Where does the time go?

These past couple of weeks has had me tearing out bathrooms, with the remodeling ongoing leaving me little time to write or have any thoughts to put on paper.

I can report the first bathroom is finished except for a towel bar so it went smoothly with the demolition of the flooring, cabinet, sink, and closet being redone.  The hardest part of the demo was getting the several layers of flooring out and the prep for the tile.

Once everything was taken out the first thing was a fresh coat of paint, Lowe’s Baguette color.  It is a nice color that in the low night light conditions gives off a nice easy tone.  In full light it blends nicely with the tile shades. 

What started this makeover was my wife looking on Craig’s list and finding Italian marble tile for a low price.  She found 18”x18” squares (40) of beautiful tile for fifty bucks.  It was enough for the bathroom and closet floor.  The cabinet was painted and new base trim was installed.

We found a new light fixture (Alaskan Moose of course) with three sconce type lights to go with a mirror.  The most money spent was on the light fixture so with a little sweat and only a few flare ups between us the room was completed over two weekends and turned out nicely.

The cost was right too . . . about four hundred dollars for a nice makeover and now her plowing into an accelerated schedule to redo the master bath.

Last weekend the demo of the master started with tile being removed from the vanity area and also the shower.  Many bags loaded with tile awaited the crew who removed my trash these last two weeks as they have been loaded with debris.  Next the sheetrock removal, again more bags loaded with more awaiting the next pickup.  My wife was able to get a first hand experience of demolition as she was the main one to remove the tile and sheetrock with a little help one night from my daughter and son in law.  She wants this done so helping get the work done has given her a new understanding of what goes into remodeling which is somewhat different than the 30 minute versions shown on HGTV.  Most of those shows do not give the reality of the things that go wrong or what is found once you take things out seeing the underlying damage not anticipated.

When she found the tile she was also able to get other 12”x12” and 6”x6” in the same color for fifty bucks and should give me enough to complete the floor and most of the shower walls with only needing some contrasting color pieces and accent pieces for the shower wall niche.  I looked up the price to get this brought in and it was about $ 8.00 a tile so she saved a ton of money.  The funny part to the tile was she found it online and wanted me to go with her to look at it and pick it up but I did not want to go so once she returned and told me where she had gone I realized my company did the new house about seven months ago.  It was his left over tile from his foyer and master bathroom.  When she described the house with a 4 vehicle garage with a huge RV bay on the left side I asked her the man’s name and it was the same house we completed earlier this year.

I’ll try to upload some pictures of the first bathroom soon and a few demo pictures of the master as quickly as I can but for now back to work.  I’m going to pull some electrical wiring tonight before I go to bed and I need to take out a wall tomorrow for a new pocket door.

Ice