50 Shades of Grey

When I first painted my bathroom, I painted it WAY too fast. "Hurry up! It will be so much easier to paint before we put the bathtub in..in five minutes." True, it was much easier when the room was empty. But I did such a bad job that it has literally driven me crazy every time I get in the shower and look at the wall in front of me.
So - on a whim.. yesterday - I decided to bite the bullet and repaint the bathroom. Trouble was, I didn't have any paint, and I didn't have any desire to buy any more. So, I turned to my trusty sample paints...all 10 of them. Pour into a bucket, shake and stir, and throw it up on the wall.
I figured if I liked all the colors individually, I'd like the end product..and I'm actually really pleased with the results.
Pictures to follow :)

IIIIIIII'm Movin' Out!

I'm almost ready for company!

The vanity - the container on the right is full of extra towels. The container on the left is for all of my bathroom junk. 

I went a little crazy on the tiny plants last night.. I've been looking forward to turning the entryway into my mini greenhouse, though. No time like the present!

Looking through the kitchen into the dining room and living room at the piles of moving.

A nice sturdy metal shelving unit for extra storage in the laundry room.

The bookshelves and my borrowed recliner :) Dad/Roommate and I built the shelves a few years ago...it's strange how well they fit here! Also, no laughing at the recliner..it's the best nap chair ever.

The finished hardwood. Initially, I wanted to stain it dark..then I saw how awesome the wood was all by itself.

Pretty big day. We moved enough stuff that I could actually use my garage! :)

Setting the Scene - as of last night

Doors in the kitchen! The (pocket) door on the left leads to the bathroom, and the door on the right leads to my bedroom.

Behind Door Number One: More doors! And trim..

...and more trim..

Behind Door Number Two: The bathroom! My mirror still has its cardboard protection, but I figure that's probably for the best right now!

Out in the living room, the bay window has been scraped and sanded down..getting ready for a fresh coat of paint.

Speaking of paint, the fireplace is looking brighter these days! This is just the primer coat..I still haven't totally decided on a color yet.. More to come!

About Grout

Just a quick update to show the progress we made the day after Christmas.

The tile had been down for a week or more waiting for the right time to grout. With family in town for Christmas, I knew it would be difficult to find a time to make any progress on the house. My uncle, being the damn decent man he is, volunteered to help us grout seeing as he has had some recent experience in that department.

Coming into the laundry from the garage. Kitchen and dining room, beyond.

The grout was pretty self explanatory, but I had the added bonus of talking it over with the salespeople at the Tile Shop. I really appreciated the guidance and actual customer service I received there – I recommend them!

The grout I bought was a modified sanded grout – this means, in addition to the sand and cement-ish mixture standard in this type of grout, this one had a polymer component that would help stabilize the floor and help keep the grout from becoming brittle and cracking over time. In addition to this, I bought a liquid latex additive that further stabilizes and adds flexibility..though flexibility isn’t the right word..

View from "the bathub" looking out into the kitchen.

Directions call for mixing the grout to the consistency of toothpaste, though I’ve heard pudding, peanut butter, etc. all work well. We went a little wetter because we felt it would seep into the cracks better than a stiffer mix. Actually, the bathroom is a little stiffer than the laundry, which is stiffer than the kitchen. I’ll let you know if I have trouble and where.

After filling the voids and smoothing out the cracks (with our fingers..no fancy tools, there), we wiped down the floor several times making sure to clean and refill our buckets frequently to avoid leaving a streaky haze over the tile. I’ve been told that the additives in the grout could make that haze a pain to remove if you don’t get it while it’s fresh, so be diligent.

Kitchen floor grouted! Bathroom, beyond.

48-72 hours from grouting, we'll be able to wipe the stone/grout sealer over the entire area. This will darken everything slightly, but, more importantly, it will help protect both the tile and the grout from staining as they're both pretty porous. Any time after that dries, we can set the fixtures in the bathroom!

I hope everyone is having a happy holiday season..wherever you are!

I fall down enough without help.

A few weeks ago, when we were really getting into building walls and prepping everything for electrical and plumbing work, we decided to level up the floor in my bedroom.

The floor in the bedroom itself was not out of level, but there was a pretty good drop off between the kitchen and the bedroom and the floor in the original closet sloped quite a bit.

The drop off between bedroom and kitchen. This is where I fall on my face.

As we tore out the old walls and removed the old ceiling, we found the area that was used as a closet was originally part of the laundry room, which, again, was originally a porch. In an effort to help the porch floor shed water it was sloped toward the backyard. When the porch was later enclosed and that space annexed for the master closet, the floor was left as is.

All of this wouldn’t have been a problem, had we not moved the closet.

We moved the closet for a few reasons. First, and most importantly: the door to the bedroom was small in height and width. We wouldn’t be able to do anything about the width because of the adjacent pocket door to the bathroom and a sewer vent pipe running up through the wall on the other side of the bedroom door opening.

Small bedroom door to the left. New opening is just to the right of the old opening.

Because of these challenges, we elected to move the door to the “fridge wall” in the kitchen – this will afford me a larger door while allowing the vent to remain in place, but you would then enter into what used to be the closet. So, we moved the closet over to where the bedroom door was originally and provided an additional buffer between the bathroom and the bedroom. Now, I won’t hear guests singing in the shower while I’m trying to sleep AND I’ll be able to move furniture in and out of my bedroom (without tripping!) much easier than before.

Leveling the floor:

We could only do this in good conscience because the floor was in solid shape. If there were settling or rot issues, the right thing to do would have been to remove the floor entirely and deal with those issues appropriately.

Notice how thick the strip is here..

..and here. In roughly 8', the floor dropped almost two inches in the old closet.

Using a level, find the highest and lowest points in the room. Starting from the high point, establish a level point using shims, furring strips, or two-by-fours depending on how out of level you are. As you progress across the floor toward your low point, the strips will get thicker, so take that into account when establishing your high point/first row. Secure those pieces to the floor using construction adhesive and screws to minimize future squeaking. From there, it’s as simple as ensuring that each strip is level in its own right, but also level with the surrounding strips.

I feel bad about covering these floors..

It probably sounds complicated because I’m horrible at explaining things like this without talking with my hands. I promise, it’s simple. Once you’ve got your mind wrapped around it, it goes pretty quickly.

From there, we used ¾” tongue and groove plywood to provide more rigidity to the floor while also helping bring the bedroom floor into level with the kitchen floor at the new threshold we had created. The plywood was glued and screwed into the strips – again for rigidity and to eliminate future squeaking.

Vent pipe (center) with the new doorway to the right.

Good to go!

Once this is done, lay your level down, watch the bubble, and drink a beer to celebrate your accomplishment! Once your beer is finished, you’re ready for dancing on your new floor J

This weekend

This weekend proved to be fairly productive..when you consider we only worked for a few hours one afternoon.

As I said in the last post, we’re hung up waiting on my electrical contractor at the moment. Until he comes back, we can’t have our City inspection which means we can’t insulate..or drywall, or sand the floors, or lay the tile, or bring in the bathroom fixtures..you get the idea. Though – as you can see – once we get that inspection out of the way, we’re really going to make noticeable progress. Like..start FINISHING stuff J

For now, though, we’re working on the outside. This weekend, we worked on wrapping the garage. This should keep the weather out, and further help with energy costs down the road. And because we used plastic cap nails, it should stay put longer than if we had just used staples – this is handy because it might be a while before we can really get moving on the siding.

As you can see, we tore off more siding under the new roofline outside the kitchen. We did this so we’ll have a solid spot to attach the F-channel to. F-channel – which receives the soffit – fastens to the wall in a straight line even with the bottom edge of the fascia board. From there, you can cut your soffit (vented in this case) to fit the gap between the F-channel and the fascia board. And because we’re not really all that professional, that’s as far as we got. The next step, in theory, is to snap the new fascia in place under the existing drip edge while overlapping the edge of the soffit underneath. Whew.

When I say “in theory” with regard to the next step, it’s because there’s a small complication. You see, when we ripped the steel siding off the side of the house, we found another issue: because the house had been added onto over time, the walls don’t line up exactly from one addition to another. When you’re working with steel, it’s not as big a deal because the material is more forgiving; however, now that I’ve (finally) decided on the cement board, we’ll have to do a little more preparation before we can start hanging. The cement board material isn’t as forgiving because it needs to be secured directly to the wall every few inches. Steel siding – or aluminum or vinyl – actually kind of floats in a channel.. that, and the physical makeup of the material make it easier to hide imperfections in the walls. There might be an easy fix for this – I’ll keep you posted.



See the difference in (old) siding colors around the windows?



Once we have our exterior walls squared away, we’ll be able to hang the rest of the new soffit and finish closing off the house to the outdoors. Once our electrical inspection gets a passing grade, we’ll be able to close the inside walls and it will start to look – and feel – like a home rather than an elaborate outbuilding.

Electrician: Tuesday. Celebration: Tuesday night? Too soon to call!