Buenos Dias Senor Tub Doctor

Michael and I had barely poured our first cup of coffee this morning when a guy comes walking into the apartment (from the main house). I wish I could say this startled us, but sadly this is so common that Buckley doesn't even bother to bark anymore. Really makes a great guard dog. Today's first visitor was a guy who passionately refers to himself as Senor Tub Doctor. Before I show you his magic, let's rewind one week. The guest bathroom got a little love this week. Here is what we were working with:

First off, it is one of those bathrooms with a main hallway door and then another door for the toilet/tub area. I hate that so much. Tell me who, besides child siblings, find this purposeful? The picture above was taken after we removed the interior door, removed some cabinets (not pictured) and removed the 50 year old glass sliding shower door (sick). What we were left with was NOT pretty.

50 years of gunk

This is where I had to tap out and call in some of the crew. It was just too gross for me. I went to my nice clean office and by the time I returned at the end of the day, the bathroom had been demolished. No more linoleum floor, no more carpet in the bathroom (always a winning choice), and no more vanity.

 

This bathroom is across from the 2nd guest bedroom and the closest bathroom to Michael's office. For this reason, he got to take the lead on picking the tile.....even though I was there should he stray to something objectionable. He chose the floor tile and and the shower tile all by himself. We had already decided to re-purpose an old dresser for the vanity. I coordinated that, but the rest was Michael (he is quite proud of himself).

Progress- with tile/floor finished with vanity in progress

The next step is for the a professional to come in and patch the drywall and cover the old medicine cabinet. As soon as that step is done, we will get the room painted. The light is on its way (which I picked and Michael will be pleasantly surprised when he sees it.

Okay so now you are caught up. So back to our Saturday morning visitor. Enter Senor Tub Doctor. Stage right. The two bathtubs downstairs are cast iron (I think) and are really great quality that people pay big $$$ for, so the plan all along was to keep them. You may still be haunted by the picture of the tub scum I showed you above. No matter. Senor Tub Doctor can fix that! I am watching HGTV as I type this and I just learned the word Re-Glazed. I think that is what Senor did. Sure, the smell made our eyes water for a few hours, but the end result was amazing. The tub looked brand new.

Feast your eyes on this!

I am really excited about how this bathroom is turning out. The new polished chrome fixtures really brings this bathroom into the current decade. Once we move out of the apartment, we are going to have the same thing done to the other bathtub. Even though it is in better shape than this tub, it will be nice to have it look brand new. In addition to Senor Tub Doctor, we also had the floor guys here. Their music (heavy metal) was less than ideal at 9am on a Saturday, but the high from the tub glazing helped. Speaking of the floors, they are mostly done. The only thing left to finish is the stairs and entryway.

Rainy day and wet poodle paws? Contain the hound!

Alright, that is all for now. I need to get some ZZZs in before the floor guys arrive Sunday morning. Work animals I tell you. Buenos noches.

Knock On Wood

Man on man is this place is starting to look like a house! We are on day two of hardwood floor instillation. It is expected to take at least five days. Things are still really dusty, but I am starting to get an idea for what the house will look like. Soon. Oh so soon.

Master Bedroom

Hallway

They have not started on the den, but they dropped off the specially cut herringbone planks.The planks had to be cut to size and then the edges were beveled to that the pattern will stick out when it is finished. They were nice enough to lay out a bit of the flooring to give us an idea of what it will look like installed. I am so excited that it gives me chills every time I see it.

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If things go as planned, the pace of progress is going to speed up.  The downstairs bathroom is looking really good (photos to come). As soon as we decide on paint colors for downstairs, they will paint. This is exciting because we can schedule our carpet install. MEANING we can start "moving in" the to the rest of the downstairs. This includes the other guest bedroom, Michael's office, and the TV room. All this excitement is getting me into a decorating type of mood. I had to talk myself down off a ledge after seeing this rug:

How cool would this be on the herringbone?

Unfortunately, this was not in my budget. Not even a little bit! Hopefully I will forget about it soon.  Next week, Michael and I may go from 700sq feet of living space to 1800sq ft!!!! Things are really taking shape. The toilet is still punking me though by moving locations every few days.

It is enjoying the fall weather on the patio

Michael and I went to a Slow Food Utah event and there was so much talk about enjoying well  made meals of high quality. It makes me want to get the kitchen done so badly that it hurts. I have been spending a lot of time on ChowStalker pinning recipes that I plan to make the minute the kitchen is done!!!

Slow Food Utah

Fun Picking Finishes

I am going to spare you the boring update on the garage, which is one step closer to being done this week after receiving cement footings. I will show updates once we get further along. More exciting updates come in the form of finishes. There were a few fun deliveries this week. First up, my new (vintage) rug. I wanted a vintage rug with a little visible wear so I ordered a vintage rug from esalerugs.com.

I don't know where it is ultimately going to live in the house, but the master bedroom, kitchen, or the upstairs den are options. I think it will be a nice addition to ensure the house does not feel too modern. The next item to be delivered was our upstair's powder room light fixture. I am a little torn on this purchase:

Obviously it will look better with light bulbs, but for some reason the exact color of the gold really bothers me. I didn't realize that I had a preference, but apparently I do. It would be a pain to return it and it does have bulbs on both top and bottom which will help light the vaulted ceilings (11 feet!) of the tiny bathroom. I am considering spray painting it with the same paint that I used for Michael's office light. Spray painting a new, Jonathan Adler no less, light fixture seems like a sin though....so I need to sleep on it.

We are also reaching a point where we need to decide on the flooring in the basement. After much deliberation, we have decided to go with carpet. Having carpet will allow the basement to still feel cosy during the winter months. We headed to R.C. Willey on Wednesday to pick up samples and schedule a time for them to measure the space. Here are the final round of samples:



Shown with floor sample. 2nd runner up is top left.



Current 1st choice is 2nd from bottom, middle row

We decided to go with a pattern to "spice it up". If we are going to do carpet, we want it to be special. I like the patterns in the first picture, but it is what I would consider the more traditional carpet type. It has a "pile?" and I am afraid that it will look trampled over time. The samples on the board are knotted and resemble something closer to a jute rug. This might wear a little better with the poodle than the other options. We were looking for an option that would also transition nicely from the stairs (wood) to the bathroom (tile). The tile varies A LOT but here is one shot of it:



It has browns and grays, but not as much brown as this picture would suggest.

In the wood flooring department, the flooring has been delivered with the exception of the herringbone portion. The wood guy is still working in his shop to pre-cut the herringbone planks before having it delivered.

You can see the top of the stack includes our new stairs. It is recommended that it sit in the house for at least three days. Done. Now get to work! It should start getting installed Monday. About time. In other wood related news, my carpenter stopped by this morning to show me samples from our table he is building. It was really cool because he made a few of the "ribs" and created a slider so that I could slide it over different stains that would ultimately be the base color. (See the Paloma table at Crate & Barrel if that was confusing).



Wood slider with "ribs"



Maybe my first choice for the base color?

Well, that is all my updates. The tile guy didn't show up today so no progress was made on the downstairs guest bathroom....or what Michael has taken to calling his bathroom. We have already had to fire our mudders and hire a new crew. They didn't show up when they were supposed to and it put us a week behind!  I hope the tile guy is not next. When people tell you that things can get delayed due to crews not showing up....they were right. YAY House Reno!

Three Objectives for The Week

My apologies for the lapse in posting over the weekend. Michael and I headed to Arizona for the weekend. It was nice to get away from the house for a while and stay somewhere with central air and glass windows. Fancy.

Now that we are back, it has become ALL HOUSE ALL THE TIME. What will I do with myself when the house is finished? What will I lay awake thinking about in the middle of the night?  We started the week focused on three things:

1) Begin the install of the hardwood floors
2) Get the cement poured for the garage footings
3) Demo and re-tile the other guest bathroom downstairs

1) Sunday night, the floor guy stopped by the house with samples. It only took me a minute to determine that the white washed oak was the right choice for us. It does not photograph well, but here it is none the less:

Like I said, it is hard to tell from the photos above. It is a pale matte finish and I think it looks great against white and one of the better options to compliment all the existing maple in the house. The Floor guy took some final measurements and produced a final bid. We gave him our deposit and just like that, the wood was ordered and is likely being delivered to the house as I type this. By the end of the week, I might have (partial) floors! Over the next couple of days, he will be under cutting the built ins (above) so that the floor can slip underneath and look like it has always been a part of the house.

We have been warned that the undercutting will be messy, but he will use a condensed air pressure something or other to blast all the dirt out of the house. The finished product will be a cleaner version of the house than we have ever seen. Cleaner than when we originally viewed the house before putting in an offer.

2) The garage is coming along, although we are in the boring stage of footings. We passed the inspection so they can pour the concrete, however there is a rain in the forecast so it has been delayed. Once those go up, actually garage looking things can get done. Like walls, and garage doors.

Grage with temp walls

3) There is a lot of progress being made in both the master bathroom and the 2nd guest bathroom downstairs. I will post pictures later this week when the "After" photos are ready. We have all the supplies on hand for the guest bathroom so that will happen first. We will be waiting until the end of time for the fancy marble tile to arrive. Estimated end of October. Yikes.

Rain Clouds and Dirt Piles

The mudders have been here every night doing their thing, making our walls look more like walls. This is a slow process. They add mud layer by layer (night by night). Eventually they will sand it. Many people have told me that the dry wall sanding is by far the worst part of the reno process. The dust is really fine and it gets EVERYWHERE. I can't even deal. The outside of the house is not any cleaner right now. The crew has started digging out the foundation on the garage and exposing the existing footings.

 

The work in the above photo was done with a jack hammer, but in order to make progress on the trenches, we needed to bring in the big guns.

 

 

A nice side effect of digging the trenches was removing the scraggly bushes in the driveway.

The trenches are about 4 feet deep around the perimeter of the garage slab. While he was at it, we even asked the guy to rip out the fitzers in the side yard. Those bushes are everywhere on the property and will likely haunt me for the rest of my life.

Things were going really well, the sun was out, birds were chirping....and then....and then......the storm cloud of all storm clouds rolled in at approx. 100 miles and hour. With in minutes, all hell broke loose. So much rain came down, I can't even describe it. The amount of water flowing down the street was simply insane.

This might be a great time to remind everyone that we have no windows on the house. We also pulled most of the roof off the garage. I am sure you can guess what happened next. Water from the roof of the garage started flowing back to the house. Next thing you know....

I could have helped, but someone had to take pictures!

I hope none of you has to verify this fact, but roof water (from a previously tar covered roof) ranks somewhere between cesspool and swamp water. It was so gross. Luckily, there were a few workers around waiting for the storm to let up. When we asked for the buckets and told them why, they sprang into action.

They raised the house side of the roof and created a water channel. This fixed the water from flowing into the house. It is a temporary fix, but we ordered the water proof membrane today. Nothing like roof water in your kitchen to get the garage materials ordered! The rain cloud left about as quickly as it rolled in, leaving us with a driveway full of mud.

Buckley, king of the dirt pile.

I have been so focused on the inside of the house, that I have not really thought much about the work outside. The regular crew will switch to the garage and exterior painting while the walls are being finished and the wood floors go in. Things are going to start coming together really quickly. The only things that are up in the air are the delivery date on the windows/doors, master tile, and kitchen cabinets. Most of these items are slated for October 15th, but who knows. Until then, I will just cook in my kitchen with drippy roof water. Pasta anyone?

A Busy Weekend

We had workers at the house all weekend and there was so much accomplished. To start with, we have walls!!! Sure, you may take your walls for granted, but to be truly excited about walls you must have lived without them for awhile. We purchased the house on June 30th. July 1st, the interior was gutted and since that time we have been without walls. And now?

TA-DA!!!

Shall we take a walk down memory lane? Below are some shots from roughly the same spot in the house. Here is one taken a couple hours after we closed on the house:



The sad little kitchen was closed off and very 60's, but not in a cool way. And here is the same shot taken 24 hours later:

A little more open, but far from dinner party ready. The house stayed in this shape for a while with a series of small changes. Eventually the old frames came down, and a steel beam went up. Things looked really open, but no rooms were defined and it was hard to get a feel for the new floor plan until the framing stage.

If we could zoom out, we could see the open kitchen.
 Here we can see the powder room framed out and the end of hall wall.
The master bath is shown on the other side of that wall.

After 8 or 9 weeks, we now have the new walls up. It may seem like a small step, but trust me it is HUGE!!!!! As evidenced by all the exclamation marks. I am embarrassed to admit that I have spent way to much time this weekend just wandering through the top floor. I carried a tape measure in order to feel like I had a purpose. Take a look at these beautiful shots:

Hallway to den/masters, wall of powder room, and south kitchen wall

Looking in to den, I swear that old toilet is in a new spot everyday.
Why is no one putting this in the dumpster?

Looking into master bedroom.
Old windows dry walled and new windows have plywood awaiting glass delivery.

Standing in den looking across the hall to the masters bedroom.
Door to future powder room on left.

More plywood windows in the kitchen waiting for glass. Three windows (the middle being a bigger one).
The plywood space to the right (by saw horse) will be the door to roof deck.

 

What a little creeper!

We have our screw inspection tomorrow (fingers crossed). If we pass, we have the mudder guy scheduled to start taping and mudding later that day. We are going to go with a smooth finish, so the mudding stage will take a while. There will be a few rounds of mudding and sanding before the walls are completely smooth. Again, this may seem like a small thing, but most of the places I have ever lived have had textured walls so I am STOKED to be getting smooth.

So yeah, this was a busy weekend.