Tub Framing

The goal last weekend was to get the tub framed out.

It didn't happen.

The Builder's back was bothering him and I put the kabosh on any building.  Even though a good soak would have done his back well. It was even harder to keep him from relaxing when our faucet was delivered later in the day on Saturday.

But today is a new day and he stopped at our favorite orange home improvement store to pick up supplies on his way home. Before I show you his progress for today, let's talk bathtub faucets for a  moment.

I wanted a waterfall faucet.  Something like this:

Pretty. Oh so pretty. 

But there was a problem.

See how wide this is overall? Well I also want a corner mounted faucet, not a side mount, as is shown here. And after looking at the phoroe of what I wanted, The Builder quickly pointed out there is no way this wide of a faucet would work.

There are narrower faucets in this style. But that's not what I wanted To me, they look like they should be on a bathroom sink, not a bathtub.

I looked at bathtub faucets for days before I finally ordered one.  I didn't like anything at Home Depot or Lowe's. I was afraid to go to an actual bathtub store because this is supposed to be the most affordable part of our bathroom renovation. So a $300 faucet was not in the budget. I looked at goose neck faucets, but those looked like belonged in a kitchen (who knew I was so picky about a bathtub faucet?!). I finally settled on something fairly traditional, but still updated from the pitted mess that is currently in there  This is what I ultimately purchased:

They had a brushed nickel, which I actually prefer However, my new shower is all in chrome (again, it was the only one I like at Lowe's!). I just feel like they should be in the same finish since they're in the same bathroom. I was surprised that it is bigger in person than it looks in the photo, but that's good.  Our tub is big and this is a good size in correlation to it. I think I saw matching faucets too. I may pick two of them up while they still have them in stock, since the vanity is right next to the tub. But I'm not ready to start that project quite yet, so we'll see. 

And this is the progress The Builder made today:

Please ignore the falling down fence that is now completely obvious from this angle...

That WHOLE space is going to be my tub! We went with the pink 2x4's like we did in both the upstairs bathroom and the re-framing in our shower. Did I mention it was such a relief to not have any serious damage when we pulled out the old tub? We have to turn the water off to remove the old bath fixtures, so that will need to wait until this weekend. The tub we bought did not come with a frame so we gave a lot of though about how we to finish it out. One of my favorite bloggers is Kristy at Addicted 2 Decorating and she enclosed an existing tub on a recent bathroom renovation. We're using her directions for a tub skirt to finish off ours the same way. This will give me a nice sized ledge to set my candles on, which is another important feature to me. We also wanted to build it out to the edge of the tile to cover it so we don't have to patch in any more than we have (as we will when we're ready to do the vanity).

Still to do:

1. Installing the new plumbing
2. Attach the faucet and drain
3. Drop the tub into place
4. Install the marble tile surround
5. Complete the tub skirt

Of course that just complete the installation of the tub. On the wall to the left of tub, we're going to install shelving. We also need to tear out the old 80's style shutter medicine cabinet.  I found this one:

http://manditremayne.blogspot.com/

I. Seriously. Love. This.

I don't like clutter on my vanity. Which is all I have now that I'm sharing a single vanity with The Builder. It's a hodge podge of stuff that doesn't fit in the cabinet under the sink and things we use frequently. I love glass jars in the vanity (which is reflected on my Bathroom board on Pinterest!). This combines the practicality of a medicine cabinet with the update of open shelving. I can't wait until we're ready for this project. Which won't be until after tub is completely done. And maybe the vanity too. As much as I love this, it is not top priority on my list. But it will be in my bathroom eventually!

Saturday can't get here quick enough, I want to see my tub installed!

Let's Talk Tubs

It's been awhile. Lot's of things going on in my life and home renovation projects have been on the back burner. But we decided this was the weekend to get moving again.

 This is my bathtub. From this view, it's not bad.  It's a garden tub with jets. It's original to the house.

Still not so bad. This is a nice large window over tub and faux wooden blinds. This photo was taken at night, so the blinds are closed. They hide the not so nice window behind them that doesn't open, as well as the oh-so-stellar view of the falling down fence between my house and my neighbors. But that's a post for another time.

Can you see the ledge over towards the left side of the photo?  This is my collect all. It holds an assortment of baskets for the junk I don't have space for since we took out the second vanity. Here's another quick peak:

The towel bar?  Completely impractical. It's not close enough to the vanity to be of much use. Shelving would have been such a better option here. Certainly more practical. That's what will be going up eventually. My pretty purple glass vase looks small from this angle (and oh so dusty from all the concrete dust that I am still cleaning up from the shower project, yikes!) but it's actually about 18" tall. This whole section will be gone when we install the new tub.  The new tub is a soaker tub that will just barely fit in the whole space. I'm ridiculously excited about the bigger tub.

This is the not so pretty part of the tub. I have no idea what they had in the bottom of the tub. It's a fiberglass tub, so it's not rust coming through from underneath. And the black electrical tape? That's the only way to keep the water from leaking out the jets when they're not running. Yes, they leak down the drain, so no water damage, but what's the point of having a jetted tub that the water drains from? 

Close up. No, that's not the original stopper. I don't know what happened to the original. This was what was here when we moved in. As renters, we didn't want to put any money into the tub (even though The Builder re-caulked the tub because it had completely peeled up and someone had put a 'push in' caulk down - it looked SO bad). If the jets had worked, I may have just considered refinishing the tub. But the jets don't work. They are horrifically loud and they spray water all over the place. We'd have to replace all the jets. That's actually quite a bit of money in repairs for a tub that I don't like in the first place! Wait until you see the tub that is going in it's place!! 

1980's pitted, ugly mixer and spout. This just screams builder grade. And it is. Why upgrade your tub if you're not going to put in decent hardware to go with it?!

And to make matters worse, the faucet is horribly pitted. I'm not sure why, we don't have hard water. None of the other faucets look like this. But this one is gross. I just never feel like clean.

Enough said:

There's no point in keeping this.

Let the demo begin! This morning The Builder broke out his hammer and some large trash cans and started tearing everything out. Zorro, one of our two cats, saw the sunny window and immediately went to investigate.  Construction noise doesn't bother him in the least!

I think demo is actually his favorite part of the job. So not mine. I hate demo. It's messy and dirty. So it works well that he enjoys it so much! Excuse the shirtless-ness, it's hot here in TX and all my boys are shirtless in the summer.

When we moved in, all the tiles here in the ledge portion were loose. The Builder glued them all down to prevent further water damage. What I have a hard time understanding is how this area got water damage. The faucet is at the other end and it would take a lot of water from the vanity to spill down and cause the damage. But there was, as will be evident in a few more photo's! Not  as bad as some of our other bathroom reno's, but still aggravating.Not a bathroom renovation photo.  This is Sam. Sam's dog house sits outside the bathroom on the shady side of the house. As soon as the window was up, Sam was watching the work. See the falling down fence behind him? Yeah.  Another project we need to get done. 

The skirting is off the tub and the mess has commenced. Yep, Sam is still watching all the progress. We cut out the piping for the jest. If the tub had been worth salvaging, we would have been careful to take it all out in tact. But since it's leaking and stained, we didn't bother. It's all going to the dump.

The tub is pulled up! You can see that there's absolutely no damage to it underneath. Certainly nothing to give it the rust looking stains in the bottom of it. I don't know, the stains puzzle me. But out it goes! 

Yuck, yuck, and yuck. So when they did the original renovation, they painted over the original vanity.  What you don't realize until you start pulling things out is that the "wood" on this is basically contact paper. Yes. That they painted over white. It's pealing off on the other side. This side, they painted right around the tub. See the hole at the bottom?  It's completely rotted out. As I said earlier, I have no idea where the water came from to cause such a big hole. But we'll be building a new double vanity in the not so distance future. I only need this one to work for a bit longer.  

Ta-da! The tub is removed and we're ready to frame in for the new tub. I'm ordering a waterfall side mount faucet for the new tub, we have a new carrera marble surround to install, shelving to install, and maybe a chandelier (I am a tub girl, must have a pretty space!). We have a power supply already on the wall from the time for the jets, so it may be something easy. We shall see on that. The builder also sanded down the heavily textured walls. The paint in here was cheap and some of literally peeled off the walls, so we may need to sand and primer as well. But that's a project for another day.

More to come!

Would You Believe...

This week The Builder and I were discussing what project to tackle next. We had several points to consider:

• We still need to order a shower door for the new shower
• We need to build a new double vanity for the bathroom
• We have plans to tear out the garden tub and replace it with a soaker tub (and goodbye leaking jacuzzi jets that don't work right and are crazy loud!)
• We plan to redo the toilet area as well.
• The entire bathroom needs to be textured correctly and repainted

It's a fair amount of work and the vanity alone is going to cost several hundred dollars more once we build it and buy new sinks, faucets, and hardware.

We both agreed the next project needed to be simple and low cost. There is no money tree growing in our backyard (lots of weeds, but that's another story). So what did we choose?  

Yep, another bathroom renovation.  Of course.

Yes, I'm moderately tired of bathroom renovations. But The Builder assured me this one would be simple, done in a weekend, and maybe $40 tops.  Sounds good, right?

You may remember that several years ago, when we were still renting, we re-painted and put new faucets in the powder room downstairs. It didn't start off well. I tried to do it while The Builder and the boys were camping, ended up peeling off wallpaper I didn't know was in the bathroom, and The Builder came home to quite a mess.

It was a simple re-do since we had no plans of buying the house at that time. We were just really tired of the worn paint and the 80's faucet. After my modest bathroom re-do we haven't touched it since. It's ok. But I've come to hate the blue color. There's no light in the bathroom and after almost three years of that color, I've realized the color is too cool for that space. It's washed out and blah. Because of the size and lack of natural light, the flash added more color to this photo than what it had in real life.

So how is this relevant?

Let me backtrack just a bit. As I mentioned, we want to put in a new soaker tub in our master bathroom. To do this, we need to remove the current bathroom vanity. Since we had planned to build a new vanity anyway, this isn't really an issue.

You may recall when we re-did the hall bathroom last year, we put in a temporary vanity until The Builder could finish that vanity (vanities are crazy expensive and I am thrifty to a fault). We knew then we wanted to tear out the vanity in the powder room downstairs. It's boxy and dated and too large for the small space. Since we finished the bathroom upstairs, the small vanity has sat in the garage. So this was the weekend to tear out the powder room vanity, repaint, and install the smaller vanity. Particularly since we stopped in at ReStore this weekend and found our soaker tub on sale! The thought process is that we would update the powder room to have a nice functioning sink when we're ready for the next phase of the master bathroom redo. After all, The Builder assured me this was a easy re-do.

Famous last words.

Do you remember what happened when I decided to repaint this same powder room? I inadvertently pulled off a whole strip of wallpaper hiding under the texture that I had no idea was there. It required The Builder to re-mud the entire wall and then texture before we could paint. Well, guess what happened this weekend? Yes, you guessed it. When The Builder removed the baseboard to paint, there was a small strip of the old wallpaper. And when he went to pull it off... a huge piece that was hiding under the horrible texture came up too. So long story short, he has now re-muded that wall, sanded down the horrible texture, skim coated it and re-textured it. Needless to say, a lot more work than what we had anticipated. Here are some quick shots from the work this weekend:

Yep, it's yucky. This is the best representation of what the paint color looks like. This is where the sink and vanity were. Even with the vanity out, it's a small space. My thought is that the new vanity will center nicely on the wall and the "extra" space will give the allusion of more space.

We'll be using the same mirror we had before as well as the vanity light. I'd love to put sconces in here, but I can't justify the expense. There will be some modest updates to some of the decor and some big changes down the road but this is a good first step.

Quick shot of the peeled up wallpaper. Oops.  Glad it wasn't me this time!! And here is The Builder cutting in with the new paint. This was at 6pm tonight. No final photo's tonight, the evening light is even worse for taking photo's in this windowless bathroom than the daytime light. And even though this update is going to take longer than a weekend, we're on track to have it done in just a few more days.

Then we get to the really good part. Installing the soaker tub!!

Phase 1 - DONE!

In just a few short hours, I am going to take my first shower in my fabulous, beautiful new bathroom. I am thrilled!

If you will recall, this was my bathroom just a few short months ago:

At 30x34, the size was the least of it's issues. It was leaky, dated with the glass shower blocks, and just over all gross, despite routine bleaching.

And then there was the demo and repairs. I lived in concrete dust and debris for much longer than we had anticipated, but with repairs to make and a wall to build, it wasn't a small project. We had some added expenses with the roll on waterproofing deciding to add a light in the shower, but overall, we stayed on track with our budget and it turned out exactly as I was picturing it in my head. 

I may be more than just a little biased, but I think it's absolutely beautiful!! This is what a shower in a master bathroom should be.

Tile, tile, and more tile....

I wish I could tell you we've completed the bathroom over the past 3 weeks and that we're completely done.

But I would be lying. Not my thing!

And doing weekly updates on tile installation is...boring. The Builder had a ton of cuts to make to get the install completed. And he sat down and figured it out all mathematically:

Yeah. So I readily admit, this tiling job was way more time and math that I had given much thought to. He sat down and figured out where each piece needed to go, size wise. He cut them and polished edges. He cut chair rail tile to go around our niche. He made bullnose tile out of left over tiles to do the shower curb and the pieces framing the edge.  All of these specialty cuts took a LOT of time. And he did an amazing job!!!!

So rather than bore you with a weekly update of what appeared to be small progress, here's a quick collage of the last three weeks:

As of today, all the tile is in! The Builder is going to start on the grout this week so it's not usable yet, but the end is near! We plan to order a frame less shower door soon, but in the mean time, our shower curtain will be going back up.  We're about $1300 into this shower and the shower door is another $650. So it will have to wait. In the mean time, a shower curtain and shower rod will work just fine.

OK, this is not the best photo. However, it brings us into the home stretch of this first phase of this bathroom renovation!

The light is still dangling from the ceiling because the ceiling hasn't been repainted yet. To make it all match up, we're going to need to repaint the entire bathroom ceiling, which we knew due to moving light fixtures and vent ducting. We're also repainting the bathroom to coordinate with our bedroom, so again, more paint. We'll do that while the grout is setting 

Here are some close ups of some of the features:

This is a rain head shower head by Mohen. My kids have all already decided they want to take at least one shower in this new shower just so that they can stand under this BIG shower head. I don't think you can see in the photo how large this shower head really is, but it was one of the largest we could find. And it's a good 8-10 inches above our heads, so it won't spray directly in our face (like our old shower head!). We bought the extension piece too so it wouldn't be so tight against the wall.

And the floor with the tile installed:

I really, really love those hexagon tiles! Although from this angle, the shower looks small again.  Bad angle, it's not! Which makes you realize how small the shower really was before we expanded it.  Yikes!

The much mentioned niche:

Again, the lighting and camera angle are awkward in here.  Probably because you have to sit on the toilet to take the photo. Super fun. More on that in another post...

This niche replaces the soap holder that we used in the previous shower to hold our shampoo bottles and body wash. There's a ledge for each of us so we'll no longer be knocking over bottles if you look at them wrong. I plan to put some suction cup hooks in here to hold our shower loofah's so we don't have to hang them off the shower lever. I'll be able to put my shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and my deep conditioner and still have room. Yes, I'm doing the happy dance!!

I'll spare you grout updates this week. The next blog post will feature a working shower!!!

Time to Tile!

This past week the waterproof membrane we ordered from Home Depot finally came in and The Builder was able to get it installed.Want a not exciting photo of it?

 OK, underwhelming, I know. 

And you can see the single piece we put down to try to get a feel for how it was going to look. Yes, I was completely tickled pink to see the prospect of tile finally going in! No more traipsing upstairs at 4:30am for my morning shower! But I digress...

Here's a quick close up of what the floor tile actually looks like:

I really considered the small penny tile that I have seen on some decorating shows and web sites. But The Builder was against it. In fact he hated it. Then we saw this one in a display and we both agreed it was exactly what we wanted. Each tile is about two inches in diameter. It's a carrera marble as well, but it's unpolished, so it won't be as slick in the shower. We'll have to seal it yearly to keep it from staining, but we know that going into it, and we're OK with that (I say that now, lol...)

I came home tonight and The Builder had done a dry fit of the floor. Those are the tiles that we chose leaning up against the wall. Even though they're not the shape of tiles I originally envision, they're still the marble that I wanted, so I'm happy. It was a relief to see that my shower isn't going to be the cave that the wood and cement was making it appear to be, even after the light was installed. Once the tile is up and the glass shower door is installed, there will be plenty of light reflecting off the marble we chose. 

Another close up. I'm mildly obsessed at this point...

The Builder did a great job of cutting around the drain (yes, I'm slightly biased in his favor!). An unexpected bonus was that the pieces along the back edge just had to be cut in half and were a very easy cut. Once the floor is in, we can hang the cement board and eventually, the wall tiles, so there will be plenty of overlap to cover any mild imperfections along the edges.

I haven't officially picked a grout color yet. And for that matter, most of the texturing in the bathroom is done now, so we'll need to start painting again soon too. I'm not 100% certain on the paint color yet, but that's a subject for another day...

Plumbing, Electrical, and Drywall, Oh My!

The shower pan I left you with last was exciting, I know. And I'm probably the only one excited about plumbing, electrical and drywall (oh my!). But it's one step closer to being able to put up tile. And that is my goal at this point.

The photo to the left shows electrical that needed to be moved.  The vent, the light switch, and a light not shown, over the toilet. We also decided to add some insulation because my youngest sons' room is right over our bedroom and stairs are on the other side of that wall. Also, The Builder is showing where the new shower light is going to go in.

The total cost on this part of the renovation was under $80. That included the light for the shower, insulation, and new drywall.  We'd already bought new electrical outlets as well as the light switch (I think we should buy stock in electrical outlets, we seem to be replacing them in every room!)

new light and light switch

I was moderately concerned that this shower was going to turn into a cave, since there is no natural light in this corner now that the glass blocks are gone. And trust me, I would rather have a cave than those glass blocks back! But The Builder assured me that a light would be an easy installation. Everything went smoothly on installing it, so I am very pleased!

Now we have the drywall back in, the insulation is done, the plumbing is closed up, and the electrical is all moved.  The arrow on the top of the photo is the new light. The middle arrow is the switch that turns on the light.  The arrow on the right is the new double outlets. You can see all the drywall is back in in the vanity area (a project for another time). The section in the shower that you see barely that doesn't have insulation is where the built in shower nook is going to go. If you look really closely, you can see where The Builder penciled it in. :)

Just a quick look at the light and the vent now that they've been moved. We'll be replacing both now that we've moved them. The a/c vent had been painted white. It was awful. The light we had replaced on our prior landlord's dime after the water leak upstairs. We both hated it from the get go, but The Builder we were trying to keep it inexpensive since it wasn't on our dime. I'm not sure what fixture we'll put in yet, but this one is already starting to rust. No real surprise since I think we might have spent all of $30 on it.

Ta da, the light on in the shower! I don't know if it's obvious in the photo, but it really makes all the difference in the world. We've got more insulation to put in, as well as a waterproof barrier (no more water damaged beams for us!) and concrete board, but we're that much closer to getting the tile in. I'm ordering the the shower pan membrane this week for next week's install, and then we'll have one more layer of concrete on the shower floor, but after that, it's tile time! I think I can see a slight glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel...

The Shower Pan

This is our new shower pan. The Builder did an amazing job. I came home from work Monday night and he was almost done. I am dually impressed!

We don't anticipate getting a whole lot done in the coming weekend since it's Valentines Day. We have plans to go to Waco and visit Magnolia Acres! For those who aren't addicted to HGTV, there's an awesome show called "Fixer Upper" which stars hosts Chip and Joanna Gaines. I absolutely love their show. Magnolia Acres is their store, and The Builder is taking me to visit.  I'm so excited!

Stay tuned, we have new shower valves to install and then the concrete board.  All leading up to new tile!!

Building a Shower

Fast forward to this past Saturday. During the week leading up to Saturday, The Builder was chipping out the concrete from the bottom of the shower so that we could make a new shower pan. I'm not going to lie. This was the worst part of the demo. We had concrete dust from rafters to the front door. Friday night we had to go out to eat or we would have ended up with concrete dust in our food. I'll spare you the photo's of the dust cloud, even though we put up a tarp and tried to block as much as possible.

When we were done, this is new shower base:

The "square" bed is the original shower.  And the chipped out concrete section is the new extended portion of the shower. 

Clearly, we have more to do here.  In my previous post, I mentioned it was FFA show weekend.  The Builder and I had volunteered to do the concession stand before we ever ripped out a single piece of tiled or knocked down any walls.  Oops. So Saturday was a bust work wise (although we had a great time at the show and auction!). But this is where we were by the end of Sunday. Can you see the wall above? Yep, he framed in the wall as well. It's amazing how much an extra 16 inches of width and three inches to the depth. 

It's an awkward angle to get a photo because there's a wall to the left (the wall for the toilet alcove). But this is the new wall framed in. You can see that the light fixture is moved sideways. Yes, that will have to be moved as well. But that's a project for another day.

And here's the wall with drywall up:

Yeah, now it's really feeling like a shower!

For the rest of the week, The Builder is pouring the mortar for the shower pan, which has to be sloped to allow for proper drainage. We had contemplated tearing out the existing plumbing and moving it to the center of the shower. However, we watched a few tutorials on You Tube and realized that wasn't really necessary. And after the grit from concrete dust in my entire house after just that small section being removed, I can't fathom how bad it would be if we had to take out the whole thing. And The Builder said there is another layer of concrete below this one. No thanks. We The Builder can follow the You Tube tutorials to get the proper slope for the drain!

Have you ever read the book "If You Give a Mouse A Cookie"? In it, giving the mouse a cookie leads to more and more things. This is house this renovation feels. We realized after the drywall was up that with the glass blocks gone, the shower felt a little...cave like. I say that in the best possible way, and I'm sure the tile we chose will help lighten it up, but we also realized we're going to need to install a waterproof, recessed light. Which means taking the drywall down. And if we're going to install new electrical, we should move the current light, which is awkwardly placed between the shower and the toilet (yes, my toilet faces my shower. Don't get me started on that one..). So we're going to move that light to be centered over the toilet. At which point, The Builder noticed that the a/c vent is right in the path of the glass shower door we plan to install. So, that will need to be moved over about 6 inches as well. The Builder assures me these are all easy changes, just mildly time consuming. We shall see...

Demolition Day 2

The Teen's FFA project kept me busy this week, but The Builder has been working steadily on our shower for almost two weeks now. 

Today's post is all about tearing it down! I wish I could say I find demolition to be the exciting part of a renovation. But I don't. I hate the dust and the grime and the mess!

All the damaged parts have been completely removed. We found that the corner of the load baring wall had damage too, so we had to shore it up as well. You can see all the pink studs where we replaced the interior studs.

And yuck, look at all the debris!!!

Here's a quick picture of the corner. After The Builder removed the damaged piece, the wall actually sunk a bit. Yikes! Thankfully he was able to get the new piece in place and a little brute force later, everything was shored of securely. We'll have to do some drywall work, but at least there's no more rotten beams and load baring walls that could come down around us...

OK, the walls look lavender.  They're not.  But here's The Builder removing one of our vanities. We had to do this to move the plumbing. And the electrical. And install a new shower wall. Yeah, lots going on here. The vanity was probably the cheapest thing they could find. The doors and drawer fronts were real wood, but everything else was particle board. The last renovation this bathroom saw had them painting over the faux wood grain. Which bubbled up and peeled with the water leak. There was not point in trying to save this vanity. So it came out too.

And the only part of the demolition phase that I admit to enjoying?

Yes, down with the ugly 80's glass blocks!! We weren't sure how easily these would come out, but after trying a few different methods of removal, the sawzall worked best. These came down relatively quickly (I missed the rest of it coming out because I made a quick food run - that's how fast it went!). We've stacked them in the garage for now because I'm hoping to sell them on Craig's List. No, I would never buy them, but they still sell them at Home Depot, so someone must want them. I'm happy to make a small profit on them!

At the end of the weekend, we managed to get the drywall on the outside of the wall re-installed. Can you see how much larger the bathroom looks by taking out that glass wall?! I am never going to miss those blocks. I can say that with 100% confidence.

Yeah, the cat is really curious during this project. He refused to stay out of the photos at the end of the day, and I gave up trying to snap one without him in it. He's aptly named Zorro!

As anxious as we are to have our shower back, we're doing this shower in small bits each weekend. The Builder's work can start to get really busy in the spring and I don't want him to work 7 days a week!

Stayed tuned for more update...

Parting shot of Zorro. Because he's our little shadow!