Day 10: Bathroom and Flooring Update

Ryan’s been sick and I have been working on packing up some of our stuff at the house we are living in now so we haven’t been doing much at the house.

BATHROOM

Looks like we are going to compromise and go with a shower/tub unit that is all one piece. His mom looked at the reviews on the tubs with separate surrounds and they are all horrible. In a perfect world we would have liked to have tub and then a shower unit that was by itself but this will be the best choice for the space in their opinion. They are paying so I can’t really complain.

The flooring will be tile. Apparently my Mother-In-Law has 8 boxes of tile left over from when they did their kitchen floor so we are just going to use that. I’m pretty sure it’s an off white or a tan, though I can’t really remember off the top of my head.

We’ve settled on a color pallet for the bathroom. (pic) The top 1/3 of the wall will be caramel and the bottom 2/3 will be raffia. In the middle separating the two tans will be 2 inch stripe of a red/burgundy color known as crimson. The crimson and possibly  darker brown will be the accent colors for the textiles used in the room…though I’m still likely to change my mind a couple of dozen times before the paint actually gets bought.

PEEL AND STICK TILE IS DONE!!!

In case you didn’t already know this MY MOTHER-IN-LAW is amazing! In one day she managed to get the remainder of that horrible peel and stick tile up off the floor. Today she has blisters on her fingers and a big stone bruise on the palm of her hand. But to quote her, “ That’s the price you pay for redoing and old house…I love it!”

Day 7: Let the Packing Begin

I would be so much happier if I didn’t have to pack all this crap. We have far too much stuff and the thought of having to pack it all into boxes makes me strongly consider just leaving it all here and buying new. Sadly I can’t afford to do that.

Today I finally decided to move the boxes I’ve been hauling around in the back of my car into the house. In a fit frenzy I started assembling boxes in the middle of the living room floor. Seated there with 6 boxes surrounding me I suddenly felt overwhelmed by it all. Where to start? What do I not need right now? What if I pack it then need it? What if I move it to the other house then start frantically searching for it at 4 am when I suddenly realize I need it. That’s how my brain works.

I decided to start with the CD’s and DVD’s. Since I haven’t listened to a CD in at least a year and since the DVD player isn’t even plugged in I probably don’t need those things. Now just wait. I will get the need to listen to John Meloncamp now that the box is taped shut…i bet on it.

Day 6: Peel and Stick Tile Is the Devil

If you are standing in the aisles of Lowe’s or Home Depot thinking that putting down peel and stick vinyl flooring is a good idea I suggest your step away from the “cheap choice” and break out the bucks for some real tile. Sure it’s gonna cost you more but when you change your mind in 5 years and want to take that peel and stick up you will thank me. I promise.

Peel and stick tile is the devil. I admit to having used it to tile the laundry room in a house we used to live in. The room was only 5x7 so it wasn’t like I was tiling the whole house, but still it was a bad idea. One I will never ever have again.

When we ripped the carpet out of the room that will eventually be our bedroom we found that the previous homeowner had been one of those who thought peel and stick was a good idea. Perhaps he was trying to make the floor more level to put carpet over or perhaps he was trying to cover up some of the gouges in the hardwood. Who knows there might even be a blood stain or some other heinous mess under there just waiting to be rediscovered. Regardless of his reasons I want to beat him. (not possible since he passed away shortly after he lost the house)

Peel and stick tile is like the glue that won’t stop holding. You can chip away at it for hours and still not make any headway. The glue smells horrible and sniffing too much makes you woozy. It comes apart in little pieces instead of large one and then when you do get it up you’ve got all this nasty residue behind. Sounds bad for a room at that’s 5x7 right? What about a room that’s 14x16. Yes that’s right folks…the room is huge and it’s going to take ages to get cleared of that mess.

Today we spent 3 hours chipping away at it and barely made headway. My hands hurt from the scraper and the tips of my fingers hurt from the multiple times I rammed them into jagged pieces of tile.

I keep reminding myself that under the tile is a beautiful floor but at this rate it’s gonna be next summer before we get to refinish it. I hate this room!

Day 5: Coming Up With A Plan for New Bathroom

If you are reading this then do doubt you have seen the pictures of the bathroom that’s in the house right now. If you haven’t then let me point you to my Facebook page where you can see the “underwater nightmare” as I call it. It’s covered in fish and it’s just like a dark hole in the corner of the kitchen.

Anyway, we are going to put in an all new bathroom The bathroom will now be where the third bedroom is now. It won’t be off the kitchen. It will be off the hall behind the living room and across the hall from the master bedroom. Compared to bathrooms we have had in the past this one is going to be huge. I’m not sure of the exact dimensions off the top of my head but I’m thinking it’s like 14’ x 9’.

Today we spent time with a sheet of graph paper and some measurements for bath fixtures that we picked out at Lowe’s yesterday. The picture quality is not that great but here’s the basic outline as of now.


The bath/shower combo will go along the wall next on the kitchen side of the room. Hopefully we can put in some open shelving between the tub surround and the back wall. The toilet will be near the window and the vanity will be near the entrance door. There looks to be a lot of unused space when you look at this diagram so we are considering putting washer/dryer hookups along the right wall. If we don’t put them there we will put storage cabinets in that space.

Day 4: Let there be lights!

Good news. Electricity is now on. They came and put the new meter in this afternoon and turned us on shortly thereafter. We flipped the breaker box and the house is still standing so that’s a good sign. We had a moment of panic when we turned on the fan in the master bedroom and it started smoking and sparking. (pic) Looks like the motor has gone bad on the ceiling fan so that will be replaced in short order.

I found one at Lowe’s that i like and it’s less than $35 so hopefully we can get it and install it soon. The other 2 ceiling fans seem to be in fine working order so that’s a good sign. I was afraid we would have to replace them all first thing.

We have yet to turn on the electricity in the existing bathroom or in the kitchen. The bathroom we avoid at all cost because it’s possible it may fall through the floor and when they turned on the electric my mother in law had been cleaning in the kitchen and she was afraid the receptacles would be wet.

Happy to have electricity…now water will be next.

Day 1: Kitchen Wallpaper Before and After

My mother-in-law and I get sidetracked easily. One minute we are measuring the kitchen for cabinets and the next minute we are ripping off wallpaper because I said, “hmmm. wonder what’s behind this?” Before I know it we had pulled off as much of the paper as we could reach *short women of the world unite* without a ladder.

In case you haven’t figured it out, I hate wall-paper. It’s evil and for some reason people love to put new paper over old paper. Then you go to tear it out and find six layers of horrible paper…each layer worse than the last. More on that in my next post.

So we started with apples and found light paneling. I can live with that for now.

Before:

After:

Day 1: Spare Bedroom/Office Flooring Before and After

The rooms in this house are huge. Giant compared to the house we live in now and compared to the one we lived in when we first got married. The second bedroom is almost as large as the master. The way this room is designed we can make it into the spare bedroom and office all in one.

Today we ripped out carpet. It didn’t take very long to do. In fact Ryan’s dad had it out before I could even get the tack strip up in the master bedroom.

Before: More stinky carpet. This carpet was in the best shape of all of them, but still had to go. For those of you who don’t know we have dogs. If you own dogs, especially ones that shed a lot, carpet is your enemy.

After: We knew this room would probably not have hardwood under the carpet like there was in the other rooms. It was an addition to the original house. The floor under the carpet is just plywood. We will probably put down laminate wood flooring in the room.