FINI!!!!

According to this blog, the remodel of our bathroom 'officially' started back on January 31, 2011. That's when I listed everything I intended to do. I guess it's after I cleared out all of the networking gear I had in the bathtub and got it ready to demo. But then it sat. For about five-and-a-half years, until August 20, 2016, when we finally, actually demolished the walls and the window. That was a fun day. Felt good. Maybe better than finally completing it, even, after all of these years. Because it's not ever really completed. As in, we still have the thresholds to cut and some touching up of paint. But other than those two silly things, it's done. Sort of anti-climatic, honestly.

It does look really good, I'm not gonna lie...

I mean, especially considering looking back on where it started, with wallpaper, thousands of little square tiles literally covering the room, and a really, really awful mirror -

Yeah, it's a lot different now. And in between then and now, it took on a lot of different forms, and uses. At its most barren, and how it was for the longest stretch of time, just waiting to be given a new life -

The exposed lath was a classy touch. And the tub was a pleasure to soak in, let me just say. And those pieces of glass, all yellow and textured... Heck, the louvered window above it. All so, so classy. Oh man, even the Ikea light I ended up wiring into the circuit so we could turn it on with the switch. And that vanity. Oh, that vanity. It was a thing of beauty, and spectacular craftsmanship, and plywood and such.

But alas, it had to go. All of it. Even the lath and plaster.

Good times. Good times, indeed. And in between then and now, we did a bunch of stuff. Like framed in the new jetted tub and shower, and installed the window. Then repurposed a 1960s credenza into a vanity, maybe the most fun project of the entire remodel. It's kind of my pride and joy, and we're taking it with us when we move (to be replaced with something from Home Depot, for the new owners to do with as they wish).

Then I needed to wire in two new branch circuits, one for the jetted tub and one for the outlets. Then my father-in-law pointed out I had ordered the wrong tub. Oops. So I had to reorder the correct tub, do some more framing, and get that thing installed. Then finish the plumbing, for it and for that beautiful vanity. Do all the wiring for a bunch of new lights, an exhaust fan, those outlets, and the heated flooring element. Really finish the plumbing, since it wasn't actually finished earlier. Install the heated flooring element and start to tile. That was kind of cool. Then finish the floor tile.

Switching gears to the walls, we had to hang all the cement board for the wall tiles. And the sheetrock. Then mud and tape the sheetrock. Yay. Followed by another (seriously) fun moment, painting. I do love painting, mostly because at that point the room actually starts to feel finished. Then the biggest project, tiling all of the walls. That took several, long weekends. And gracious people willing to watch Squish so K and I could tile. The last step was the glass shower door.

And then, at (very) long last, it was finished.

In between even all of those steps, we cut and hung all the trim, including crown molding. I only messed up a couple of pieces of crown. I designed a built-in cabinet that I made out of scrap plywood. And a hundred other things. But yeah, now it's finished, and it's wonderful. Wonderful just having our own bathroom, with a door to our bedroom, and a heated tile floor. Wonderful we don't have to share a bathroom with our teenager. Wonderful it's just done, which was the last room of the house. It took a team this time, not just me. K helped from the design to tiling and lots of points in between, all points really by taking care of Squish when I was working on it. Her dad dropped by several times for several weekends. J pitched in. Comparing it with the first bathroom I remodeled, it's definitely better, as should hopefully be expected.

Those little built-in shelves -

Like I mentioned, it's the vanity of which I'm most proud (that started out like this)...

And turned into this -

And some of the fixtures...

And the heated floor thermostat -

It really is awesome. For the remainder of the house, we have crown molding to install this spring, and to finish the back patio cover and fire pit. Then it'll be time to leave this place, to let someone else take it from where we left it, with all the work over the years. Lots, and lots, of work. This blog will come to a close, as a chapter in my and now our lives fixing up this little 1923 bungalow similarly comes to a close. It's been a blast, and we'll wrap up those projects before I officially sign off from here. In the meantime, we'll definitely enjoy using this bathroom, the heated floor, the jetted tub. Something for which we'll always be proud.

time for a shower door.

The last big(ish) project for our bathroom was to install the glass shower door we ordered a couple months ago. It ended up being really straightforward, and took my father-in-law and I maybe a couple of hours to get it installed. I started by leveling the holes for the vertical track, then drilling into the shower tile -

Attached the track and inserted the glass pane -

Then drill a hole into the tub to attach it -

And the solid glass section was in -

To keep it stable, we needed to drill another hole to attach a horizontal bar at the top -

Now it was solid. Finally, then, the swinging door. We first leveled the hinges and screwed them in place -

In order to space the door at the necessary height above the tub, I used drywall shims set to 5/8" thick -

Boom. Installed! It looked gorgeous, let all the light in through the (north-facing) window, and allowed us to see all the tile we installed. Win-win-win.

While Scott was here, I used his help to install the attic fan I had wired and vented.

It took some finagling and adding some scrap 2x lumber to the joists in order to attach it (stupid thick sheetrock on top of lath and plaster ceiling), but with the fan and shower door installed we could (FINALLY) use the shower!!!

Really, really awesome.

a quick (baby) fix.

Years ago (seven, apparently) I built a paneled wall to enclose the upper part of our chimney (here and here).

Fast-forward to a few months ago, and our Little started crawling, which was quickly followed by the getting-into-everything stage. Daddy needed to keep him out of the fireplace. Enter: scrap wood (various scraps of plywood and 1x lumber), table saw, 12" planer, and wood glue.

After a few hours of work, I had something that matched the paneling -

Boom. Problem solved.

time for tile [the walls].

Ok, to start off this post there are two things worth mentioning...

1) This was certainly the most intense job of this entire remodel (in comparison, even all the plumbing stuff I did here and here was easier, or at least less time-consuming)

2) The $20 I spent on this ol' Workforce tile saw at a garage sale eons ago was maybe the best $20 I ever spent...

Now that's out of the way, we had some tiling to do... The wall behind where the vanity was going to be and the entire shower surround (including the window and two built-in shelves). Whee.

First off, I thought the saw could use a new blade...

Then I set it up on our front porch (umm, this was back in the summer when it was hot)...

And we promptly got to work. Here's the wall...

Not too bad. We added a tack strip after leveling it on which to lie the first row of tiles (the strip was 1/8" taller than the 7" baseboard would be), and worked our way up and around (first) the plumbing stub-outs. Drilling ceramic tile isn't bad, and what's funny is I was searching for a way to do it and keep the bit from sliding. I finally found something that looked like it would work and then called the local hardware store to see if they carried it. The guy on the other end probably didn't think I was terribly resourceful, because he offered a simple solution that didn't entail having to buy anything:

- Take the same size bit and drill into a piece of wood to use as a guide

Umm, boom. Yeah, brilliant! So I did...

Here then is the outline for the drain...

I didn't have a bit that big, so I had to, well, be resourceful (or just creative, heh)... I started by clamping down my homemade drill guide to the tile...

Filled it with water to keep the bit from overheating...

And drilled...

And kept drilling, repositioning the guide about a dozen times...

Then took my tile snips to get a rough circle...

Finally, set the tile into place...

Boom.

Then I had to drill for the two glass shelves we'll be installing above the vanity. Sort of the same drill, except the tiles were already set on the wall so I used another piece of wood and stapled some grippy rubber shelf liner material to the backside, then just stuck it to the wall and drilled...

Boom.

And the wall was finished (including the top border)...

What will bug me for the rest of the time we're in this house is the fact I screwed up that top border when I centered them, when I should have offset them like the rest of the 'subway' installation. Bother all, seriously. It really bugs me, but not (yet) enough to chisel that top border off and reinstall. I'm not saying it won't happen, but not in the foreseeable future. It's just going to have to bug me.

Well then, that was child's play compared to the impending shower. This was going to take some time...

But in between dozens of weekends spent doing dozens of various things, we (finally) installed the final tile this afternoon!

Backing up a bit, we set up shop in the bathroom, and so this was how our bathroom looked for these past couple of weekends...

With a thick, moving blanket on it, the vanity actually made a really nice workbench...

Nope, rather than a nice bathtub reading/wine caddy for my wife, we had an old piece of plywood to hold tools and our bucket of thinset while we worked...

Sharpies came in handy, as did an old T-square I found at a garage sale that I thought was kind of retro-cool...

There was lots of marking. And measuring. And above all, cutting. Lots of cutting. Never-ending cutting, it seemed. I cannot imagine doing this job with the tile saw any further away than it was...

K would measure the tile length we needed and relay it to me. I'd measure and mark the tile, cut it, then hand it to her...

We had a system. It still took a long time. But she was having fun...

And I was collecting a pile of scrap tile beneath my feet...

I ended up free cutting 90% of the tiles, just marking them with the Sharpie and cutting them without the fence. The 7" blade made cutting straight lines really easy, and once I got in the groove I was able to whip out cut tiles at a pretty decent clip. It still took a long time...

Then we got to the plumbing again. But we were in a groove, and it was only a slight bump in our blinding pace. I started by marking the tile using the Kohler valve guide as a template...

Cut (in this case, actually cutting the otherwise full tile in two)...

And set in place...

Onward!

In time, all of the walls were done, which just left the inside of the window and the two built-ins...

I spent an evening while K went to grab S from her sister-in-law (who had been gracious enough to offer to watch him for us while we spent a solid 8 hours tiling!) just cutting all the inside tiles for all three. Installing them wasn't hard - and I spaced the horizontal top and bottom tiles ever-so-slightly wider so that I could use eight full tiles...

The tile for the bottom sill is sloped at about a 14º angle so the water just runs off onto the tub...

We had long-ago chosen glass tiles for our built-ins, and at some point I realized they sort of mimicked the look of the window. I bought white thinset (and grout) to use on the glass (since we were using a pewter grout for the white tiles, we had been using a dark thinset). Somewhat miraculously, the space for the built-ins fit two tiles across and five rows high - perfectly...

And then... and then, it was time to cut the final tile, the smallest tile of the entire installation...

And it was complete!!!

(Even the two sides along the tub to the floor... )

I went out to announce the news and found K holding Squish, taking his second nap...

: )

She had kept him occupied whilst I finished this job for us. I have the best wife...

The last little thing I did was fixed a broken corner of floor tile since I had a little bit of thinset left in the bucket. I started by cramming some little broken pieces of tile into the space (the reason the tile had cracked was because there wasn't subfloor directly underneath and I had dropped a piece of trim on it, bleh)...

Then globbed in some thinset and gently placed the two cracked pieces...

And re-fit the trim...

Boom.

At long last, I cleaned up. Vacuumed. Removed all the drop cloths, tools, and trash. Then, with a sigh, I took the moving blanket off the vanity (it's not yet installed, just sitting there because it had been in the living room where we needed to put our Christmas tree, heh), and stood back...

Kind of cool. It's come a long way. A really, really long way. Especially since this day two summer's ago... And there's still plenty of stuff to do (umm, including grouting all this mess, but grouting really is easy). But it's starting to look like our bathroom, the one we both envisioned, designed, and planned together.

Next up... Grout and caulk. Then finish hanging the crown, buy the crown for the doorways, caulk all the trim, install the fixtures (toilet, vanity, towel bars, mirror, etc.), and touch up paint and stuff. Oh, and buy then install the glass shower door. That'll be cool!

Closer though... closer...