Bathroom project saga

This post is for me, myself, and I as official documentation of the "complete" guest (and Larry's) bathroom conversion. It will be completely complete when the plumbing leak is fixed and the mirror frame that was damaged is replaced, but everything will look essentially the way it does right now, so I'll go with that. A few of the pictures have appeared in a previous blog entry, but I need repetition.

Here we are back in October, all green and pastel and Monet-like. 

 

I chipped away at removing wallpaper just in time for the plumber and carpenter to remove the toilet and the vanity, and to haul away the stained counter top and rusty sink.

 

Then it was the Wilsons' turn to prep the floor, remove the wall tile,

and get the surface ready for the new off-white ceramic tile.

End of Day 1

Day 2 Lindsey put in her two-cents as Jeff slathered on the adhesive. Three rows almost done, lots more to go. Somewhere around this time the plumber came back to deal with a tub drain issue, and discovered that our water heater was leaking and would likely be worthless very soon. So we saw George again a couple of days later when he came to install the new water heater.

 

End of Day 3

 

Day 4, tile is on the wall, "bling" trim installed, and ready for grout. Grout was done by the end of the day. On Day 5, Jeff and Lindsay finished up their work.

The carpenter reinstalled the cabinet on Saturday (Day 6) and brought the mirror, which turned out to be only the frame with no glass in it. Wait a minute... He prepped the wall by putting up the track clips, attached the track to the back of the frame, and then returned the frame to the store to have the mirror put in. That's when everything fell apart. 

Here's how I got the mirror at the end of Week 2. Notice anything?

 

The response from the glass place was "Wipe it off with a dry cloth. It will come right off. Or, use hot soapy water. That will take it off for sure." This was after I'd tried both of those things and also Goo Gone, which didn't budge the goo a bit. A week later they agreed to remove it because I said I didn't want to damage it further by scraping it off.  So they scraped it off, and of course left a  a mark. There's more to this, but the final answer from them was that they'd pay for a replacement frame and we're keeping the original one with the mirror in it until the replacement arrives. I hope it's not pink.

 

To condense the two weeks that followed, the plumber came and put the toilet back on the wall (it's a wall mount toilet, so that's why) and installed the sink and tub fixtures. A few days later, I happened to be in the basement bathroom and noticed that a couple of ceiling tiles were wet and stained -- a leak from the reinstalled toilet. Only it's turned into much more than that, and the plumber will be back to open up the wall behind the newly reinstalled toilet (which happens to be inside a bedroom closet in a place that we'd done the same thing a few years ago, and then had the wall repaired) and do whatever expensive thing needs to be done. I watch HGTV, so I know what will happen! 

It took the electrician a couple of weeks to get the pendant lights put in, and also a new bathroom vent fan, and he'll eventually come back to put one in the shower in another bathroom. 

Last, but definitely not least, Bryan came to paint after waiting patiently for everyone else to be done. He showed up with his brushes, drop cloths, and ladder, then took a at the walls and said we should have a skim coat layer put on because of the roughness in some areas caused by wallpaper pulling off some of the plaster. Fortunately, the plasterer was able to do the work within a few days and so Bryan come back the day before Thanksgiving. Bless him!  We were away for the day, so it was a delight to come home to everything finally done, except for the necessary cleaning from residual plaster dust, etc. He even sent a text with pictures attached to show me how it looked when he finished working. That's one guy I'll hire back for sure!

Here's what the bathroom looks like, sort of. The colors don't come through just right, but it's close enough.

You'd think we were doing some big-deal renovation for all the time, effort, and problems, but it's really a very simple change that updates a bathroom that had the original tile from sometime in the '60s when it was built. I miss the mint green a little. Well, not all that much. The new tiles and trim update the look of the bathroom without making it seem out of place in a house the age of this one. 

Here's a close-up of samples of the tile, trim tile, and flooring, and the paint color I didn't use. The flooring has a linen look--a soft effect. I like it a lot.

We're considering updating the kitchen cupboards and changing the layout in the kitchen somewhat, but we're not as enthused about it as we were one short month ago. It seems like it took three months for the bathroom work, so I can only imagine what a 4 to 6 week renovation project might feel like. For now, it's shelved until we can get our gumption back.