When the Bad Gets Worse...

The last two days, The Builder has been priming the cabinets for paint. I was willing to wait until the weekend, but we've got tickets to the football game on Sunday and we'll loose a solid day of work. So he didn't want to waste any time this week.

The worst cabinet in our kitchen by far was the sink cabinet:

Under the Sink

That board in the bottom was replaced when we bought the home in 2013. The prior bottom was rotted out and we couldn't really use the cabinet for storage. 

So you can imagine our surprise when we pulled out the bottom to repaint it and found this:

Umh.  Yuck!!

And let's not forget the other side:

Those pieces on the floor?  That's the rotted right side of the cabinet. It pulled right out when The Builder took the bottom out. And the smell. It's terrible. The kids even noticed. Gross is an understatement.

So we had a decision to make. 

Replacing all of the cabinets is still completely out of the budget.

But replacing one cabinet maybe wasn't such a bad idea.

Umh, two may not be a bad idea either! Thankfully they're on sale at the orange home improvement store so we headed out to pick them up. They'll get a coat of primer and then paint. You may have noticed that we're ditching the drawers on the smaller of the cabinets in favor of a door. When we bought our new stove, we lost the bottom drawer that we used to store our baking pans. We planned to find a place to store them once the kitchen reno was done - maybe in the new pantry we plan to build this spring. But now I'll use this cabinet space and it will be much more efficient for us. We never used all four drawers. We have drawers on the other side of the kitchen that were filled with junk. So we'll do some reorganizing and this cabinet will work much better for us. 

As to "The Plan" all but the new cabinets are primed and have the first coat of paint on. So all in all, not bad for the first two days of work!

The Plan

The Builder worked all Sunday afternoon on the kitchen. We have quite a hefty to do list on this "soft reno". The humidity is a huge issue because everything was so wet when we tore it out, that's adding to our time line as we have to allow for things to dry out.  The original four day estimate is out, but while the to do list looks extensive, most of it is all cosmetic and will go faster than many of our other projects.  So here is our basic timeline:

• Prime all the bottom cabinets
• Paint all the lower cabinets
• humidity allowing, this could be done during the week when we get home from work.  But we need the humidity to go way down to allow things to dry out properly
• level the counters properly and install the new counter tops - huge issue, we have sections that are as much as 3/8 out of level.
• turn the water off and install the new sink and faucet
• install all the new hinges - a total of 30 - and put the doors back on.
• empty and prep the upper cabinets
• prime and paint the upper cabinets
• turn off the water and install the new sink and faucet
• install the new base boards
• repaint the kitchen
• rehang the curtain rod in the bay window

Stay tuned!

The Bad, The Uh Oh, and The OMG!

Merry Christmas!  Most people are still enjoying the remnants of Christmas - the lights, leftover food, the last of the decorations. Me? I'm moving on to the next project.

So my master bath is on hold while we get ready to build a new vanity. Not ideal, but I need to order a new granite top and sinks for it and my budget is always tight this time of year. Our only sink and vanity is now not functioning (bad clog that we managed to work out of the  shower drain, but is now firmly logged in the pipe for the sink...sigh) so we're getting by using the sink in the powder room. Super fun, these renos!

Move In Day August 2011

This is a photo of my kitchen when we first moved in. The kitchen space was a selling point for me. It was BIG. Much bigger than the kitchen we'd had in the previous rental (I probably could fit three of that kitchen into this one). Lots of counter space, decent storage, and that bay window - lovely natural light!

This photo doesn't reveal what is hidden behind the doors and the counter top. The reality is, my kitchen is a soggy, bug attracting mess. What looks presentable in photos is actually a crumbling pile of particle board. With The Teen graduating this coming June, there is no way I am going to have all our family over with the sorry thing I call a kitchen. For the past two years, we slowly been replacing things as they give out. The garbage disposal. The fridge. The dishwasher. Just this past Black Friday, the stove. The only appliance we haven't replaced was the microwave - because the previous owner replaced it right before we bought it. It's just a hot mess, as they say here in the south.

So I've been gearing up for this soft reno. When I told my dad he said "what on earth is a soft reno?". Good question, right? Essentially, we're not replacing any cupboards or flooring, nor are we changing any of the footprint. It's just supposed to be a cosmetic update.

See, I desperately need to gut my entire kitchen - starting with the cabinets. They're half of the soggy mess. I've priced them and I'm fairly certain I know what I want. RTA cabinets - Ready To Assemble. Real wood, dove tailed, solid cabinets. They come unassembled which is a big portion of the savings. The Builder is more than capable of assembling and installing them. It's about $3000 for the entire kitchen. A huge saving if you've ever priced new cabinets.

But they're not in my budget this year.  Or next year.  I have this silly thing called an HVAC system that has to be replaced. No one can live in Texas without a good a/c system (we're not actually sure our heater will turn on this winter, yikes!!) and mine is on life support. So that's my budget buster this year (again, before the family arrives!).

Since new cabinets are out, I'm repainting mine. Paint is cheap and it will allow us to fix some drawers and doors that have seen better days, as well as refresh them.  Along with that, the vanilla, 1987 Formica counter tops are being swapped out for the granite looking, bull nosed laminate counter tops we found at the Blue home improvement store. We also discovered all the hinges have rusted out on the cabinet doors, so those are being replaced too. Sounds simple, right?

The Builder informed me my projects are never simple.

When we started taking off the doors to clean, sand, prime, and paint them, we discovered that everything is saturated. I have no idea how long my kitchen has been absorbing the humidity that is Houston, but saying it's a soggy mess is an understatement. We've added new base boards to the list of things that need to be replaced.

So how bad is this project?

Under the Kitchen Sink

The sink has had many water problems over year, even before we moved in. The bottom was completely rotted out, so we put a board in it about two  years ago. You can see, it's already warping again. It's just gross. We're going to pull that bottom out and replace it. Again. There's not much I can do about the warping cabinet wall, so we'll sand it, prime it, and hope the paint will hold up.

What are those marks in the cabinet? Is that were someone left food?  Nope. It's rust. The hinges are completely rusted through on the doors. Did I mention Houston is humid?! We bought all new hinges. Thankfully we had to take the old ones off to paint the doors anyway, so it was more the expense than a time factor. And yes, every single door has this rust when we took the doors and hinges off.

Yes, that shelf is bowing. We're going to shore it up with a brace since it's built into the cabinet. It's not the best shelf, and I'm looking at better storage solutions, but it's what I have to work with for now. This is the cabinet that stores my mixing bowls and baking supplies, so that shelf allows me to store without stacking everything on top of each other.

And when we pulled off the counter, this is what we found hiding in the corner:

Dead Corner

Dead space. Literally a big empty cavity. I don't know who did the space planning for this kitchen when the house was built, but this makes no sense to me at all. When we replace the cabinets eventually, this will be a cabinet with a lazy susan.

What are the other problem areas lurking in this kitchen?

Multi Colors

This is the area under the sink. The area isn't important. Take a look at the various colors of paint this kitchen has had over the years. There's a bit of Marigold peaking through. That appears to have been covered up by a minty pastel green, which then has a dull grey over that. I had no idea when I viewed it in it's vanilla splendor when we moved in that the vanilla color was probably the best paint color this kitchen has ever had.

To the Left of the Sink

The burnt breakfast counter? Yeah that was The Builder. We were deep frying some wings before a football game and apparently the fryer was a bit too close. Oops. The plan for the bar is to replace it with a wood top, since we don't have the option to replace it with laminate to match the new counters. Eventually, we plan to tear it out and drop it down to counter height. We'll be ordering quartz counter tops when the time comes, so it will be seamless. But that's several years off.

Finally, some photo's of the demo itself:

Removing a counter

The Builder is tearing out the counter. We left the small counter to the right of the stove (have to have a place to plug in the coffee pot!!!) but tore out the other two. The Builder also left the counter in place holding the sink. We weren't going to replace the sink with this soft reno because sinks are expensive and I would really like a farm house sink eventually. However, we had a change of heart on this and wound up at the orange home improvement store looking at sinks. And somehow one found its way into our cart, along with a new faucet (which we had actually planned to buy because the one we bought to replace the other broken one is now broken as well, sigh...)

Delta Lakeview Single Handle Pull-Down Sprayer Faucet

So we went with a sink from Delta because of the Magna Tite docking. The sink we have right now doesn't have a magnet to hold in the faucet head and hose. It clicked in securely when we first bought it...for all of three months. Now it just sort of hangs loosely. Also, the neck was never tall enough. You couldn't get a pot under it comfortably. Probably because the sink is so shallows - more on that in a minute. But also because the neck wasn't tall enough. That will no longer be an issue with this faucet. Super excited about this faucet!

And then the sink that found it's way into our cart:

KOHLER Verse Stainless Steel Sink

We had quite the debate about our current sink. I was positive it was no deeper than seven inches, which appears to be a standard size carried at the orange box store. The Builder was convinced it was eight inches. I promptly told him he was crazy. I've washed my hair in that sink. There was no way it was eight inches deep. After some friendly banter back and forth about the depth of the sink, we took a serious look at this Kohler sink, that's nine inches deep. It's the same width as the current sink, 36", but we new the deeper sink would be better.

When we got home, The Builder was quick to break out the tape measure to show me he was right.  At which we saw that our sink is only six inches deep.  Not even the standard seven!! Up until that point, I was feeling slight guilty spending the money on a new sink, since ours mostly likely needed to be re-sealed properly so it wouldn't leak anymore, and then would work fine. I don't feel guilty anymore. Even if I end up keeping this sink when we do our full kitchen reno in a few years, I can live with that.

The Builder put our kids to good work as well.

The boys scrubbed down all the cabinets with TSP so that they'd be ready to prime. The Teen cleared and scrubbed all the counter before we removed them (I don't know why, but I can't put dirty counters out on the curb for trash day).  All of them helped box up all the cookware stored in the cabinets as well. It only took a couple of hours with them all helping - we had anticipated this being a full day to clean and clear it all out.

The Builder and Oldest DS1

Did I mention it's hot and HUMID here in TX right now? We've been in shorts all week and finally turned the barely working a/c on Christmas day. But the boys were looking forward to the demo portion. The Builder showed them how to use the hammer to knock a solid hole into the counter. The Teen and I don't quite get it, but if it helped the boys work better, then by all means, knock a hole in the counter! Of course, it might slightly be my fault as well.  I watch a lot of Property Brothers on HGTV. The homeowners always take great delight in punching holes in walls that are coming out. Since we're not taking out any walls at this point, this is the closest they could get.

Our original goal was to have this done in 4 days. That was before we realized the sink was a bigger mess than we thought, that the cabinets have been absorbing the humidity for a few years, and that some of the doors now need to be rebuilt. Thankfully we have another 3 day weekend next weekend, and that might allow us to get finished up.

Fingers crossed!

Coming Together

The tub skirting and touch up paint in our master bedroom has been done for a couple of weeks now. I just now managed to get around to taking photo's.  It's been crazy busy at work, plus my kids schedule's and then my school schedule.  Yikes!  

I LOVE it!! The tile, the trim, the deep soaking tub. All of it is perfect. The built in is also finished now:

I still don't have the dial from the old jetted tub covered. Eventually it may end up being a light switch. Maybe. I'm not done with the planning stage of phase 3, so it's anybodies guess at this point.

I love how the built in mimics the window. same profile on the header and ledge, same molding and trim on the sides. So much more storage space than I had before!

You may have noticed I haven't accessorized yet. I'm waiting until the new vanity is built. I still need towel racks and bathroom rugs. The purple won't be staying. The built in needs baskets (I stole those from my sewing area!). Small details. They will all come together in the end. But I'm not at the end. Yet.

Since we bought a bigger tub, it's no longer centered under the window. This is bothering The Builder. A LOT. I think the solution will be several floating shelves to fill the space.  We'll build those too. The Builder has made me several already throughout the house and they're easy to make. 

I was hoping that the vanity would be built by Christmas. But that isn't going to happen. So we'll start that project after the first of the year. 

AFTER we complete a small kitchen renovation to refresh our tired kitchen!!! The goal for that is to complete it over our four day Christmas weekend - which is really 3 days for since we won't work on Christmas day.  More on that later...

Let's Talk Molding

So I've showed this 80's, built in medicine cabinet before:

BLAH. Let's talk about what I don't like.

1. The 80's shutter door. Yes, it's been painted white (I've seen photo's of homes in our neighborhood that still have it the original honey oak) so this is actually an improvement - yikes! But even in the 80's, I didn't like the country shutter door look.
2. The size. It's terrible. I have tall bottles that don't fit. I have small things that I have to stack because there's not enough space. To say this doesn't work for storage is an understatement. Wider and taller so that I can have a second shelf would be ideal.
3. That it's a traditional medicine cabinet. Which is weird, because as a rule, I like traditional decor. For this one though, I actually wanted an open concept shelving. I am not usually a fan of open concept. But maybe that's just in the kitchen. In this bathroom, in this spot, I wanted something pretty and open. 

This.  This is what I want. I love what this blogger did with this project. Well, for the most part. This looks pretty narrow in the photo. But the two shelves for tall items and the shelf for smaller items? Yep, totally envisioned that in my bathroom. The Builder liked it too, so it's a done deal. 

You may remember the opening when we took out the medicine cabinet, there was pink wallpaper from the original bathroom on back of the drywall.  We did decide to leave it there, but we used construction adhesive to adhere 1/4 wood to the back of the drywall. I wanted the shelved to be as deep as possible so I could have some decorative baskets to hold my miscellaneous junk.The blogger I got the inspiration for the built in used hers for nail polish. I love that I can customize this to make it something that will work for me. Ironically, the wall she built hers on is next to a diagonal wall as well. Go figure.

So here's what we have so far.

We started by making the cabinet wider. There was just a 2x4 in wall to hold in the medicine cabinet in place, so we opened it up all the way to the stud. That added about 2 inches. Not huge, put just a little wider. Ignore the switch, it won't be staying. It used to operate the incredibly noisy, leaking jets on the old tub. One day we might run a light fixture off of it, but the plan for now is that we'll cap it and close it up. The screws in the wall are wear we installed 2x4's to adhere the 1/4 inch MDF.  Where we gained the most space was in the height. Overall, we added 4 inches to the height. This will let me hold some of my taller bottles here instead of all crammed under the sink. Even when we're not sharing a single vanity, I never had enough storage for my makeup and toiletries.

Then we added a ledge to match the one at the window. This one is lower profile. The wall to the right is actually on a diagonal. I didn't want one of us to come around the corner and walk into a ledge that was jutting out too far. You can really see how out of plumb these walls are! A lot of this will be covered with the molding. We have to work with what we have. There was no way we were going to rip out and replace any more studs! The Builder is fussing about it still, but I think it will be fine. I'm completely over tearing out any more studs in bathrooms!

And here's where we are at the end of the weekend.

Already, you can see that the trim makes up for a lot of the edge not being plumb. We think the molding really adds height to the look of the cabinet. And now that switch looks really close! Clearly we have some more drywall work in the not to distant future. 

We still need to fill the back of the built in so there isn't a seam, as well as fill the nail holes on the molding. We still have 2-3 shelves that will need to be installed, as well as paint and primer. So a little more work still on this one. I really like how it mimics the window on the next wall:

OK, don't look out the window. It lets in beautiful natural light, but sadly, the fence seems even worse than it did when we started this project a few months ago.  The temperatures have finally cooled down for Houston, so I suspect here in another month or two, a new fence is in our future. Thankfully I have blinds! But you can see that the molding and the casing matches the built in as well. 

Again, we still have primer and paint to go, but we're down to what The Builder would refer to as "the punch list". The light at the end of tunnel!!  However, that means we're going to have to get started on the vanity next so we can say the entire project is done. We're so close to being done in here!

Back To The Tub

The front door is done.  It looks fantastic. But I don't have a good photo! It's been crazy around here and keep forgetting to grab a photo of it. My neighbors have commented that they love it, so that's got to be a good sign.  Photo's soon for the door.

Today we're talking about the tub again!  It's been awhile, but actually, The Builder we've done a lot of work.  Last I posted, it looked something like this:

The tile looked good. But there was no grout. Nothing was painted. The ugly medicine cabinet is still in the wall. There's no tub skirt or molding and none of the drywall repairs had been done. Basically, it's about as unfinished as it could possibly be. 

See that list above? It's all been completed!

So no, we didn't do it all this weekend. We've been working on it for a few weeks. Oops. Let's get caught up, shall we?

This is the molding we decided on. This is actually one of those happy accidents. I originally wanted this molding just to frame out the window and the medicine cabinet. You may recall my inspiration project here for my medicine cabinet. The Builder put the piece right under the bottom of the window too, and I realized I really liked it. So he grabbed an extra piece and we realized it butted up against the tile almost perfectly! We hadn't decided how we were going to finish the top of the tile or frame out the tub and skirt, so this was a happy discovery. Back to Home Depot we went to get enough trim for the entire project:

Total cost?  Right at $50. We had considered a 'pencil' carrera marble trim that would have been $9 for 10 inches. Significantly more in cost. And if I had really like it, I would have spent it. But I didn't. It was all wrong for our bathroom. I didn't even bother to bring home a sample. The Builder didn't like it any better than I did, so there was no point. We looked at a LOT of tile to trim it out, but nothing seemed right. So I'm very happy we discovered an affordable option that we think is perfect.

Nothing is painted yet. In fact, you can see the rounded edge of the window sill The Builder installed. We bought the trim pre-primered and this photo shows the nail holes filled. We didn't want to paint until it was all ready to be painted, and we still had the tub skirt to finish - which you can't see in this photo.

So this weekend, we worked on framing out the tub, the window, and the medicine cabinet. I thought it wouldn't take long. I was wrong. It took most of Saturday to get it all installed, and even then, we're waiting for the construction adhesive to set.

You may notice the walls have been painted as well. The walls have all been correctly textured and look so much better!! I can't wait to put artwork up on the wall. But that's still a ways off. Did I mention I love this trim?!

And last but not least, the tub skirt has been filled, primered, and trim added as well:

I'd love to get a shot of the entire tub, but the old vanity is still in the way. And since we haven't build a new vanity yet, it's going to stay there a bit longer. Again, this is just filled and primered. We still need to caulk the edge and then paint it all out. Still, it's really nice to see it not sitting in the wood frame.

Tomorrow I'll post the updates to what was the medicine cabinet!

No Drama - Part 2

Dear No Drama Red Door:

Just one coat of paint sprayed on and I love you already.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Mike

Yes, just a light sanding and one more coat of paint and it will be done...!

No Drama

The long holiday weekend has definitely encouraged The Builder and I to get in and work on projects. He finished the drywall repairs, sanded down the horrible bathroom wall in our master bath and rolled on the new texture - the right type, not the "lets hide wallpaper we're too lazy to peel off" outdoor stucco texture. Out next step is to paint, install the new window sill, and maybe get the first piece of the tub skirting installed. We've also got crown molding to put on the window and we need to finish off the tile around the tub (grouting, sealing, etc.) I've taken lots of photo's of that, but that's not what we're here to discuss today.

Today we're talking doors.  Specifically the front door.

My front door is a mess. The varnish has been peeling since the day we moved in (2011 if you want a reminder). When I take any photo's of the front door, I fade out the door and concentrate on the wreath or the actual decor. Because the door looks that bad. I really, really wanted to buy a new door. I found one at Home Depot that I loved. It had a price tag of $650+tax. Which I was OK with (it was half the cost of the $1300 door I initially was admiring). Except with bathroom renovations and back to school expenses, there was no way that was going to be in my budget this year. And my door keeps looking worse and worse. 

Take a look at the bottom of the door where the worst of the damage is (no clue why!). You can see the original color of the door where we removed the door knocker - which I'm not sure that we'll be replacing. Those seem really dated. We also discovered the threshold is almost completely rotted out. So that needs to be replace too.

So The Builder completely sanded the door down and went back and filled all the dings. Sanded down, the door doesn't look bad at all.  In fact it was in really good shape under the ugly varnish. I was tempted to just stain it and put a new coat of polyurethane on it and call it a day.

But you may remember, I'm really a red door type of girl. I had one for a whopping month back in 2011, before we moved into this house. I didn't see any red gel stains that would give it that bright punch of red I was looking for. So while at Home Depot on Saturday, I decided to pick up a can of paint. 

It's called "No Drama".  And it's red.

More to come!!

Wallpaper Woe's

Today The Builder and I headed to Home Depot first thing this morning to pick up supplies to finish repairing the bathroom window ledge in our master bath. The window sill that had been there previously was wrotted out from water damage.

I had a plan. I eventually plan to take out the ugly, shuttered medicine cabinet and replace it with this:

Mandi from Tidbits From the Tremaynes posted a great tutorial for it here and I pinned it as soon as I saw it. I rarely like open concept shelving, but this really appeals to me. The Builder liked it too, so it was a done deal. The other think I like though is the trim on the top and bottom. And since this will be right by my bathroom window, we decided to trim it out the same way for a balanced look. 

I didn't choose the exact same molding she did, and this project isn't on the forfront of my "to do list". But we figured we'd get the molding to do the window and it would be a start. 

"Start" was the key word.

The Builder was cleaning out the window sill, preparing to get it prepped for installation, when he saw a small little piece of wallpaper that needed to be removed so he could do some drywall repair. 

Do you remember the last time I found a little bit of wallpaper that needed to be removed? Yep, The Builder had to completely re-mud and re-texture the wall.  You may guess where I'm going with this story...

Those "sheets" in the bathtub? Umh, that would be painted over wallpaper. They literally put texture in the paint and painted right over the 80's pink and silver swirly wallpaper. And it came off in great big sheets in this section! Of course our concern then was if the whole wall was this bad. 

It was.

The wallpaper came up as if it had been glued on with a temporary glue stick. I kid you not, we literally just pulled it up as easy as you would rip out a sheet of notebook paper. Not good. Eventually I want to put some artwork here and I don't want to have to worry about wallpaper peeling up if I need  to install anchors or want to hang anything up. There's also no point in putting new paint over that. 

This section came up super easy and was done in under 10 minutes. However, the rest of the wall wasn't so lucky.

It appears in this section, they did start removing the wallpaper. And apparently they determined it was too difficult. Probably the same issue with some of the drywall paper peeling up as you saw in the photo above. 

Instead of taking primer, sealing it, and fixing the damage, they decided to throw up a layer of mud through the entire center section of the wall (including where there was STILL wallpaper) and smooth it out. Then they added a heavy texture to the pain and rolled right over it. So in some sections, it was super easy to remove, like this:

Yes, I'm holding the camera and pulling off the "paint" at the same time. 

But the large majority of this section was adhered to the repaired mud. While we didn't need wallpaper remover to get it off, it did take a LOT of scraping and several hours for The Builder to get it all off. 

See the white peeking through under the paint? That's where they did the repairs. Just slapped it on over the gouges and wallpaper and then smoothed it out and painted right over. There's a term I hear frequently here in the south. Hot Mess. And that describes this perfectly. What he couldn't scrape off, he had to take the hand sander too. I am very thankful that this appears to be the only wall with the wallpaper. Perhaps it was a feature wall?

We decided to pull out the medicine cabinet just to make sure we had all the wallpaper remnants out. 

Take a look at what we fond behind the cabinet:

Yes, that's a pristine, never seen the light of day, original piece of wallpaper. Why is it behind the medicine cabinet, adhered to the drywall in my closet? Yeah, your guess is as good as mine on that one. We're going to leave it be since it will never be seen.

So we end today with the wallpaper completely gone and primer where we need to mud over the gouged drywall.

The Builder says all the drywall repairs need to be done before he starts on my window sill. 

While I'm disappointed that they project I really wanted to see done this weekend most likely will be put off until next weekend, I'm beyond thrilled that all the heavily textured walls in my bathroom are gone. We had always suspected there were wallpaper remnants still there, just not full sheets!

For now, my window sill can wait...

And Then There Was Tile..TILE!!

It's truly amazing how quickly a project can progress when there are no unexpected surprises.  Just a few days ago, we had happily dropped in the tub. It wasn't level, the plumbing wasn't attached, and we still have drywall to replace and repair. But I was happy to see the tub in.  It was a start.

Today, not only is my tub in, level, and the plumbing hooked up, but The Builder managed to get most of the tile surround in!  Here's a few photo's of the progress today:

The Builder took out the drywall and replace it with Durock (cement board) all the way around. This should really be used anyplace that's going to be near water. There's no piping for a shower here, so we didn't do the additional step of waterproofing it, but the Durock is better than standard drywall

I didn't get a picture of plumbing connected. I'm not sure it would really be an interesting photo anyway, it's pretty standard. But now everything is covered and today.  You can see how far up the old tile came. The new tile won't come up quite so high. After this photo, The Builder put backarod in the gap before he started tiling.

This is the same tile we used in the shower. I don't like the look of too many different materials and patterns in one space so using the same tile gives it a more cohesive finish. 

As you can see, there is still some drywall repair work to do before we can paint. We'll use the same grout we did in the shower.  I can't wait to cover up the pink studs with the skirting, but unfortunately that's still some time off

Yes very pleased with the progress made this week!

Making Progress

When started our bathtub remodel with this:

A nice blank slate once we tore out the old tub.

And then we added the framing for the new tub:

You can see how the space is going to be filled.  This is progress!

Tonight, The Builder made even more progress:

The tub is IN!!

OK, so it's not level in this photo. The Builder had to go in and make some adjustments to the frame so the tub would fit securely. That's not a fun photo though. 

Notice that the old tub fixtures are gone. He pulled those out tonight too. 

Here's a close up of the faucet he installed for me as well:

Yes, it's absolutely perfect! I didn't think I wanted chrome, but I have to say, I think it's going to look perfect in this bathroom.

And while drilling the holes for the faucet, The Builder discovered that this tub is insulated. Which means my bath water will stay hotter longer. I love a hot bath and nothing could make my heart happier. Since the last tub leaked and didn't hold water for long, this is really an added bonus!

As you can see, we need to replace the drywall we tore out. The water lines aren't hooked up either, and we need to install the new drain kit we bought. 

Once the drywall is in and we do the patch and repaid, we might be ready to install the Carrera marble tiles we bought to go around the tub. We wanted it to tie in with the shower and not have too many patterns and different materials, so this was an easy choice. 

Hopefully next post we'll have running water!