day eleven

It’s been a long week and a half without a shower… but we seem to be figuring out alternatives just fine.
To refresh your memory… this is what the bathroom looked like before: (yuck)
Here’s a play-by-play of what’s happened so far:
Saturday
My brother and Alec started by removing all of the fixtures in the bathroom and then started removing the old ceramic floor and the walls… and the ceiling… The floor proved to be quite the tough cookie – eating up a lot of time out of the day. It’s funny how you don’t realize how much garbage a job like this will produce. Our garage is FILLED with debris.
Sunday
Once the floor was taken up, we realized that the fan in the downstairs powder room was vented to nowhere. Now, there isn’t a shower in that bathroom – but it still means that whatever the fan is sucking up is just ending up in a void in the ceiling/floor (depending where you’re standing). The fans that were in the bathroom were quite noisy and we decided that we might as well replace them in the process of venting them both to the attic and out the roof. More projects, more time. The new fan is delightfully quiet in comparison to the old and I’m excited for the same one to be installed upstairs as well.
At the end of the day on Sunday, the boys were where they wanted to be at the end of the day Saturday. A full day behind. Uh oh. So, Alec asked me to call the tile installation company and see if we could push the date of installation back a week to allow them to be ready in time. When I called, I was told that they thought the next available date would be in mid-May, but that they’d call me back tomorrow to let me know for sure. At the end of the day, our sub-floor was in and Alec had removed part of a stud that had water damage/mold from behind the shower. Other pieces of wood had a bit of mold as well, so Alec painted a fancy sealant on top of those areas to seal in the mold and prevent further growth.
Monday
I got a call early Monday morning confirming the bad news that if we wanted to reschedule, our new date would be May 9th. That was 3 weeks away. I called Alec, I called my brother and they both agreed to keep working to get as much as they could get finished. SO, after a  long day at work, my brother and Alec continued to work on the bathroom.
Tuesday
Another evening of work after work! My brother came to our house before we got home and started working hard on installing the behind-the-wall showerhead parts. It was nice to be able to decide where the showerhead will go (really high for us tall folks) but frustrating for the boys to decipher what the heck the instructions were trying to say. When Alec joined, they finished off the plumbing and put up the last of the drywall for the shower.
Wednesday
Tile installation day! The tiles themselves were dropped off around 8am, but the tile guys arrived mid-morning. They told Alec it would take about 4 hours, but they were here when he got back from work. Tiles looked great, no grout yet – but great!
Thursday
Grout day! The guys didn’t come until the end of the day… but it got finished and looks great.
Friday & Saturday
Because of the long weekend… we had both our workers (Alec and Andrew) working on Friday. They finished putting up the drywall and began the mudding/taping/sanding process. I came home from work to find out that they didn’t buy any paint on their last Home Depot run, so I quickly booked it there to buy some because they would be closed on Easter Sunday. I bought primer for the drywall and paint for afterwards… it’s called Popcorn, but looks way more yellow in the can than it did on the paint chip. Uh oh. We shall see what it looks like on the wall!!
Sunday
The painting begins… we get a couple coats of primer on there before we head out for Easter dinner.
Monday & Tuesday
We hit a bit of a delay on Monday because Alec caught the cold I have been battling for the last week or so. Poor Alec. So, even though he had Monday off – there was no change in the bathroom while he recovered. When I got home from work on Tuesday, I put a final coat of primer on the whole bathroom. I painted a test strip of the real paint colour, but alas…it is very yellow. So much for that can!!

So that’s where we’re at… I will try to go to Home Depot tomorrow after work to buy a different can of paint, some baseboards and anything else we need. Once the paint dries, the shower should be good to go. Then it’s the toilet and sink. (And good news! My special order faucet came in ahead of schedule! Woohoo)
Hope you enjoyed the update – we’ll have more to show you soon.

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