OK, so it’s my thread and I’ll hijack it if I want to, hijack it if I want to, etc. etc.
As noted previously, the master bath project got pushed back because 1) we didn’t get quite as much out of our refi as we wanted, and 2) we needed a damn dishwasher, and we ended up voting that up so many times it hit the top of the priority list.
Before I got too far in to that, I wanted to finish the re-wire of my house that I began a while ago.
So, I decided to take some videos and put them on YouTube like all the cool kids used to do. You know, when people just put stuff up there without premeditation about getting subscribers and clicks.
Anyway, here is the channel I created so that I can share my zillion projects and with my family and friends. I know we have plenty of tradesmen lurking about, and though I pass all of my code inspections I know that I don’t have the experience to know some of the little secrets. So I invite any comments here or there.
Thank you! That gray was actually a lot darker than we intended, but hell…it matched well enough.
Nah, I screwed mine up too.
That link ought to have gone here.
I always hated that dishwasher joke when I was a kid!
We definitely need one of those plastic curtains with the zipper…where did you get it?
Sicks, how’s the project going?
We’re still in the demolition stage on the master bath. So far, termite damage, black mold, and more ugly wallpaper. There were pink tiles under the white ones too, and traces of pink paint around the medicine cabinet. At one point this place must have looked like a She Shit-shed.
Somewhat on hold, for the last week! Been on vaca… Was supposed to get drywall up, mudded, and painted 2 weekends ago but Lowe’s fucked me on the delivery. Basically I was expecting delivery that weekend, and at about 2:30 some douche called and said “Yeah, so you were expecting a delivery today…it’s not going to happen. Our flatbed driver doesn’t work on weekends.” No “Sorry, blah blah”…nothing. Just basically “You’re screwed, homie, how about later this week?”
So I cancelled that order, left a 1-star review for my local Lowe’s, and they’re not getting any more of my money.
So tomorrow, I get to go pick up my cabinets (from Menard’s), and while I have the U-Haul van I’ll get my drywall and melamine board for my concrete countertops (at Home Depot).
Tomorrow the plan is to get everything ready for my main panel switchout on Tuesday. If I get all that done at a reasonable time, I’ll get the drywall hung and a coat of mud on, and the platforms built that will raise my base cabinets and countertop up 3".
The plastic wall product is called Zipwall. It’s on Amazon, I got mine at The Depot, I’d imagine most big box home improvement stores have it.
Here’s a picture of the project as of this evening. Really nice to see it coming together.
Funny that a large impetus for this project was just that my wife wanted a place for the coffee maker to live where it wouldn’t get blockaded by crap on the counter, and this is what we ended up with.
Ooooh! Ahhhh! You’re getting to the fun stuff now. I bet your wife will be over the moon when it’s finished.
We’re just to the point where our whole bathroom is torn down. We’ve bought all the stuff that goes in it, but it will still be a little while before it gets installed.
We pretty much gutted and redid our entire house after buying it 5 years ago. 2.5 baths. We could’ve reconfigured things so that one bath was connected to the largest bedroom, but it was just the 2 of us, and it wasn’t important to us whether we walked a few feet down a hall or not. We were planning on living her for a long time - possibly being carried out in boxes, so trying to recoup a couple of grand a decade or more down the line played zero part in our decision-making.
We enlarged the largest bath, and put in a decent sized (not huge) shower AND a separate tub. We used one of 2 closets in the 2d largest bedroom for the shower. At the time, we thought a tub MIGHT come in useful for bathing grandkids should we ever need to, or in the rare occasion one of us might want a soak. We kinda had the idea that a 3 bedroom house ought to have at least 1 bathtub. I think I used it when I had a cast on my ankle. And my wife may have taken a bath or 2 over the past 5 years. It doesn’t bother me that we have it, but if we were doing it again, we might have done things differently.
We live in a neighborhood where probably 90% of the homes are variations on the same ranches, split-levels, 2-stories, all by the same builder. Ours is a split level. Every once in a while we will go to an open house and see how they redid their baths/kitchens. For example, the main floor is a living/dining room “L”, with the kitchen inside the angle of the “L”. As built in the late 50s, there was a wall with a standard doorway between the dining room and kitchen. People have reconfigured that all kinds of ways. Some take down all of the walls, amking it one big space. In our opinion, that makes things too open. No place to hide the dirty dishes! We took down the dining/kitchen wall, and installed a peninsula.
We only recently saw one home that had the upstairs beds/baths reconfigured in a way that we might have liked better than ours. But it isn’t anything we even think of as we live in our house.
We’ve lived in 3 houses over our 34 years of marriage. Painting was the ONE home maintenance/repair thing we did together best. My wife would do the trim and cutting in, and I would do the rolling. We did great work; we had a system down, such that we were very efficient and actually enjoyed it. And you can’t beat painting for the biggest bang for the buck/time. But, moving into this house in our mid-50s, we added painting to the list of things that were more fun when we were young. My wife had been developing some arm pain/numbness, and we think her looking up to do the wall ceiling cut throughout the house might have been the final straw leading up to her cervical fusion. When we had our sub-basement finished, we paid for professionals. Seemed very expensive, but sure was easy.
More progress. Primed today, this week I’ll caulk and putty. We made a sample countertop so we can use it to compare colors to.
Deciding on grout color to fill pinholes.
We had 3 paint colors narrowed down for the cabinets, but we changed minds again. Since the kitchen is going to end up pretty bright, clean, and industrial looking, I started looking at cool tile for a low backsplash. Now, since the backsplash is going to pop out and be a focal point, we’re going to look at paints based on that.
I found one that is narrow glass tile with black, gray, and clear tiles with stainless steel tiles mixed in. Kind of fell in love with it, going to grab one tomorrow and use that to choose paint.
No comment on the bathroom stuff - you seem to know what you are doing and it looks great. But if you are going to do YouTube videos, for the love of God, please stop taking/uploading vertical videos!
A discouraging setback to report.
The whole floor was tiled, and part of the wall, when we realized something wasn’t quite right. We had gotten two different tiles, with two different matching grout colors, and the guy laying the tile used the wrong grout. It doesn’t look so bad on the floor (which is why we didn’t notice earlier), but it looks terrible on the wall. So I think we’re going to spend this weekend trying to scrape it all out again.
And I hate to say it, but I want to scrape up the grout from the floor too. This is probably the only time we’re going to make this sort of improvement to the house, and I really wanted it done our way. I’m feeling pretty bummed about it right now.
Been a long time since I posted an update on my not-a-master-bath project…
But the concrete counter top for the kitchen nook that took priority over the master bath is done. I took a short video here. Happy with the result.
Well, guys, after approximately four months and twenty thousand dollars, our master bathroom went from this to this! I think we will be happy with it.
My husband got his tub, which I probably won’t use but it’s very beautiful.
This is the walk-in shower with the linear drain. I like it now, but I’m a little worried that as the weather gets colder it won’t be as much fun. It doesn’t hold any heat, which won’t be a problem ten months of the year, but during those other two months might be quite painful! :eek:
This is where the magic happens. It’s got one of those fancy European 2 button flushers on it so you can customize your disposal.
Sicks, thanks for giving me the opportunity to post this stuff! Quite possibly no one cares, but it was exciting for me. And I’m looking forward to seeing your project completed also.
Everybody else, stay tuned at some vague future time for the next home improvement project, “Putting a New Roof on the Barn”. zzzzz
I bet your wife will be over the moon when it’s finished.
We took down the dining/kitchen wall, and installed a peninsula.
