Shower Fixtures...

After nearly one whole year, we are finally out of the basement and showering upstairs again and I cannot tell you how amazing it is!


Installing these lovely fixtures is what made it all finally happen...

Now all that the bathroom needs is some window and door trim (not a huge task, but we've decided to move on to more pressing projects like finishing the nursery before baby arrives) and some towel and toilet paper hangers.

I will show some pictures of the whole bathroom after the trim is done (knock on wood...I shouldn't even say that I will because goodness knows we still haven't trimmed the main floor from our first renovation a few years ago). 

Here's an updated look at our Bathroom To-Do list:

• Install the toilet
• Assemble and install the vanity
• Install the medicine cabinet/mirror
• Replace the window
• Add trim to the window
• Fill and paint the window trim
• Install the shower fixtures
• Install the shower curtain rod
• Hang the door
• Install door trim
• Paint the door trim
• Install the fan
• Buy and install a light fixture (we thought we had got this done this weekend, until we got the fixture home and realized that it hung far to low and would hit some taller guests heads, so the search continues)

Any projects you're particularly grateful to have done?

Vanity Fair

Shortly after we got the toilet installed, it was onto the vanity.  I was suuuper excited for this part because it's such a finishing touch part of a reno that gives a lot of impact, never mind function.  So we left off with just a toilet in there, like this...

Last summer we picked up this IKEA Hemnes dresser and it's been sitting in its box for the better part of a year.  How good it felt to tear into the box and start assembling it!

God bless Ikea and the simplicity of their instructions and assembly!

Once the frame was done, Darryl drilled it into the wall and attached the sink...

Then the drawers and faucet went in...oooooh, aaaaahhhh...

And finally the medicine cabinet!

With a little peek at the shower tile in the mirror...

And because the bathroom is so teeny tiny and it is hard to get a full view of everything, I had to take the same pictures from a different angle.  I was so excited to have this done that I went a little camera happy.

And just for funzies, let's do a little "before" and .... almost "after"...

Up next on the To-Do list:

• Install the toilet
• Assemble and install the vanity
• Install the medicine cabinet/mirror
• Replace the window
• Add trim to the window
• Fill and paint the window trim
• Install the shower fixtures
• Install the shower curtain rod
• Hang the door
• Install door trim
• Paint the door trim
• Install the fan
• Buy and install a light fixture

So still lots to do, but here's to progress!!  Darryl got a bit more crossed off that list this weekend which I will post this week as well. 


Did you get anything checked off your list this weekend?

Ladies and Gents, We Have a Throne!

While these pictures may be underwhelming to the average viewer, it was a very exciting day to me when the toilet got installed upstairs...

My bladder has calmed down in the second trimester (it would have been really great during the first trimester not to have to trek downstairs to pee in the middle of the night lol) but I hear as baby gets bigger in the third trimester the bladder issues will return and I couldn't be happier to be able to walk the few steps across the hall to relieve myself!

It doesn't take much to make my day apparently! lol

We've made a little more progress in there that I'll post soon.  Until then here's what's next...

Up next on the To-Do list:

• Install the toilet
• Assemble and install the vanity
• Install the medicine cabinet/mirror
• Replace the window
• Add trim to the window
• Fill and paint the window trim
• Finish caulking the shower
• Install the shower fixtures
• Install the shower curtain rod
• Hang the door
• Install door trim
• Paint the door trim
• Install the fan
• Buy and install a light fixture

Paint

Seeing paint going up on plain drywall is such a satisfying feeling, it makes things feel so much more finished even if they really aren't.

If you remember how the old bathroom's paint was peeling because the wrong types of paint were used, or mixed together and mould spores were starting to grow...

Because of that, we chose to use Valspar's Ultra Kitchen and Bath no VOC paint in "Smoke Infusion" on the bottom of the chair rail and it matches up pretty well with the accent tiles in the shower too.  This was Darryl's pick out of the slew of swatches I picked out and I love it.  Above the chair rail is the same Valspar paint in a white.

In these pictures, only the grey has been painted, not the trim, chair rail or white part of the walls.  They are all done now but I guess I didn't take a picture of it.


Darryl put on 3 coats of paint on the walls and added an extra coat on the shower ceiling area where more steam will be concentrated.




Up next on the To-Do list:

• Install the toilet
• Assemble and install the vanity
• Install the medicine cabinet/mirror
• Replace the window
• Add trim to the window
• Fill and paint the window trim
• Install the shower fixtures
• Install the shower curtain rod
• Hang the door
• Install door trim
• Paint the door trim
• Install the fan
• Buy and install a light fixture

And I think that's it.  So there's still lots to do, but in my eyes, they're all more fun and exciting finishing touches that I far prefer to the demo, dust and reconstruction phase.


*We made some more progress this weekend which I will post this week*

Shower Tile

Gosh this tiling job took forever, and poor Darryl was about ready to rip his hair out when it was done.

(We never claimed to be the neatest renovators :S)

It looks much better now that it's all grouted and cleaned up a bit (which it obviously isn't in these pics lol).  We're still not showering in it just yet (9 months into this reno now), but I feel it's coming soon! 


There's another update or two beyond this point that I'll post soon.  The end is finally in sight!!

Cement Board, Drywall and a Tub!

Ok I drafted this post almost half a year ago and then lost the motivation to post it...shame lol.  Here's how it started out:


"Happy New Year!

We're coming to the end of our Christmas holidays and I'll be going back to work on Monday.  During our time off we've made some progress in the bathroom which is exciting. As I'm sure you can tell from the title of this post, we...and by we, I mean "D"...got the drywall, cement board and tub installed! (There was other, very important, but less interesting, work done over the holidays as well, including some electrical and plumbing work).

 

A look at what the view from the hallway looked like a while ago...

 

And where we're at now... (or, where we were back in January)

 

We have that one piece of drywall to the left of the picture where the light switches are to put up, but need to frame the door in first.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cardboard is still in there because we'll be mudding and thin-setting soon and, although there is a plastic covering on the tub, that's not strong enough to protect from falling screws or harder objects (as we've learned), so that'll stay in until pretty much the end.

 

 

So we hope to get the door framed in and that last piece of drywall done shortly so that we can get to mudding and tiling eventually.  I've given up giving ourselves timelines because life always seems to have a way of changing things up and this way it's less of a feeling of let down lol.  Darryl will be starting a very important internship this week (back in January) and will be doing some shift work so we're not sure how that will get in the way yet".

So that was what I had written over 5 months ago.  Luckily there is more progress than what you see in the above pictures and I will try to be good about posting those sooner rather than later.  Even though I haven't been posting anything, I still read my blog roll list regularly and a common theme I was reading about earlier on this year was a lack of motivation or inspiration to post and I guess I wasn't alone in that.

I'm hoping with the start of good weather I'll be more motivated to keep on top of things as we still have A.LOT to get done upstairs.

Any renos you're working on?  Taking longer than you expected?  Upcoming projects?



Framing and Insulation

Well things are still slow going over here.  Scratch that.  Things are no-going.  But that's ok, we hope to get back on track in about a month or so once Darryl's done his semester at school and I have some time off from work.  In the mean time, there was a little bit more that we got done this summer before school started up again.

 

 

 

Darryl put some foam baffles in the attic for ventilation to channel cold and hot air to the roof vents before putting the insulation in.

 

 

 You can also see the fan partly installed under Darryl too, which is fantastic and should prevent any mould from forming like it did before.

 

 

This was one of those things we didn't take into consideration and ended up pushing back the more exciting things I was hoping to get done, like drywall and tiling and installing fixtures.  But it's obviously something that is needed and will help us in the long run.

 

 

Then Darryl got some framing up - that was an exciting visual change for me!

 

And this is the view from in the bedroom, looking into the washroom.

 

 

Then came some insulation.  Another big visual change that excited me - another step closer to making it look more like a livable room again!

 

 

Hopefully these rooms will be a bit toastier in the winter and cooler in the summer months now, and our energy bills will be a teeny bit lighter.

 

 

Not the most exciting or visually stimulating post, but definitely exciting for me as the rooms start to look a little less like construction zones!

 

We did get just a teeny bit more done in August before school started up, so I'll share those pictures as well.  And dream of getting back to the hard work and progress in a few weeks.

 

 

 

Why Our Demo Timeline was Tripled...

When we originally embarked on our newest reno, we thought we'd be done demo in a day, easily.  Well it quickly progressed into 3 days.  Not for no good reason though.

 

The door on the left leads to the bathroom, and the room you can see into is the back bedroom...

 

 

And then this happened to that room...

 

 

 

Mhmm, when they say that renos tend to snowball quickly, this is what they mean.  We knew we wanted to take about a foot of space from that bedroom to make the bathroom just a bit more spacious, but once one wall came down, the others weren't too far behind.  We didn't start out with the intention of demoing the whole room, just the wall that backed onto the bathroom, but once we got started we figured it was a good opportunity to better insulate at least one room upstairs.  

 

 

Just like we found during our main floor reno, there was zero insulation up here either.  It gets pretty hot up on that floor in the summer with no AC, and no insulation.  So we figured the extra hard work now, would pay off in the long run.

 

 

 

This looks all too familiar.  Funny how it's been a few years since our main floor looked like this, and yet once you get into the demo again, it feels like you haven't had a day off.

 

If you were to stand in that bedroom and face out you'd see the hall, and that wall that attaches to the bathroom. 

 

 

And now it looks like this...

 

 

Wide open spaces (anyone else singing with me on that?)

 

So where are we now?  Well, we're at least a little further along than that picture which I'll share next week but, truth be told, it's busy times over here...Darryl's back to school and has acquired a part time job which takes up most of his weekends, he's also in the thick of midterms so, needless to say, there are bigger priorities right now than finishing our only 3 piece bathroom in our house (now that's a statement!).  But getting good grades is the most important thing for now, then we can refocus our energies back on construction.

 

Anyone else out there have a big project on hold??

 

Bathroom Demo



This post isn't pretty so I'll keep it simple.  Demo started with the fixtures coming out...

 

We are keeping the toilet because we upgraded it to an eco friendly one when we re-did our main floor (full disclosure: the seat lid got ruined during demo so that part will have to be replaced)

We are keeping the tub on hand because we can't bear to part with it and have hopes to one day incorporate it into our "forever home".  I would love to have a shower and this tub just for bathing.  But as far as having it as your only method of shower, it was not practical or enjoyable for us.  It was like suffocating in shower curtains that stuck to you like magnets, no where to put your soaps and shampoos (yes we had a rack that straddled the tub but that didn't stop things from always falling off).  The main reason though, was that this baby's enamel had worn off.  To give you an idea, here is a picture of it immediately after a thoroughly aggressive scrub-down:

The sides are fine, but take a closer look at the bottom...

Ladies, how does one leave a shower (nevermind a bath!) feeling truly clean in that!? (mhmm, I showered in flipflops).  Yes, it could be refinished, that's why we're holding on to it for now, but it was a budget breaker for us at this point.  So it was removed...

Just cause I was curious...Made in Toronto

You know how they say things get worse before they get better?  This was what was behind the tub...

Pa-ukkkkkkke!  Pretty sure that is some mould  :S

While we're on the topic of grossness, when we took the tub out, we found this...

That, my friends, is a Christmas glass half filled with cigarette butts.  Like whhhaaaat!?  WHO was smoking in the bathroom and hoarding their old butts under the tub???  The people who lived here before us continue to amaze.

And since I'm past the point of shame now.  This is nast, but at least somewhat expected.

Once that was all taken care of, I taped everything off...a feeble attempt at keeping the dust contained.

 

Covering the demo process could easily take up a few posts, but I think that could get boring pretty fast so I'll give you the Coles Notes instead.

 

The floor came up...

The walls came down...

The plumbing was exposed...

Et Voila...  a demoed bathroom!

 

 

If only the process had been as quick as that  ;)

Here's to things going from worse to better!

In a couple of days I'll show you why our projected one-day-demo plan turned into 3 days.