Bathroom and Whole House Update - August

The bathroom paused for about a month after our contractor (and we) fired our tile guy. This time of year it takes about a month to get on the schedule for anyone new, so next weekend we should have 100% photos.

View from the window ledge.

I love my new bathtub!

View from the new doorway. More tile going up on the wall with the light on it. The 2nd light will get installed, the medicine cabinets will go up, and the shower enclosure will go in.

New look in bedroom, clean ceiling, white doors, and a bed on floor b/c we're waiting for carpet and so aren't moving all our furniture back in yet.

Why is the carpet taking so long you ask? Why, because we added more to our little construction project. This phase is DIY so will take longer since it'll get done on weekends. See that stair railing? Very early 80's. Slightly better after I painted it a few years ago. It's bolted to the drywall and notches were cut out of each stair tread to allow for the post to be flush to the wall going up the stairs.

All those cut notches in the treads make it look pretty crummy from the side. With brand new carpet on the horizon we decided we didn't want it to look like this anymore.

 Yesterday FFM and I made ourselves scarce so Travis could work without distractions. He was BUSY! He cut back the carpet a few days ago, and yesterday started by taking out the pickets which were bolted, nailed, AND glued to the wall.

Then he worked on the 'balcony' area and took out as much as he could while still leaving a handrail.

Our new railing plan calls for the treads to be flush with the wall, so then Travis started on cutting off the protruding bits of stair tread. Hard to see, but the 3rd stair up in this picture has the excess cut off.

 That all wrapped up on Saturday afternoon, leaving Sunday to start a new project. Popcorn ceilings called...so we started in on our dining room ceiling. After watching the pros do it in our bathroom and bedroom we thought we'd tackle a room ourselves to see how it turned out. We've heard horror stories about the challenges, so weren't sure how things would turn out.

Right off the bat I'll admit it's pretty awesome to be married to a tall man! I sprayed water and he followed me with the scraper. We have an old paint power roller/sprayer that we used to spray with water - stuck the hose in a 5 gallon bucket of water and sprayed and sprayed and sprayed.

 After about 30 minutes of prep, and hour of spraying and scraping, and 30 minutes of clean up we had this! Next weekend we'll attempt to mud it, then perhaps on to more rooms.

I would like to take a moment here to tell readers that nearly all of the ads on this little bathroom job have been from my darling husband. The stair rail is kind of my fault (I pointed out the nice new carpet would still look icky going up the stairs) but everything else was his idea. We're happier now that most of the trades are out of our house (still have tile and finish trim to go next week) and the railing parts take a month to come so we're not under too much of a time crunch with our DIY add ons.  Projects done and cleaned up before dinner are way easier than those that are still going strong at 11pm!