Basement bathroom, part deux - MORE TILE

So, part two.

We left off with a ripped out backsplash and prepping the floor for tile, right?

John tried and tried to chip out the floor tiles underneath the toilet, but like everything else in this house, professionals did it and thus it is so much harder to undo what a pro did the right way the first time.  Alas, as problems go, it's a good problem to have isn't it?

So on to the tool rental place to rent a demolition hammer.  But of course the guys at the tool place know way more than we do about tools and told John he needed a rotary hammer.  Whatever.  Please let me rent the tool so you can charge me 25% of the retail cost of the tool.  Thanks.

Rant over.

John came back with the rotary hammer and turned that bad boy ON.

BEFORE:  there's the carpet,
blissfully unaware of it's fate

Yea, I wasn't so impressed either.  But did that thing work!  Wow.  10 minutes and it was done.  Done so well that there was no re-leveling or patching needed.  We were ready to tile baby!

So now we take out the blue carpet and are ready to start tiling!

IN PROGRESS:  see how well the rotary hammer
works?  Also, note the awesome job John did at
patching the walls where the tile was before.
There is a surprise for the back wall....

I can not stress this enough.  Plan your layout before you start mixing mortar.  We have done our share of tiling and have already learned this lesson.  We spent a fair amount of time figuring out the cuts and spacing of the tiles and drawing our level lines etc... But this work definitely pays off when you get started.  We were able to do the entire floor in about an hour.  That's with the wet saw acting up and John having to do the cuts without it.  Thankfully, our plan involved mostly straight cuts and it didn't slow us up much.  Tomorrow we grout!  

IN PROGRESS:  Hey, that's me!  Tiling!!

Yea, tomorrow....  was the Capital One Bowl (Nebraska v. S. Carolina) at noon.  We planned on having some friends over and watching the game, setting the backsplash tile, and then grouting the floor.  Who knew that the Huskers would stink it up so badly?  Ugh.  So we decided to let the day get away from us.  Next thing we knew we were ordering pizzas for dinner and watching ALL of the bowl games until way after bedtime.  Oops.  

So the next day we got to the backsplash and grout.  I say so what?  We are on holiday break and deserve a day to lay around with friends watching football and pigging out and not grouting the basement bathroom.  Sam is the only one who cared since he had to come ALL the way upstairs to go to the bathroom.  Poor baby :)

Now that backsplash was a bitch.  No other way to say it.  We didn't plan out the layout as much since it was such a small job and the tiles intersected so long runs wouldn't be a problem.  We knew there would be cuts.  We thought it would take 30 minutes tops.  Truth is, it sucked.  Since the wet saw was out of commission, John had such a tough time cutting the glass tiles with a glass cutter and snips.  We got it done in the end, but our 30 minute timeline was shot to hell.  It took about 2, maybe 2 1/2 hours to finish.    

But it is glorious, look:

IN PROGRESS:  not grouted yet and horrible lighting :)

Now it's mid afternoon and we haven't even started grouting the floor yet.  No worries.  Grout is the easiest thing, it's the cleanup that sucks.  We grouted the floor after dinner and it came out perfect.  So glad we did the planning etc... so we could just be happy with the finished project instead of wishing we'd spent more time on the prep.  I tell ya, it pays to be a grownup sometimes and think before action.  Well, in home improvement projects anyway...

Enjoy the after shots of the tile...

AFTER:  Grouted and still poorly lit

AFTER:  Ahhh, done and looking F-I-N-E

Next, part three - the little things that you don't think are going to take too long that end up taking way too long.

Basement bathroom, part one - WHY DOES TILING TAKE SO MUCH WORK?

So, the basement bathroom.  This was another of the moving day "easy" projects.  Here is the rundown of what we were going to do in there:

-remove carpet (yup, there was carpet in. the. bathroom)

This isn't the bathroom (obviously), 
but that's what the carpet looked like

-remove wallpaper (you didn't think there was a room that didn't have any did you? see above for the visual)
-install tile floor
-maybe get some new tile for the backsplash to update it
-maybe paint the cabinets some fun color, just because
-paint the room

We knew that we wanted to keep the vanity, sink, faucet, toilet and shower tile.  They were neutral enough that we could work around them and save some serious money.

Here are few moving day shots:

BEFORE:  The boys love the sink, so we kept it.
We weren't sure about the mexican tiles.

BEFORE:  Did we move into a hospital room?

There was a nice long break from school over the holidays, so there would be plenty of time to get this project and a few others in the basement done.  I think the naive optimism of 2 1/2 weeks off got the best of us.  Regardless, we dove right in.

I had removed the wallpaper right before Thanksgiving, thinking that I could put a quick coat of paint on the walls before we had guests for the holiday (being naive, it's a theme here).  Yeah.. that didn't get done.

So, Christmas Break!! we were ready to dive right in.  But here is how Christmas break goes around here.  

Days before Christmas:  John needs to finish shopping

Christmas:  Christmas!

The day after Christmas:  Sam's birthday

So we are left with starting most things on the 27th, no big deal right? - John doesn't go back to work until January 6th.  Well, this year Sam had a party on the 30th - in the basement - so we couldn't really tear up a floor and remove a toilet until after then, right?  

But between the 27th & the 31st (and bowl week) we could rip out the backsplash tile and the tile around the toilet.  So we did.  You may notice that those items weren't originally on the to do list for the room, but since we had time and couldn't tear up the floor we did them anyway.  Also, we had already bought some tile to replace the mexican tiles on the backsplash because they were very cool and we liked them.  

Tile removal, day one:

The wall tile around the toilet popped right off with minimal elbow grease and John worked on patching the walls to get ready for paint.  We determined that the floor tiles were going to take some serious work and possibly renting a rotary hammer (?) so we left that for the next day.  During this time I checked in and asked if there was something I could do to help.

Then, naively, he said this: "You did great popping the wall tiles off behind the toilet, do you mind taking a minute to get the ones off the backsplash?"

Did you know that 30 years ago, contractors in Nebraska took every available precaution when installing heavier, authentic mexican tiles on walls? As in EVERY bit of reinforcement that they thought was needed, they did.  

Proof:

It was a bit chippy...

Glue, mortar, wire mesh, oh my!!

That bit in the picture above was the part of the wall that we just cut out with a utility knife.  The tile underneath the mirror (which needed to be saved) and above the countertop tile (also, needed to be saved) was much more tricky.  2 hours into the backsplash removal, John left to go and buy some tool that he thought would work.  It did, we had to cut all of that wall out as well, but in the end the tile was gone and the walls patched and ready for the new! improved! wall tiles :)  

Part two (and possibly three, four, and five) to come.  Stay tuned.

The Legend of Frankenmantle: How John the Carpenter Saved Christmas

I realized that in yesterday's post I mentioned the Frankenmantle without explanation.  Forgive me.  Today I will regale you with the story of how Frankenmantle came to exist.

It will be much more entertaining with visuals:

BEFORE:  moving day.  Gotta love the pinksplosion.

I will point out the not so obvious flaws in the mantle that we bought along with the house.  

-it is mounted about 4" too high on the fireplace, making the gap between the top of the opening and bottom of the mantle awkwardly sized.

-it is about 2" too small on either side, making the side to side appearance also very awkward.

-it is very ugly.

So the tale begins...  

...we lived with it and exorcised the pink from the living room, wallpaper from the hallway, bizarre brass carriage lights from the fireplace and hideous pink backgrounds in the built-ins flanking the fireplace.  Yet we still didn't like the mantle.  It was just not a good fit for us and the house.  So onto craigslist it went...

DURING:  picture from the craigslist ad and our new, but long-term temporary lights.  

 ...and miracle of miracles, someone wanted to buy it for their house.  They showed us pictures of the room it was going to and it was a much better fit.  I hope it is happy and I wish it nothing but the best and hope it enjoys its new life.

Now we were left with 3 sad bolts sticking out of the fireplace and nothing to attach our Christmas stockings to.  Oops.  Here is where our hero John the Carpenter enters the story.  

I went to pick up Will from school and when I came back we had welcomed Frankenmantle into our home.  Behold...

AFTER:  Awww. In process of being Christmasized

AFTER:  Now there is a place for stockings :)
Christmas is saved.

Here is how it went down.  We had the paneled piece left over from the powder room vanity project

See it there?
Notice we had lovely brass carriage lights in there as well.

In an incredible flurry of awesomeness which took place in the 20 minutes it took to get Will from school - John the Carpenter achieved legendary status by:

1.  bolting the leftover piece from the vanity to the wall

2.  finding and then attaching a random shelf that we had moved from 2 different places to the top (we used the top of the vanity piece above as the backsplash for the new! improved!! vanity in the powder room)

3.  cutting and staining a piece along the side that he needed to add to balance the visual

AND

4.  beginning to decorate it with Christmas decorations

The Legend of Frankenmantle:  How John the Carpenter saved Christmas.

A new holiday classic.

Boom! Something got done!!

You know it.  Mark the date.  We have a finished project.  By finished I mean that we don't need to touch up paint, caulk, buy a new toilet, etc..  I mean it is done enough that I don't feel like it's missing something and I can move forward until it drives me crazy again and I do something else to it.

Here is a before:

Moving day.

Ok, so it's a smallish project.  On moving day the plan was to make this cabinet in the living room a bar area.  I thought of a mirrored background to add light to the corner and sex it up a little.  So Exactly 4 months after moving here, it is done.  But when I look at this picture I notice some other things that we've done in between:

-pink carpet - gone
-wallpaper in hallway (you can see it above the cabinet) - gone
-brass carriage light on fireplace - gone
-the mantle that was too small and mounted too high on the fireplace - gone

Wow.  Just look at this.  The pink background inside the cabinets was exponentially more hideous in person.  I believe it actually clashed with the pink carpet.  In fact, it was not even a week into living here that John and I freaked out late one Saturday night and broke out primer and painted over it so we didn't have to look at the PINK! anymore.  We literally got up from a football party coma and started painting at 11PM.  All the pink made the fireplace brick read pink as well, it wasn't until the new carpet that we realized that the brick has more brown than pink.  But no longer my friends - the pink is officially all gone.  Yay!

Behold the after:

Hard to tell how cool it is, but trust - it's cool.

Sexy, right??

OK, I got a few more things on the agenda for this area (but I'm calling it done - for now).  The mantle clock will return to the mantle when we build a more permanent one.  The frankenmantle John made on the fly is awesome in it's own right, but not quite what we have in mind for the long term and definitely not sturdy enough to support the weight of the mantle clock.  Basically we needed somewhere to put the Christmas stockings....

So snaps to the Christensens.  I'll post better pictures when we get some sun around here and take down Christmas decorations.  It'll look like a proper bar then, I swear :)

Another room done (almost)

Do you see a theme here?  Almost done rooms.

So. The powder room.  Here was moving day plan for that room:

-strip wallpaper from walls AND CEILING.
-get a new vanity/sink/counter/faucet combo
-new sconces
-paint

BEFORE:  there it is.  On. The. Ceiling.

BEFORE:  Wow.  Just wow.  

Fortunately, the wallpaper stripped right off the walls.  In nice big sheets that I could neatly fold and throw away.  Unfortunately, it left behind the backing paper and glue.  I used the steamer to get the backing paper off and after asking Google, I found out that all I needed to do was get some wicked hot water and wipe off the glue residue.  It took forever and a day, but after some serious scrubbing it was clean.

DURING:  Notice the glue residue on the walls.
The ceiling still has the paper AND the glue.

On to the vanity.  Here is where living with your situation for awhile can save you time and money.  We fully intended to go buy a new vanity/sink combo, install it and call this room done.  But then we started looking at vanities.  Hmmmm.  There were a few that we kind of liked, but $1000 + price tags we didn't like.  At this point I should mention that we also measured and determined that the room was built around the vanity, so we would have to take off at the very least the door trim.  Or else take an axe to the vanity and chop it to bits to get it out Bath Crashers style.  So we waited.

Then we had friends over for a football game.  Our friend Jay returns from the bathroom and we are joking about the state of the room (see above, with cleaner walls).  Then he says "I'd keep the vanity, no one else has anything like that in their house".  John and I looked at each other and silently agreed that Jay just saved us some serious cash.  

Next day we decide that all we need a new sink and countertop.  Since it is a piece of furniture and not a standard sized item, we would need a custom countertop made.  Also, you can tell from the picture below that it has that lovely part in the front that juts out 1 1/2 inches.  That pretty much eliminates finding a scrap piece of stone on the cheap since it would need to be customized.  Let's just skip right over the discussions about countertops (tile, granite/quartz, laminate, even concrete) and agree that it was going to be more money than we ever thought.  

So.  Now we have a room with clean (now primed) walls, bare lightbulbs hanging out of the walls and a monster of a vanity that needs a new sink and countertop.  If you check the list above, we've done about 1 1/2 of the items and it's been 2 months since we moved in.  We knew what kind of sink we wanted so we went ahead and ordered the sink and faucet.  In the process of measuring for the sink some of the tile surrounding the sink came off.  Then we started imagining how the vanity would look with the wood top sanded down and stained to match the existing wood and resealed.  Then we did just that.  The End.  Actually - John did that so I don't have much explanation.  I do know that he did a fantastic job and it looks amazing. 

DURING:  Ready to be stained & sealed

Paint.  The general rule around here is that I pick paint colors and John does most of the painting.  I didn't imagine that once we decided to sand and reseal the vanity top the project would move so quickly.  Especially since the sink/faucet arrived in 2 days.  I decided on Martha Stewart Rainwater.  But since time was of the essence I just mixed a bunch of paint we had around the house together and came up with something nearly identical to Rainwater.  Suck it Martha!  

Long story short, here the the finished project.  A note about sconces.  All along we thought we'd want some modern brushed nickel sconces to make the room look updated.  Then at the last minute I saw these on Overstock and bought them.  They match the hardware on the vanity.  The mirror is ours, it used to be above the fireplace at the old house.  

AFTER:  My photog skillz need work.  But my
paint mixing skillz are dope.

AFTER:  See what I mean about my photo skillz?
But the vanity is pretty.

Here is the almost done part.  Look closely - do you see how different the sink and toilet look?  The toilet.  It's almond.  So very sad. And now the room is all clean and bright, it looks really almond.  Ugh.  I'll think about that tomorrow.  Also, artwork and soap dishes...  tomorrow, I promise :)

One room done (almost)...

We are very good at starting projects, not so good at finishing.  Check that.   I am good at starting and not finishing.

Moving on....  Back in September (!) we did manage to finish something and then forgot all about it.

When we moved in, Sam's room was the closest to being "done" in our eyes.  The carpet was a nice color and the walls and woodwork just needed a fresh coat of paint.

Here is the before:

BEFORE:  Such a sad closet...

BEFORE:  I've forgotten about the diamond window inserts
and shutters that make everything dark.dark.dark.

The shutters in theory are a good idea.  They open and close just like a window blind but have a little extra somethin'-somethin' going on.  But as you can see in the picture above they need a fair amount of space to open and close.  We figured once we got a bed, desk, dresser and chair in there there was going to be no room for the shutters to open and close properly.  So they came down.  And since their frame is built from the floor up and into the wall, we patched holes in the wall and carpet.  

Then we painted the woodwork white and the walls Benjamin Moore's Moonshine.   I spray painted the closet doors glossy black and Sam painted his bed frame oil rubbed bronze.   Done.

AFTER:  The closet is much happier now :)

AFTER:  Oops messy bed, but you get the idea, right?
But I'm giving him props for having it made at all...

So there you have it.  We still have to put up some artwork and paint the back of his door in magnetized or chalkboard paint (he hasn't decided yet).  But I'm calling it.  Done.  Well, 95% done anyway...

Progress?

The current background of this blog is what our hallway was wallpapered.  Did you notice, I said was.

Yeah baby, that's right - it is G to the O to the N - E!!  

It started out on a Sunday night a couple of weeks ago.  The weather was beautiful, we had spent the day outside trying to get the outdoors in shape for winter.  So, after dinner I'm thinking if I sit down now I'll never get back up.  John ran out for a minute (fountain soda), I took a deep breath, got the steamer out and went to work on some of the walls in the hallway that I could reach.  I figured if these walls were the only thing that got done, it would be that much less to do when we tackled the project as a whole.

BEFORE
The walls that started it all on the right...

BEFORE
I can't describe the level of claustrophobia this invoked... daily

Suffice to say, one thing led to another and next thing we knew we were renting scaffolding and fighting about paint colors :)  

IN PROGRESS
Lovely view from the kitchen table...

IN PROGRESS
The point of no return...

After narrowing the color scheme down, looking at an insane amount of paint samples, and more than one argument, we decided on Benjamin Moore Camouflage.  It is reading sage greenish in the pictures, but it really isn't... it's more grey-brownish-green than sage-green if that makes sense.

AFTER
Not so claustrophobic now are we??

We still have to paint the lower part of the walls in the hallway.  Also, when things settle down a bit around here, we are going to wallpaper - I mean pay someone to wallpaper - the wall above in some lovely grasscloth.  For now we just painted it so we didn't have to look at the wall without paint or paper on it.  Which, I should mention is why we chose the paint color, it goes perfectly well with the grasscloth we're going to order, and once it is papered it should look divine.

We are so not done here.  

Proof (sorry for the bad picture, it's cloudy today):

1. patch holes
2. prime
3. decide on paint color (v. hard)
4. paint

John and I would also like to thank our loyal helpers, without them this project would have taken much, much longer.  Sam and Will  I mean - Rick and Vera!!

Next up:  lighting and a gallery wall - I can't wait!