Hair Spray and Caulk…Can They Co-Exist?

Only in my bathroom!  I thought this looked funny.  We have so many remodeling projects going on that items like this caulk gun start blending in with regular household items.

Well, well, I guess since I am showing you this picture, I will have to let you know that we did start remodeling our bathroom.  It is not exactly what we wanted to do.  We really wanted to take a wall down and move the plumbing around.  However, due to my decision of going back to school next Fall, we have decided to save our money and just update the bathroom.  We are not finished.  We still need to put shoe around the baseboard and I need to sand and paint the doorway and window, but this will give you an idea of what it is starting to look like.

BEFORE bath area. Notice the awful surround.

The floor was horrendous. We pulled up several layers of old tile and plywood.

Pulling out all the old

AFTER old moldy sheetrock and surround gone, new shower surround put in!

AFTER new floor

BEFORE

AFTER not sure why my pictures are fuzzy.

Bye-bye ugly!

I pulled all the old flooring out, Steven tore out the shower surround and sheetrock and stuff and then he repaired the wall and we both liquid nailed the new surround in.  I then caulked and siliconed it (do NOT want a mildewed shower later!) very thoroughly and Steven laid the floor.  I am proud of it!  Not exactly what I want at the moment (this is what I really wanted), but it looks a WHOLE lot better than it did.  It started getting be very embarrasing to have guests over…especially overnight guests!

I am so busy with finishing up the school year, that I have not been able to do the finishing work.  When I do, I will post pictures of the end result.  Until then, my caulk gun and hairspray will need to learn how to get along….they may be there a while!

Andrea

Gearing up for a bathroom remodel

So, it is finally here!  We are putting our ducks in a row to gut and remodel our only, yes, I said ONLY bathroom in the entire house.  Since this house was built in 1907, the bathroom was an afterthought.  We have the original bathroom that you can access through a door on the porch (believe it or not, we do not use this one 🙂 ) 

original bathroom door on the back porch

and then you have a very small one on the inside built from the same room as the one on the porch.  We are going to take down the wall in between the porch bathroom and the inside bathroom and make it one large room.  At least, that is what we plan.  It seems that every time we get the sledge hammer out, we find something we were not expecting and then, we are delayed, or the project comes to a complete halt.  Hopefully, this is not the case with the bathroom.  I am tired of walking on plywood floors in there.

bathroom now

bathroom now 2

bathroom now 3

The plywood?  Let me tell you how that came about…  Shortly after we moved in, I was curious to see if the original wood floor was underneath the very ugly peel and stick tiles that lined the floor at that time.  So, I bought a crowbar and pulled them all up.  I found more peel and stick tiles, so, I pulled them up too!  By about that time, my husband came home and found me over my head in peel and stick tiles.   I guess he decided, if you can’t beat them, join ’em….  He grabbed the crowbar and helped me pull up the plywood.  What we found?  MORE peel and stick tiles.  Sheesh!  Under those peel and stick tiles was another subfloor of plywood and then the original floor.  The condition of the original floor was not bad, except around the tub.  Whoever the genius was who installed these multi layers of tiles and plywood, did not caulk around the tub.  So, all of the flooring around the tub was rotted.  I was wondering how in the world it was holding up my very heavy cast iron tub.  I imagined myself one day enjoying a nice bubble bath when all of a sudden CRASH and I am peering up through a five foot hole, visiting with the cats who live under my house.

We deliberated on several projects to move forward with this summer.  We decided on the bathroom in the hope that if we invest money there and, when that is complete, spruce up the kitchen, we may be able to get the bank to take a second look at our house.  As I said in previous posts, the appraiser told the bank that our house only has a 20 year life expectancy and that even after we complete the necessary repairs, our house would not appraise for enough to cover our loan.  Frustrating!  The main reason for this is, the bank made us tack on projects that we did not want.  But, they convinced us that it would make the appraisal value higher, thereby it pushed the contractor’s fee up to around $80k (in his pocket), plus the material costs.  What mainly frustrates me about this is, I don’t need a contractor to make the repairs to our house.  I need a roofing company, a plumber and a carpenter…the rest of the work we can do ourselves (we have pretty much done it already anyway).  This is our third house redo.  I guess the politics of the whole thing aggravate me.  To read more about it, visit some of my previous posts on the subject.

So, back to the subject at hand.  Here is a picture of my bathroom, and here are pictures of the fixtures, tub etc. that we will be adding to it.

Tile:

Bathroom Tile

 

 

Clawfoot tub from Lowes

Pedestal Sink

Inspiration:

Inspiration

Inspiration

Inspiration- love the mirror!

Chandelier, for over the tub

 Andrea

Projects – 2008 in Review

I was sitting around trying to think about what we did all year.  It seems like 2008 was a slow year for us as far as the DIY scene was concerned.  In the early part of the year, around March, we spent a lot of time getting construction bids and filling out mountains of paperwork for our construction loan, only for the subprime mortgage crisis to hit and, in the end, we ended up scratching the whole deal.  I had to go back through my pictures to see what exactly we DID accomplish this year.  I was glad to find proof that our year was not wasted.  Here is a pictorial review of our year:

January:

Finished the rent house (Hallelujah!) and took our three year old employee to Chuck-E-Cheese.  Hey, we had to pay her somehow for all that painting she did!

February:

We celebrated our five year anniversary

March:

My birthday!  Ahem….anyway.  In 8 hours, I cleaned, primed and put two coats of paint on the living room walls.  It wouldn’t have taken me 8 hours normally except that I: 1) painted alone; 2) pushed a very heavy 10 foot ladder around the room 8 times while I painted the middle and top of the room …twice! I have 13 feet ceilings.  [is it 13 foot, or 13 feet?]

April:

In April, I redid an ugly 80’s dresser for Vivian’s room and, for storage, we revamped an old shelf my brother made many years ago by adding crown moulding to it and painting it.

May:

We took down the ugly drop ceiling in the attic.   We also painted the Master Bedroom.

June:

I sanded, repainted and recovered an old chair I bought for $5.00 at a junk store.  I also managed to tick off the entire Ratcliff family and get called a potstirrer.   Hahaha….that’s definitely a new one for me!

July:

I started this blog. Yay!  I pulled a metal tray on wheels out of the garbage and remade it into a plant stand for my porch.  Click here for the details and pictures.  Even my husband could not believe I wanted something this ugly.  But it turned out well.

My new plant stand

August:

We went to the Philippines.  What a life changing experience!  Click here to see more photos of the trip.  In case you cannot figure out who I am, I am the very white girl in the middle!

handumanan

September:

Vivian’s Birthday.   Hurricane Gustav hit Cenla.  That was very interesting.  It took us about a month to recover and get all of the debris cleared and everything back to normal.  I can’t complain though, we did not endure anything like New Orleans did.  Click the link above to see pictures of that fun.

October:

Was definitely not a project month.  I was caught up watching the media and reading the news regarding  local and national politics.  I did get a call from the Louisiana Historic Preservation Office in Baton Rouge telling me that they want to put my street on the National Register.  Which reminds me…..I need to give her a call.  That nomination is supposed to be sent to Washington in April.  I am definitely going to help make sure that happens!

Precious!

November:

I repainted and reappointed the guest room and stripped a fireplace mantel.

December:

We worked on the attic/loft area so we can add another bathroom upstairs.  Steven put up two porch lights in the back.  Steven stripped a door and a transom down to the bare wood.  We also stripped some paint in the hall that was caked on to the wainscoting.  Click here for December’s project pictures.

I guess all in all it was not a bad year.  We did not get as much as we wanted accomplished.  We didn’t nearly come close to the amount of work we did in 2007.  Oh well, put it on the list!  It will get done eventually!

Andrea

Working on the Attic/Loft

Since we have five more days left of our vacation, Steven decided to continue working on the attic area.  He started pulling up plywood so he could get it ready to blow in some insulation.  We always thought that the plywood was sitting on rafters or beams, but when he started pulling up plywood, this is what he found:

I was excited about it because it is grooved and fits together pretty well.  I started envisioning refinishing it for the loft area we are planning.  Steven was not too happy about it because it meant he would have to take it up (or at least some of it) to be able to blow in the insulation.  In fact, this discovery threw a huge kink in his plan and he was not happy about it at all.  He is green (anyone who who has taken the Colors Communication Assessment knows what I am talking about) and he does not like his carefully calculated plans to get kinked up.  We will probably take most of the plywood up to make sure all of the electrical is ran properly and up to code.  When this house was built, it did not have electricity.  We found gas lines, so the first owner must have had gas lamps.  You can see where the knob and pole wiring was retrofit in the ceiling.  It appears that our wiring has been updated and the knob and pole wiring is no longer used, but we just want to make 100% sure before moving on.  It would be awful if we had to go back and pull up flooring again in the future due to electrical issues.

The really funny part about pulling up the plywood was to find this:

What were they thinking?  It appears that an attic fan was removed from this area and also that electrical wiring was retrofit.  Instead of sistering some beams (or some other proper and efficient method of leveling the floor), they decided to stack together pieces and parts of wood in order to make the floor semi level and then to nail a piece of plywood on top of it.  Sigh……

For some of the other “nice” jobs done to the attic, click here    Not only will you be able to see the lovely sheetrock job, but also a drop in ceiling which the PO must have installed blindfolded.  I laugh when I write anything about a PO…it makes me wonder if in 20 years or so, someone else will be writing a blog about me and all the horrible house blunders I made.  🙂  Anyway, we completely removed the drop in ceiling.  It is not a great improvement, but an improvement nonetheless.  This kind of thing makes me excited!  It means progress.  Steven is more of the demo man and I am the cleaner upper, detailer/finisher.  I usually let him do the demo and rough in work and I come back in, fill in holes, sand, scrape, paint, etc.

Here is the color scheme I would like to use for this space once we get it all done…you know, about five years from now!  I want this space to be sophisticated.  These are all Valspar Signature colors by Martha Stewart.  I picked them up at Lowes today.

I am thinking the lime green for the walls, maybe the dark slate blue for an accent wall.  Dark brown furniture. The throw pillows and accessories would be the middle three colors: red, light blue and gray.

Here are a few pictures my daughter took.  Here is the remodel of the upstairs through the eyes of a four year old:

Happy Monday everyone!

Andrea

Ideas for a Craft Room

After making our annual trip to area stores to take advantage of after Christmas sales, Steven and I decided to finish cleaning the “attic” upstairs to get it ready for insulation.  I am not sure if this space was used as an attic, or if it is just unfinished.  There are so many bad PO jobs done to the poor space, that I can’t really tell.  We are planning on turning the space into: 1) spare bedroom, 2) bathroom, 3) home theater/man room, 4) craft area.  It is a huge space.  It feels more like a loft than an attic.  More about the loft thing later.  Anyway, we basically moved things from here:

(This is going to be the spare bedroom and bathroom) To here:

To the left will be the home theater projector and to the right will be my craft room area.  We had to clean up the area that we will put the bedroom so that we can pull up the half inch (yes, I said half inch) plywood that is on the floor, check to make sure the electrical has been ran properly, blow in some insulation and put down a sturdier plywood subfloor.  Right now, when you walk across the room, the boards bow and squeak.  One of the last PO’s decided to frame this space up for the master bedroom.  The hysterical frame up and drywall job pictures are here. 

Anyway, since this is a large open space, I wanted to decorate it loft style.  Here are a few of my ideas:

Most of the pictures pertain to my side of the room…the super craft area.  But, you get the idea.  When you first walk up the stairs, to the left will be a wall of built in shelving to house all of my books.  I was thinking about painting the wall behind the shelves with chalkboard paint and using white shelves.  Should make a nice black and white contrast.  The shelves will be tall so I can write on the chalkboard above the books.  For wall paint, I was thinking about a nice lime green with accents of turquoise and brown.  Maybe a splash of red accessories here and there.  You know me, gotta have red somewhere.

Unfortunately, the decorating part is WAAAAAAAY far down the line.  The first order of business is insulation.  The second order of business is installing a bathroom so we can demo the HORRIFIC one downstairs.  We only have one, yes, yes, yes, only ONE bathroom downstairs.  It is hard to imagine that we have 3200 sq feet and only one bathroom.  There is no other place to squeeze in another bathroom except upstairs.  So, unfortunately, we are working on the upstairs so we can work on the downstairs.  (Doesn’t make sense, does it?) We cannot remodel the bathroom downstairs until we have another one somewhere else.  We cannot remodel the kitchen (the kitchen is ALMOST as bad as the bathroom) without having somewhere to wash the dishes, etc. (a bathroom).  So, we had to sit down and figure out what needed to come first.  It completely galls me that we have to spend time and money on an upstairs space before we can work on OUR living space downstairs.  Oh well….  I guess it all comes down to: What comes first, the chicken or the egg? 

Steven and I both have one more week off, so we are trying to make the best use of our time.  We are going to try to blow in the insulation next week and, while we are at it, retrofit some insulation in the walls downstairs.  I sure am glad I caught that episode of This Old House two weeks ago showing exactly how it is supposed to be done! 🙂

Maybe, if all goes well, I will be able to post pictures of our framed up new bathroom next week.  It will still be a while before we get the flooring laid and have it replumbed, but I can hope for the best and dream about it anyway….right?

Andrea

PS I am enjoying our high of 75 degree weather!  You won’t catch this Southern Girl anywhere close to snow! 😀

***Update:  This never happened due to a lot of bad electrical wiring we found.  So, we held off on putting in the insulation until we could get the electrical updated.  Don’t want to start any fires!  Ya know?!