Rounding Third...

...and headin' for home! Literally. We are officially six days away from moving into our project and it is frankly, a bit scary. The big news of the weekend was that we passed the final plumbing inspection on Friday. Laura spent the day waiting around for a 90 second visit. Annoying but one less hoop to clear.


We worked on the upstairs bathroom tile for about 12 hours yesterday which is about as much tedium as we could take. Eating pizza made by someone else at 9:30 at night after a long day like that is awesome.


Today we slept in (also awesome), dropped off a whole truckload of cardboard at the transfer station, sanded some molding, sealed the grout and caulked the downstairs shower, grouted a bit of the upstairs shower tile for the last of the plumbing fixture install tomorrow and re-installed the microwave (long story but this time it was done on the first try). Laura wrapped up the pull and knob installation and then we both did a big cleanup of the place. I have scheduled the last of the inspections for tomorrow morning and we want the place to look move in ready. I think we are there so wish us luck!


Here are some pictures of the kitchen (with knobs!):

Happy St. Pats

I hope someone hoisted a green beer tonight. I was a bit busy paying homage to the tile gods to find myself a pint. Not that I am complaining, especially since the results of the last few days have been pretty remarkable. Laura and I took a day of "vacation" yesterday to work on the bungalow. I say "vacation" as that is what our companies call it, but relaxing it is not. We did sleep in and run some errands before meeting the countertop installers around 9:45. They rolled in like a storm and in a little over four hours had all of the quartz counters in. They did a pretty stellar job in my opinion.

Superfriend Jill came by around 12:30 with an awesome lunch of Indian food. Our lunch places are getting a little stale, and this was a welcome change. So welcome that the leftovers were our dinner. She and Laura installed tile on the walls surrounding the toilet upstairs while I grouted the downstairs bathroom walls. I then handed off the grouting operation to them so that I could work on the never-ending shower pan upstairs.

Tonight I grouted the two walls and the floor tile in the upstairs bathroom in preparation for the plumbers that are arriving tomorrow. Here is a little before and after shot of the upstairs bathroom for those just tuning in:

Our 1/2 bath before

The current status of our new 3/4 bath

If all goes well tomorrow night we should have hot water, a toilet that works and hopefully a sink or two. Oh yeah, and appliances. Those are coming tomorrow too. I think that I am most excited about the hot water though.

Pushing through

We had lots of wheels turning today, working on lots of different projects. In the end, the progress was remarkable. Jon came out again and spent the day sanding our trimwork and patching the holes. We hired a friend of Justin's who is a carpenter and door hanger extradordinare to come hang our doors. Eric installed all of the door jambs that we so dutifully saved from demolition.

Our new bathroom door and salvaged trim. We need to patch a few holes and sand down the finish before we paint everthing white.

Meanwhile, Justin and I wrapped up the tile in the main floor bathroom (except one piece of bullnose that we need to pick up because we ran out). Jon brought the medicine cabinet that he built and we installed that too.

And after everyone left, Justin and I installed the flooring in the upstairs bathroom. Even after breaking several pieces trying to cut around the toilet, we had just enough to finish the job.

And finally, Doug, the stair craftsman and his father-in-law, made some serious progress on the railings. He'll be back on Monday to finish the one section not in the photo.

T.....i.....l.....e....!

Oh tile how I will love thee. Just not now. Not even close.

We are approximately 96% complete with the tile installation of the downstairs bathroom. We worked on it some more today and should have it wrapped up tomorrow if all is just and right in the world. Then we can grout on Monday in preparation for the toilet going in on Wednesday. To say that we will be excited to have hot water and an indoor toilet by weeks end is an understatement.

Here is the wall that we are closest to finishing in the bathroom:

Tile, Tile Everywhere

It seems that laying small tiles takes longer than laying big ones. At least that was the revelation that Laura had today while on day seven of the downstairs bathroom tile installation. Our previous tile projects involved only floor tiles that were much larger and far less complicated than what we are currently working on. We made good progress over the last two days on the subway tile walls, and it appears that there is one more day of tile installation and probably a full day of grouting to wrap up that room. We will have to get the door frame set and trimmed as well as the medicine cabinet installed before that happens, so we have a few steps to make before that can be a completed room. Super-friend Jill helped out on Saturday and Sunday with the tile extravaganza and sanding some of the existing molding to prep for paint. I was attempting to get as much dusty work wrapped up before the floor finishing starts and that was on the list. My Dad also came out on Saturday and he wrapped up the last of the floor infills in the kitchen and prepped a couple of the recovered door jambs for re-installation. He also helped me out in the upstairs shower with the first of the multi-step process of building the shower pan. We were able to get the first sloped lift of the dry pack in on Saturday and that is where it sits. Doug the carpenter also came by on Saturday and he installed the handrail to the upstairs so it is out of the living room for the floor guys.

At this point we won't be back in the house until next Sunday which means we have a week of packing up the other house, making a dump run, and building a new railing on the back stairway to the bungalow. It seems that cutting up the old railing to make a ramp to get to the dumpster means that the city inspector can require us to rebuild the entire thing to code. With plans in the near future of replacing the whole shee-bang we will be building it on the cheap. Not my style as many of you know, but I am going to try. We moved a bunch of tools to the garage with the intent to tackle this during the week. Hopefully the on again off again snow goes away that we have been having as that is truly unpleasant to work in.

Here is what has happened lately:

The stairwell handrail (on the far right) and two of the newel posts are installed and ready for the floors to wrap up.

The first step of the upstairs shower pan installation is complete.

Laura and I in the downstairs bathtub discussing the finer points of the wall tile installation.

The downstairs bathroom as it currently stands. The big wad of blue tape is holding in the ceramic soap dish.

Odds and Ends

Justin is a perfectionist. Today it nearly killed him (psychologically). See, we had planned to have all this wood backing in the walls to make hanging cabinets in the kitchen easy. But, when we went to install the range hood, the backing was too low and there were no studs where we needed them. Ah, ha! Justin would just cut out a piece of drywall, install some plywood in its place and screw the plywood into the studs. And he did...but he over-engineered his solution with a bunch of pieces of wood cramed up beyond the hole in the drywall and screwed in and then he forgot to move the electrical line to the right so it would line up with the electric in the hood. And then he broke a screw in the contraption. So, when he decided to take it all apart to move the electrical wire, it didn't come apart nicely...the broken screw held some pieces in place and he had to bend the wood to get the wire rerouted. When he went to put the wood back in place, it didn't fit nicely like before...it kind of angled in. He had to shim the fastening brackets for the hood so that it would mount nicely. And this operation just killed his perfectionist spirit. But I offered no consolation. It was 7:28 pm and I was ready to go home.

Here's the kludge with the shims and Justin with a sassy attitude.

Oh, but the kludge was good enough because the hood hung nice and level and hid all the rough stuff behind it.
Satuday wasn't all about the hood--we did lots of other things too. Justin's dad, Jon, came over to help for the day and he patched all of the subfloor to prep it for the patching that the floor refinishers will do next week. Meanwhile, Justin installed our bathroom radiant floor heating system and the self-leveling compound that it lies in. I pulled out the rest of the staples in the wood floor, removed all of the tape from the rooms we were finished painting and finished painting the second coat in the living room.

Here's our new bathroom floor with the warming coil set into the cement.