorgeous colored glass in the center...

The space is pretty tight, so we couldn't do anything super-major like rearranging the room, but we'd worked out a general design scheme with our contractor and work started this past Monday.

Why, you may ask, am I posting a picture of our hallway? All will be revealed....

Also, just because things aren't interesting enough with contractors in and out of the house and the living room tarped against the dust, we're also dogsitting while Tracy and Travis are on their honeymoon. Cody, say hi to the nice people!

Seriously, our cats are loving us right now!