Big Bathroom Purchases

Here's a reminder of the bathroom before...not that we're done, but you can at least imagine the tub in it's new setting once we're done!


We have finally made our decision on the bathroom shower enclosure, supply lines, and drain for the clawfoot tub. It's a splurge, but I think it will be worth it. They are all from vintagetub.com. We have also purchased the "Warm Tiles" system to install under the tiles, which our feet will really appreciate in the winter - I'm guessing we'll have to keep the house pretty cool unless we want to bankrupt ourselves with gas bills. We purchased the system from AplusSupply.com, thinking it would probably take a long time, but we ordered it on Monday night and it arrived yesterday, so that's a pleasant surprise. Hopefully we will be able to start attempting the installation in a week or two. (Famous last words!)

Here are our official new bathtub accessories. Everything will be in polished nickel. I'm also looking forward to getting a nice tub rack that spans across the tub. But to be honest, it will be nice just to have a bathroom so we can move in!

Let the Plumbing Begin!

I haven't been much help to Michael lately because of my studying, but he seems to be doing pretty well on his own. We have been brainstorming and figuring out things together, so at least I'm still some help.

We are developing our plan for plumbing and electricity. We have managed to completely disconnect the bathroom from the old wiring, so it will be all new when we are done. It was somewhat more complicated than you might expect since one breaker in the panel went to 3 other rooms and the attic on top of supplying the bathroom! I'm just glad we're doing as much new wiring as possible!

But for now, Michael has decided to attack the plumbing first. We will have all new pipes from where the main enters the house, new hot water supplies, but will leave the waste pipes and vent alone. At least the waste pipes have been redone somewhat recently as they are pvc. We managed to add a lot of extra work to our plate by planning out where the bathroom would be upstairs if or when we get around to finishing the attic. We wanted to run all the supply and wastes up to the attic while we have everything open in the bathroom. So it's a lot more now, but hopefully we really pay off down the road.

A little explanation of the photo of Michael. We had a bit of an adventure at the local plumbing store today, which was way better than going to a big box store by the way. Anyway, Michael has invented a device for testing his copper soldering with air, it's pretty cool. I think he should patent it :)

I've also posted a pic of our new combo bathroom ceiling light/exhaust fan. It should go with whatever type of fixtures we end up putting in - we're leaning towards matte nickel, but it's a lot more expensive than chrome, so we'll see. And the faux marble isn't nearly as yellow as it looks in this picture, it's pretty much white.



I also had a question about the shower enclosure in my last post - I'm pretty sure we're going with vintagetub.com. Their site seems really good, and I've seen some good comments about them - but we're still looking around if anyone has some input. And I saw that someone was checking out our blog looking for info about insulating old bathroom walls. Having the walls torn out is obviously going to make it pretty easy for us, but in the rest of the house where we're not gutting it we're going to try to do the blown in insulation from the outside.

Well, I guess that's enough rambling for now!

Work continues, but we try to have a life too...

After consulting several people we have decided it would probably be best not to jack up the whole house to deal with a sag in one short hallway. But yesterday Michael and Phillip Doyle, a local homebuilder who knows Michael, managed to jack up, even out and reinforce the bathroom floor joists, so we are pretty much ready to move on to the subfloor.

For a break from the house we did some lounging around and went to a drag race last night. It was pretty fun - very Kentucky :) Here are some pictures.







Hopefully we will be making some serious progress on the bathroom this week, so I will be able to add pictures of that soon. For now, here's a picture of the tub enclosure we're planning to get for our clawfoot tub, it should look really good! I think we are going to paint the outside of the tub black, which will look nice with the black and white tile!

Moving On...

Okay, we still have a few details to take care of on the roof, but since it's been crazy hot and we don't want to damage the shingles - and the roof is essentially done, we've allowed ourselves to start on the bathroom.

Now this is a violation of one of the main rules we set for ourselves - not starting a new project until we've finished the first one, but I think we'll be okay here. I've been studying a LOT for the bar exam, and Michael can't really finish up the soffits on the roof alone, so we started demo on the bathroom on Saturday, and he's been working on that ever since.

I managed to take a few photos of our progress so far. We are basically completely gutting the bathroom. It's kind of funny having our own house, and being able to just decide, "hey, let's go rip the walls off of the bathroom!" Of course it's a messy job, and taking longer than we might have thought, but we had to tear out drywall, then the horribly damaged plaster covered by the drywall, and then the lathe since we are not capable of repairing it, and would really like to insulate the bathroom and redo the wiring anyway.

So here are the photos, hope no one is grossed out too much by the disgusting remnants of the old toilet seal and the cigarette butt we found there.

Aren't we fancy!

Michael is probably proudly riding this around the yard right about now - showing the neighbors that we do intend to keep care of our lawn!



The roof is fully shingled, and the roof ridge is installed. Now there are just the last few details to take care of - which of course are the most annoying - and then we can move on to the bathroom. Unfortunately I also need to study for the bar, and Michael is probably going to start looking for a job, so who knows how long our next project will take. But at least our lawn will look good :)

SO close!

We are almost done the roof!

Hooray - I know it may seem crazy that it's been over two weeks and we still aren't done, but we've literally worked hard on it every day. We finished the last shingle on the roof today by working about half an hour past dark, proving again that we are going a little bit crazy.

Unfortunately we aren't totally done, there are some details to take care of. But it looks like we should definitely be done by Thursday, then we can take Friday off if we want and start the bathroom on Saturday! We're excited :)

Hopefully we'll have pictures of the completed roof soon!

sandy

We are very very lucky

Although thunderstorms and rain have been forecast for almost every day lately, with the exception of a few showers yesterday, it has been dry for almost two weeks.

It's ironic that we live in such a rural area, and everyone is talking everyday about how they wish it would rain, while we are thinking just the opposite.

Michael and I proved that we are truly hardcore yesterday. We had briefly given up when it started to rain, and just covered up the roof and left. But we returned a few hours later despite the omnious skies and continuing thunder.

We had removed a section of rotten wood earlier in the day, so we had a gaping hole exposed to the elements that we were desperate to cover. So we worked on the roof in the rain like crazy. Michael was sawing, I was nailing, and by the time we were done we had it completely patched up and had every surface covered with either shingle or tar paper!

We are now about 1/2 way done the second side, we are definitely moving a lot faster.

Here's hoping that by next weekend we will be working on the bathroom, once that's done we can officially move in!

Here's a picture of Michael and me not working on the house, since I haven't made it into the blog yet :)



sandy

Here Comes the Rain...

Which is not a good thing considering we are only a little over half way through roofing. I can't believe we've been at it for 12 days already, but the first side was way more work than the second side, so hopefully we will be done in 3 or 4 days.

Our next project is the bathroom, and while it will also require alot of work, it shouldn't be anywhere as grueling, or as important to get it done to quickly to avoid a flood in our attic.

Since I haven't taken any pictures in a few days, here is one from the Owens Corning site of what our shingles are supposed to look like - I think they look better on our roof, and the shingles don't really seem as black in this photo as they are in real life.

Hopefully we will have more fun photos next week when we start doing demo on the bathroom.