Master Bath Renovation, Part Nine

To start at the beginning of my bathroom remodel, go to Master Bath Renovation, Part One.

We have a working throne room.  Yay!  The only thing left to do in there is to install some shelves above the toilet.  We installed and grouted the tile, then husband installed a new American Standard Acti-clean Vortex, self-cleaning toilet, the handheld bidet with hot and cold water, and the toilet paper holder.  Instead of drilling through the tile to install the toilet paper holder, we planned the place where it would be installed beforehand and just left a tile out.  It worked out perfectly.

I found this neat little light switch cover on Etsy.

We've gotten most of the walls tiled, but are still waiting on the countertop installation (which is scheduled for tomorrow) so we can tile the backsplash.  

I found this old china cabinet to use for storage.  I plan to paint this eventually.  Don't be hatin' me for painting an antique.  This is directly across from the stained wood vanities and all that dark wood is too overwhelming for that space.

We're still procrastinating on the shower and considering hiring someone to do it.

Go to Part Ten to continue.

Master Bath Renovation, Part Eight

To read about my bathroom renovation from the beginning, click on Master Bath Renovation Part One.

Yes, we still have an unfinished bathroom.  It's been over three months now, but we really haven't been working on it for the past two weeks or so because...holidays, then I got sick, then got sick again.  Bleh.  I'm finally recovering, so today we kind of half heartedly laid out some tile to get it ready to install tomorrow.  Seriously, if it didn't cost so much money, we'd hire this tiling done in a heartbeat.  This is not a job for wimps and I'm at least half wimp.

But, we did get some things done since I last updated.

We finished tiling the entire bathroom floor, all except the shower floor.  We're kind of stuck in limbo on this, trying to decide the best way to proceed.  We have the tile all cut out to size.  But...

See the problem here?  Major "lippage".  The ceramic tiles are not flat.  They are bowed in the middle.  So, when the end of one tile meets up with the middle of the tile next to it, it's lower than that crest in the adjacent tile.  We've been told by one tile professional that we got defective tile and that we should take it back.  But, in every tutorial about installing plank tiles that I have read or watched, they have said that it is common for the planks to be bowed, so you have to stagger them in a way that minimizes that difference.  That's what I did in the rest of the bathroom and it turned out, not perfect, but acceptable.  But, this shower area is out of control.  

I think the only thing we can do to fix this is to cut the tiles into smaller pieces and not use the planks whole.  In other words, cut out the "crest" and have more grout lines.  So, when we muster up the energy, we'll tackle this.

There was major excitement when we finished our closets and were able to move our clothes out of the guest rooms and into our closets.  Although, we still have one guest room full of stuff.  I told husband that when we're done with this reno, I'm going through the whole house and do a big purge.  No mercy, everything that hasn't been used in the last year goes.

Here's the side of my closet for hanging clothes.

Opposite that are two IKEA china cabinets, repurposed for closet storage.  They each have three drawers and two glass doors with three shelves.  Loads of room for folded clothes and more.  I have my jewelry hanging on the handles at the moment, but intend to find another place for that in the future.  I painted the walls in my closet Sherwin Williams Faint Coral.  It's a barely there soft peachy pink and I love it.  Looks great with all the other white.

Husband's closet is very utilitarian and painted my favorite white, Sherwin Williams Greek Villa, the same as the shiplap and trim in the rest of the bathroom.  He has the same IKEA cabinets on one side and hanging clothes on the other.  The electric panel is in his closet so we had to plan the hanging clothes storage around that, but it worked out fine.  The two closets are actually one room separated by the IKEA cabinets backed up to each other.  That leaves us with storage for luggage and other bulky items on top of the cabinets.

We had baseboards leftover from when we remodeled our house back in 2008.  Our painting contractor had stained and finished them already and they've been stored in the barn all this time.  So, I pulled those out and we used them in the closets.  

We also started on installing the octagon mosaic tile on the walls.  This is the back wall of the toilet room.  Not grouted yet.

And, this is the wall next to the vanity.  We had to get this part done so we could install the vanities and be ready for the countertop installers.  Unfortunately, they messed up and it's not installed yet.  But, we're back on track and they're supposed to be working on it now.  We'll install the rest of the tile around the vanities after the countertop is installed.

Vanities waiting for their top.

I found switch plate covers that mimic the farmhouse trim around the doors.

To continue reading about my master bath renovation, go to Master Bath Renovation, Part Nine.

Master Bath Renovation Part Seven

We're in the home stretch!

To start at the beginning, go to Master Bath Renovation Part One.

So, about the crown moulding and Kreg tool.  No, it definitely did not work.  This was a horrible, horrible job for Husband.  Very frustrating.  After it was done, I told him, "Take that Kreg tool BACK!  It was absolutely worthless."  He did take it back today and it turns out that the one we got was defective...a piece missing or something like that.  So, I can't say whether the tool actually works or not.  I just know it didn't work for us.

There was one outside corner that was almost perfect (to the far right in this picture), but it took Husband an hour and a half to figure out that one piece and it was no thanks to the Kreg tool.

Here's the almost perfect corner up close and personal.

The inside corners weren't quite as difficult.  A bit of caulk fixed them right up.

But most of the corners were like this wonky catastrophe.  Nothing lined up at all, but we were at the point where we just didn't care anymore.  All I can say is, "thank goodness for caulk."  And, except for the fact that I just showed the world (or, my 60 something followers) that our corners are awful, I'm pretty sure nobody will ever notice.

 

Overall, the crown looks great.

And, I'm very excited about the farmhouse door trim.  This was easy peasy.  Just several straight cuts, nail 'em up, call 'er done.

Also, an exciting milestone...tile!  The closets are painted and I just finished grouting the tile in the closets.  Man, that was a hard job.  I started it on my own while Husband went to his welding class and I certainly bit off more than I could chew.  Thankfully, he came home earlier than usual, or I would have been there literally all night.  As it was, it took me about five hours to lay less than half of this floor. And, it was a mess.  That night, I could barely walk.  My legs were shaky and I just went to bed dirty because I couldn't even stand up in the shower.  I creaked around like a 90 year old for a couple of days afterwards.  But, when we went to finish it, working together and getting into the groove of it, the job went somewhat faster and I didn't get as fatigued.  

We still have the rest of the bathroom to tile because we're tiling in stages.  There is no way we could have gotten this done all in one go.

But...progress, right?

To continue reading about my renovation, click on Master Bath Renovation, Part Eight.

Master Bath Renovation Part Six

To start at the beginning, go to Master Bath Renovation Part One.

We're still working on the bathroom and have made a lot of progress, but it's like two steps forward, one step back.

We were having major problems getting the crown molding cut so that it would fit together.  We pretty much gave up in despair on Monday.  Husband went to Lowes and bought a Kreg Crown Pro crown moulding jig tool.  He has a Kreg jig to make pocket hole joints which he uses all the time and was happy to see that they make a jig for crown moulding.  I'll let you know how it works...when we get to that.

In the meantime, just this morning, Husband was installing the last row of shiplap plank right along the ceiling.  Each piece has to be ripped down to about a two inch strip and will cover the studs that you can see at the top in Part Five.  These will be covered by the crown moulding and we had planned not to put planks there at all, but it turned out that we need to to have something to nail the crown to.  Anyway,  I was vacuuming up the dust from sanding joint compound in our new closets.  He went down to the barn to get something and there was a skunk in there.  Harry Dog grabbed the skunk, which is unusual because he has learned to stay away from skunks.  Well, either he forgot, or he thought it was an imminent danger.  When he grabbed it, it sprayed and got all over the barn.

As this bit of excitement was going on, the power in the bathroom suddenly went off.  Husband called me from the barn to tell me about the skunk, then I told him about the power.  He thought he might have hit a wire with a nail.  So, he came back up to the house, reeking of skunk, and took a couple of planks off the wall.  Turns out, he did not hit a wire.  So, he is currently investigating the mystery cause of the power outage and I'm pretty much stalled on my closet work, because...no power.  My plan was to put the first coat of paint on today, but now, I don't know.

So, how about some fall color?

These pictures really are beautiful, but unfortunately, you can't really tell because Blogger.com doesn't seem to care that pictures aren't clear on their site.

I need to scout around for a place to move my blog.  I'm getting really tired of blurry pictures.

Go here to continue reading about my Master Bath Renovation Part Seven.

Master Bath Renovation Part Five

Click on link to start at the beginning, Master Bath Renovation Part One.

We're moving right along, but, whew, this is taking a long time.  I'm officially in Thanksgiving mode this week, cooking and cleaning and getting ready to host Thanksgiving dinner, so I haven't done much on the bathroom.

Husband worked on the shiplap.  We ran out right towards the end.  NOTE:  if you're installing shiplap, make sure you buy extra.  By my calculations, we needed 47 12 foot planks.  I bought 50 just to be safe.  But, it turns out that we needed 2-3 more planks.  I was bummed that our work got interrupted.

Also, if you're a rank amateur wood worker, like us, and have outside corners that have to be mitered...hire someone or, if you don't have a compound miter saw, get one.  We bought Ariata pine nickel gap planks from Home Depot.  Many of them were warped and/or had a slight crown in them, when they should have been flat.  I didn't know this, but when you cut a board with a crown/hump in it, the cut comes out curved.  That was a nightmare.

We have crown moulding to install and we expect it to be harmful to our health.  So, husband is going to buy a compound miter saw before we ("we" meaning "HE") tackle that.  Hopefully, he'll be able to finish up the rest of the shiplap without having a brain aneurism.

So, this week has been mainly cleaning up in preparation for the holiday.  Husband finished up the electrical work and installed all the lights so that we could get the boxes out of the house.  And, he cleared away most of the tools so that we can now walk across the back porch.

I love seeing something done, even if it's just putting the A/C vent on the ceiling.

We got the damaged wood floor repaired by a friend.  I put the first coat of joint compound on the bedroom wall.  Since our drywall technique left something to be desired, we had some fairly big gaps and unevenness that I had to address.  Well, it's not totally our fault.  The original drywall was kind of wonky and that's what we had to work with.

The closet is all drywalled.

Another view of the closet.  I've put the first coat of tape and bedding, but this picture was taken before that.

The vanity lights.  I had planned on having four of these, but when I got them, they were waaay bigger than I expected and four of them would have been overwhelming.  I hope I didn't make a mistake keeping them.  But, they are pretty.

I'm loving this light fixture.  It is in the center of the room and husband put a two way switch on it so that it can be turned on and off from two locations - by the exterior door and by the bedroom/bathroom entry.  I got the ceiling and most of the walls painted before we installed the lights.  

The water closet (aka toilet room) light.  Call me crazy, but I'm kind of wanting it to look like an outhouse.  Bwahaha.  Husband said it was "cozy".  I'll take that as a compliment.

To continue to read about our master bath reno, go to Part Six.