Doin' Things is What we Like to Do...YES!

Last weekend, I painted in the bathroom.



Let me just say that primers are a girl's best friend, contrary to popular belief. I am the first to admit that my joint taping/compounding in the bathroom was less than stellar. Similarly, Bren is not ashamed of the occasional discrepancy in cement board flushness or screw depth. However, I am happy to report that primer and flat paint cover a multitude of sins.

For anyone considering a paint project, I highly recommend BEHR paint (Home Depot). It runs only about $20 a gallon, and a gallon goes a surprisingly long way. The finished product is remarkably similar to the paint chip you get at the store, and you can test colors out for free with their ColorSmart dealy-bob (spelling approved by Arwen), either with stock photos or your own. However, unless you are working with pristine white walls, disregard their assertion that BEHR paint is both primer and paint. Cement board in particular is thirsty stuff, and even after two thick coats of primer I could discern the brand.

Before jet setting off to Minneapolis for work, Bren applied a layer of cement to the shower floor, graded down towards the drain.



After some drying time, we checked on the project, only to find we weren't the only parties interested in it...



Later, "The Inspector" reappeared to weigh in on the drain itself...



Since then, Bren has laid the moisture barrier liner.



By the look of things, he had to consult the masterminds at Wendy's in order to discover how to proceed with this step. After poking his brain with a Q-Tip failed to help. A final layer of sand mix will make this floor tile ready. Miles came over today to help finish cement boarding the rest of the shower:



He's got skillz. And sideburns.

2008 Update

Happy New Year, everyone! To sum up our holiday season:



-- Chevy is half the man he used to be. But he got a sweet bed for Christmas. No, those aren't our hardwood floors refinished. Aunt and Uncle recently gutted and renovated their kitchen into something from the pages of Gourmet.

-- The Nutcracker and Christmas retail. Enough said.

-- I traveled to Tulsa just before Christmas for Gina and Jamin's wedding, and proceeded to get stuck in a whiteout in Kansas on my way back.

-- The holiday was great, and I was lucky enough to have a week off to get the music out of my head. I channeled the inevitable post-Tulsa homesickness into energy for working on the house.

The living and dining rooms have gotten their respective coats of "Scotch Lassie."



I promise it doesn't look like Astro-Turf (or splotchy for that matter) in real life. The "cove," or the curve at the ceilings, will stay white, and there will be moulding on that fuzzy green line below the curve and the blue tape line above it. That inner moulding will frame these:



The ceiling tiles we started to install, only to be again confronted with the crushing discovery that holding heavy and unwieldy items over one's head for extended periods of time altogether sucks. Our excuse to postpone the torture a little longer? A very welcome onslaught of Christmas gift cards to Lowe's and Home Depot made it possible for me to...start tiling the bathroom! (Angelic choirs)



Look at it! I am a tiling machine. About two minutes into this project I realized that since I wanted the tiles offset, I couldn't use the spacers we bought. Now, I understand that "eyeballing it" isn't a recognized method among true craftsmen, but I have to confess that I have long considered it a talent of mine. Let's take another look at that tub, shall we?



A thing of beauty, no? A soak in this thing will be most welcome, especially since it was at about this point that I literally felt like my somewhat temperamental spine was going to pop out of my back.



Capacity: two humans, or approximately 236 cats.

The opposite wall, where the pedestal sink and toilet will go:



Bren is responsible for the tiles that require the use of the tile saw. He did the corners, and has these cut and ready to apply with thinset. He is also responsible for...



The shower, which is anxiously awaiting it's bottom. The floor needs to be graded with cement towards the drain, and the various moisture barriers installed, before we can tile in here. Then we'll grout and seal everything, install all the knobs, the faucet and shower head, and hopefully be able to take baths before Arwen visits!

The paint is going to be a light sagey green, called "Rejuvenate." How apropos.

We're putting black and white hexagonal subway tiles on the floor, which will require special ordering, and a bit of penny-pinching. Sinks, toilets, and even towel bars are more expensive than you think they are, too. Did you know that you can spend over $300 on a toilet paper holder if you want? The ceiling needs to be drywalled, the vent and light fixtures replaced...It's a long way from done, but it's still better than THIS!



You've come a long way, baby.

I'm in Pieces (Bits and Pieces)

Think of this next time you turn the hot water knob in your shower or bath...



Two sets of knobs, a shower head and a faucet.

A cool $400 and as many little, tiny parts.

Taking our first shower at home...[will be]...priceless.

Prime Time

Catching up:

We work a lot. Just not on our house. Bren now does his deliveries and installations alone, and has a big Geek Squad Home Theater Unit truck parked outside the house. Luckily, it masks...said house.

The ballet season started in October with Le Corsaire, a pirate ballet, and then the perennial favorite, Dracula. I had the good fortune to go to an Arts Integration conference for Educators in Oakland, CA, and meet my cousin Scott in San Francisco. He is studying Chinese in Monterey. He is much smarter than me.

I also accepted the position of Director of Education and Outreach at CB. Hence, my project (walls, floors) has progressed little. I did, however, begin priming the fully resurfaced living room walls for paint last weekend.

There's not much to show for it, since it's really just taking the room from kinda white to really white, but my sidekick is pretty cute:




In a French independent film kind of way. Chevy's mom has been hanging around the house lately, to our dismay. Does he know it's her, and that she abandoned him? Do we suffice in her stead?

He must think we're OK, because he helps me with the laundry.



He makes sure I keep the black load black. "Blacker than the blackest black times infinity." If you get the reference, kudos.

I promise we're not going to post cat pictures every time we write from here on out. It's just that he's always...there. And the little extra money that comes in, that was originally intended for home improvement, has gone to the veterinarian's office adjacent PetSmart of late. It's amazing how many shots this guy has to endure!

Rub A Dub Dub...

Here's a quick update. Miles came over this weekend and we finally got the tub laid into the frame. We put down a thick layer of concrete as a footer to support and secure the tub from shifting. It probably still will shift a bit after a few fill-ups, but hopefully not too much. Pressing the tub down into the concrete was similar to closing the lid on a waffle iron.



I got the drain pipe in too. Joining CVP pipe is way easier than soldering copper pipe.

Post post

The toughest part about doing all of the remodeling ourselves, is not knowing the order of how things should be done. Trial and error, and problem solving have become my biggest hobbies (that and playing "bite-my-hands" with Chevy [see below for the lowdown on the cat from Anne]). The tub has been the main project for me the last few weeks, and I feel like it could have gone much faster, but most of the time I spent working around decisions and setbacks. I knew I had to build the frame for the tub. How much of a ledge should I put around the rim? How much wood do I need? more than I thought. It was nice that the instructions with the tub gave me the exact measurements for the frame. The tough part for me was how much longer I had to cut the wood to make the ledge. Oops, those eight pieces I just just cut are too short.
Here's me working:



Anyway, I got the frame built finally. At this point we realized that the tub is pretty darn heavy, and when a tub that size is full of water, it is going to be super heavy. Add myself into the mix and we're talking heavy-heavy. All that on the floor of a house that is already pretty old adds up to an achy house.

To ease our minds and to alleviate future worries, I put in a Lally Column to support the joists below the tub. This thing has 16,000 lbs of support.



After that all I had to do was nail in the frame, cut an outlet box, install the outlet for the tub power and cut the rough-in for the tub drain through two inches of real hardwood and sub floor. Can you see why this has taken me forever?

Well here's the progress as of tonight:



The rough-in.



At last, the next step is to drop the tub into the frame. Then there's only about twenty more things left to do before we can bathe!

I Shot A Weed in Denver Just to Watch it Die

Rewind to our laborious Labor Day weekend. We pretty much killed our lawn. Not only is it all weeds, it's all weeds that have had the run of the place for some time. The same pestilence reigns next door and across the street, as if the weeds existed before the street was paved. Witness exhibit A, a modest example of the offending breed:



The root is like a carrot! Anyway, we have the ugliest lawn on the block now, and that's an accomplishment. I hate it, but we really can't address the outside until we have a few more basic comforts in place. It's cooling off, and still no tub. Bren's working on it (more on that later), but it can't be done soon enough. Last night, I took a nice hot bath...I set the washing machine to the hot setting. Enough said.

The living room walls completely resurfaced, the ceiling has been giving me fits. The cove is finally sanded, after we attempted to devise all manner of curved sanding mechanisms, including attaching a halved length of sandpaper-covered 4" PVC pipe to the electric sander, to no avail. Finally, it ended up being good, old-fashioned elbow grease that did the trick. We are going to put moulding just below the curve, and around those cool ceiling tiles I mentioned before. We'll paint the area between the moulding white. And the tiles.



All this sanding creates a lot of dust. Just ask Chevy, who, as it turns out, is actually a boy.



He looks like a skunk. Chevy, by the way, is an estimated 9 weeks old now. He's gained a pound since we found him, which means he's a whopping...two pounds. An active fellow, he's inspired some unexpected construction around the house:



We took some rope we used to secure our belongings in the moving van and wrapped it around the banister in the bonus room, creating the ultimate scratching/climbing post. You can't really see him, but he's having a blast.

Am I one of those...



NOOOOOOOOOO!