Bathroom Progress

A couple months ago, we hired a contractor - contrary to our remodeling style (see my old blog post about this).  Justin worked on roughing in the 4th bedroom bathroom.  He did a great job, but of course, we are still trying to finish the bathroom!

Today, we had Tri-Star refinishing come and refinish our bathtub.  I thought it worked out great, let's see how it holds up.  But here are some shots of the work:

I am JUST ITCHING to get this all done!  BTW, the blue tile is re-used tile from demo of the bathroom on the first floor of this house.  I wanted all the tile work to look old, or period-esque from the 1930's when this home was built.  The tub refinisher, Tom, asked me if we wanted to maybe some-day he could come refinish the tile work.  BAH!  I politely told him we just installed it and that was the look I was going for.  BAH! 

Also, here is the current state of the bedroom.  Looks kinda sad to the naked eye, but looks KINDA AWESOME to me - BECAUSE WE ARE ALMOST READY TO PAINT!  Mickey has been here this week working on patching and sanding the mudwork (dry-wall).

I mean, there are NO MORE HOLES in the ceiling!  Here, here is an original shot of the room:

Yes, that is rust on top of carpet in the original.  Yes, there is a hose/vent in the wall on the right.  Also a gas pipe sticking up from floor on the right (two of them).  This room used to be a salon, back in the 60's/70's probably.  Maybe even 80's/90s.

Oh, and one more thing, we picked out the tile for the bathroom floor.  We are doing white hexagonal with a border, similar to this, to match the pencil tile in the tub.  Neutral color for the border...

Going with something called Mushroom.  Hopefully it will look good.  Can't wait to share pics of that.  Once we have the tile in and ready, we can really get crackin on finishing this dang-on bathroom!!

BTW.  Tom (tub-refinisher) was here today.  Mickey was here today.  Craft Heating and Cooling was here today (3 times actually).  And Mary Alice's friend, John Zerillo was also here.  And it just hit 3pm (and I've done 3 loads of laundry and hung them.  YES!)

Productive Thursday!

Love to you and yours,

Heather

Sticky Situtation

Its been a busy couple of weeks at the Crawford household...

When I say busy, does this help describe that?


Laundry, sanding trim (for window in 4th bath), and Mary playing in sandbox.  Whew!

So my project two weeks ago was this:

Any guesses on what I had to do?

Well, its something I've been wanting to do FOR MONTHS.  Literally.  Remember this post?  I stood in one spot in the front of the house and took pics of ALL the projects we had to do.  Makes me think about it... There were 14 projects from that one spot.  We took care of #3, #9, #10 and #14 - except we still need to fix those french doors.

And before I just went throuh that list, I thought we had gotten a lot more of those done!  Yikes!

But going back to that list... #13 has been bugging me to no end. When we stripped the woodwork around the original leaded glass windows in the front foyer, we tapped the windows with masking tape... and the masking tape has been there for what, 8 months now?!?!

BIG mistake.

Seriously.  One lesson learned, hopefully you can learn from my mistake.  DON'T EVER TAPE WINDOWS.  It is MUCH easier to scrap off paint or stain than scrape off masking tape!  I guess maybe if you remove the masking tape right away... then that would be okay.  But if you wait MONTHS to take it off (which is the way everyone does things, right?  Well, at least anyone with small children)... scraping the stain or paint off is easier!

Here's the process.  See the gunk in the corners of the glass?

Well, you can remove it with goo-gone... or you can try a heat gun... or you can just scrape it off with some elbow grease.  With some trial and error, I believe elbow grease is the best solution.

Most likely, elbow grease is the best solution for most tasks... unfortunately! But have you seen Nicole Curtis's guns?!?!  She believes in elbow rease a lot too - and claims that's why she has her guns! :)

If you have not seen her show on HGTV - and you are obviously interested in home remodeling - I HIGHLY recommend it!  I really like her.

Back to the project. See that nasty build-up of crap on the razor blade.  Thanks to my husband for having a lot of extra razor blades around!!

Some very dirty rags,



And a few hours later, here is what we have!



On a side note... here are some other projects we have been working on (mind you, all this we have done in the last 2 weeks!  Whew!).

That is the vanity someone donated to us we will use on the 4th bedroom bath.  Sanding it so we can paint (last week).   We painted it yesterday.  Used the paint sprayer for the first time - wow!  Set-up and clean-up took longer than using it!

Here is what some downtime looks like in our house:

Mary Alice and her new best friend, John Zerillo, enjoying some watermelon.  So thankful to have met some awesome people down the street :).

Oh, and a little more news - Mickey cut his hair!  No longer looks like carrot top!!  Mickey is actually here right now working on dry wall.  Whew.

Happy Monday morning ya'll,

Heather

Behind the Scenes

If at any point, you have a question about what I mention - please ask!  If its too hard to write on here, you can always email me:  Heather.Ritz@gmail.com

Three weeks ago we hired a babysitter.  Not to go out on a Saturday night or anything like normal people do.  We hired a babysitter to watch the kids on a Sunday from 9-3 so we could get some worked done.  True Tom-and-Heather style.

Wanted to share with you what we did.  The 4th bedroom/bathroom is a nightmare.  Tom noticed a leak but had no idea where it was coming from.  The garage is under the bathroom - with super high ceilings (12 ft?).  So, he cut the floor up to access the piping.  Of course there are bends to it so he guessed where the bend went.  Guessed wrong.

See the opening in the floor?  Then see directly under that where the floor is cut up and the you can see that white, curly looking stuff (insulation)?  Yes, that is where we thought the pipes went.  Directly opposite of where Tom is kneeling is the bathtub, FYI.  

So, Tom had to cut the pipes out, and of course there was a Y right underneath where the door hinges (I mean really, who wants to take that all down and then put it up again?!?)

See that pipe on the floor to the right of Tom's knee?  Here is a close up:

That is the end that wouldn't come out.  Little booger.  Here is the whole piece we pulled out.  Imagine that white part (the rusted steel) underneath the edge of the door.

Close-up of rotted pipe (and in focus):

Yowzers.  What is even funnier is that instead of fixing the leak (which, as I've explained, was in a crazy hard place to get out) - some previous owners just re-routed the sink drain.  The sink was actually inside the 4th bedroom that used to be a salon back in the 60's-ish.  The whole neighborhood told us this, so did the previous owner (see my old post about when he visited!)

BUT - the even funnier part is that they re-routed the drain straight through the garage ceiling into the garage sink.  Then, the garage sink drain just went onto the garage floor and eventually down the drain in the middle of the garage.  BAHAHAHA!!

I think I need to start taking some more quick video clips for you all - I think that would explain things a bit better.

We spent one weekend tearing the floor apart and replacing the plumbing, and then spent another weekend putting the floor back together.  

AND I TILED A SHOWER WALL... more pics of that to follow.  Tom finished it of course, and my lines are much more crooked than his... but I STILL DID IT.  Feels good.  Not sure if it feels good enough to do it again.  :/

In the name of "All work and no play",

Heather

Busy Beavers!

Mary Alice has this "PJ Funnybunny" book and it is rather good!  PJ leaves his family to go live with other families (pigs, skunks, moose, etc.) and finds that there is no place like home.

Every time I read the book, I get to the beaver family and read, "PJ did not like living with the beavers because PJ did not like to work very hard".  We are SOOOOO the beavers.  Not sure how I feel about that one.

Fun fact:   We went to the Busy Beaver FOUR times IN ONE DAY the other day.

Fun fact #2:   I took 3 showers yesterday

Fun fact #3:   We have 2 shop vacs.  Tom has worn out the on/off button on BOTH of them.  (you have to plug it in to turn it on/off)

I know I could go on... I'm just not feeling very witty right now.

Because we have been working our @$$es off!  (actually, yes.  Quite literally!)

And you can't forget the little things either.  Like the other day (probably 2 weeks ago already), Tom and I spent an evening filling in nail holes.  We finally got around to painting the quarter round, measuring/cutting, and installing it in the master closet (already done in the rest of the house).  But of course, when you nail it in you leave holes.  

According to Tom, "This is the difference between amateur and professional".  Apparently we are professionals! :)

This is what we used.  Its actually water based so you can just use your finger to apply.

The handyman, hard at work.  Filling nail holes.  Thrilling stuff, eh?  

On a more thrilling note... WE HAVE AIR CONDITIONING!!  Of course, it was installed the day before it went to 50 at night and was 75 and perfect the next 3 days.  But hey, I'm not complainin' ... :)

Fought long and hard for that one!  Our home warranty has officially expired now, but they are paying for this!  YAHOOO!!!!   (see my old post about our efforts on that front)

On to finishing the 4th bedroom and bath this week... more updates to come real  soon!

In the name of remodeling,

Heather