To Sum Up: And Then There Was Bathroom
01/30/08 18:48
I'm very sorry about the lack of updates. It was a
good idea -- bad execution. Unless you have a
dedicated blogging staff, I don't recommend trying to
do both during one of these projects.
But what is this? An update? Does that mean...?
Yes. Yes it does. We are done, and here's the proof from the doorway:
And from the tub:
Here's a quick rundown of what transpired (you can probably follow along in the gallery -- I believe most if not all of this is documented there):
Day Five: Grout - Andrew mixed a couple pales of grout and he did the shower walls while I mentally prepared for the floors. When my turn came, I moved fast. So fast that while Andrew and Jhenn raced to wipe the shower clean before the excess dried, I had to wait twenty minutes before the grout in the floor set up enough to do any wiping (I would have helped in the shower but even with only two people it's kind of crowded). Granted, there are a lot more lines of grout in the shower than the floor so my speed has nothing to do with skill unfortunately.
We called it a day after spending a good amount of time scraping the grout that had gotten caught in the shower tile texture. There was no easy way out and we were exhausted.
Days Six Through Nine: Scraping - I don't look back on these days fondly. These were work days in every sense. I went to work at 6am, got back at 5pm and started scraping the shower. Andrew came over and finished installing the fan/light/heater and the over-mirror light fixture. I scraped. When I finally finished the shower, I moved on to the peeling paint. And I was soon joined by Jenn.
Days Nine and Ten: A Different Kind of Scraping - The previous occupants decided to paint high gloss paint directly onto existing high gloss paint without any primer. It didn't work well. If you looked at it funny it peeled. So Jenn and I scraped and scraped and tried to keep each other from tearing the drywall down out of pure frustration. On the eleventh day we called it and moved on to patching.
Day Eleven: Patching - The tub install had required the removal of two sizable chunks of drywall on either side of the tub itself. So I cut some drywall to fit, installed it, and Jenn plastered over the seams. We also patched up the hole where the old light fixture lived and a small strip that allowed us to run some cable to the fan/light/heater.
Thinking we'd be priming later that night, we started to get excited. The end was near!
Days Twelve and Beyond: The End Is Not Near - We discovered that the plaster was taking longer to dry than expected. This didn't come as a huge shock. We'd had to lay it on pretty thick to get a smooth result. But waiting for things to dry became the new frustration. Here's a quick rundown of the next several days. Imagine you're watching time-lapse photography. Maybe it'll be more interesting that way.
- Plaster dries, we raise our hands in thanks.
- Sand plaster - entire house now covered in fine, white film.
- Discover that we could do a better job with the plaster, apply some more.
- Wait.
- Sand plaster (see "fine, white film").
- Add texture which boasts a two hour drying time. Instructions clearly written by liars as it takes around four or five hours to change color (which is supposed to indicate its dryness). In some places it never changes color.
- Wait.
- Prime walls and ceiling. Primer supposed to be dry in 1 hour. More liars at work at primer instruction-writing facility.
- Thinking we're ready to paint the ceiling, we notice that the primer -- a chemical designed to bond to anything -- is not adhering to one portion of the ceiling. That one portion turns out to be the badly-executed patch by the previous owners. We rip part of the ceiling open and re-patch. This is hands down the most difficult patch we've had to attack and requires -- you guessed it -- more plaster!
- See "fine, white film".
- Finally, it's dry. Finally we re-prime.
- Finally we paint color onto the wall -- a rich, chocolate brown. We stand back and admire our work. You'll notice there's no brown paint in the pictures above.
- Realizing that a bathroom the size of ours becomes a cave when painted a dark color, we return to Home Depot and find another color.
- We re-paint the walls!
- We wait.
This whole plaster-sand-texture-prime-paint business took about a week. Maybe more as I've blocked out most of the associated memories. I'm only able to tell you about this much because I wrote despairing journal entries detailing the whole mess.
OK. That part about the journal entries was a lie. I was way too frustrated to write journal entries.
Day...I Have No Idea: You Think You're Nearly Done But You're Not - We moved the vanity into the bathroom to see how she fit which turned out to be "not very well". There was a gap between the countertop and the wall at the back of the vanity so we discussed possible solutions which included shimming the front of the vanity, sawing off a portion of the back of the vanity, and torching the condo and walking away.
We ended up shimming the front of the vanity a little and then affixing a thin strip of wood to the wall just below the vanity line to serve as a platform for a line of silicone sealant. We bolted the vanity to the wall and sealed away.
We installed the trim. Not much to say about that.
We installed the toilet and discovered that the hose that feeds the toilet was too short. Not only that, but they don't sell longer ones. Anywhere. I had to create my own! Does that seem fair?!
We installed the storage cabinet. Possibly the easiest thing we did in the whole bathroom.
I hung the mirror. Then I installed the medicine cabinet only to discover that -- should I want to open the medicine cabinet -- I'd have to move the mirror down 2 1/2 inches. Which I did. There's a story about anchors here but the wound is too fresh.
I spent last Sunday installing the faucet which I imagine will take an hour tops. (If I've done anything well over the course of this project, it's ignore recent experience.) It takes four hours. There are leaks. Those leaks are fixed. Parts are missing and then discovered attached to previously-installed parts. And I find that the pull for the drain doesn't actually fit through the vanity because I followed the instructions which said to center the faucet in the hole. Had I moved the faucet forward, the drain pull totally would have fit. But at this point, silicone sealant is drying on the faucet's base and I'm tired so I decide we don't need to control the drain right now. Maybe next year.
Jenn installed the towel bar, hand-towel ring, and toilet paper roller. And she caulks the toilet.
And here we are. I would sum up, but reliving the last several weeks has taken a lot out of me including -- but not limited to -- my will to live. Rather than continue and risk my life, I'll leave the summing up for another time.
Sorry for any misspelling or grammatical errors. I'm only an English major and know nothing of such things. What's proof-reading? I'll never know.
But what is this? An update? Does that mean...?
Yes. Yes it does. We are done, and here's the proof from the doorway:
And from the tub:
Here's a quick rundown of what transpired (you can probably follow along in the gallery -- I believe most if not all of this is documented there):
Day Five: Grout - Andrew mixed a couple pales of grout and he did the shower walls while I mentally prepared for the floors. When my turn came, I moved fast. So fast that while Andrew and Jhenn raced to wipe the shower clean before the excess dried, I had to wait twenty minutes before the grout in the floor set up enough to do any wiping (I would have helped in the shower but even with only two people it's kind of crowded). Granted, there are a lot more lines of grout in the shower than the floor so my speed has nothing to do with skill unfortunately.
We called it a day after spending a good amount of time scraping the grout that had gotten caught in the shower tile texture. There was no easy way out and we were exhausted.
Days Six Through Nine: Scraping - I don't look back on these days fondly. These were work days in every sense. I went to work at 6am, got back at 5pm and started scraping the shower. Andrew came over and finished installing the fan/light/heater and the over-mirror light fixture. I scraped. When I finally finished the shower, I moved on to the peeling paint. And I was soon joined by Jenn.
Days Nine and Ten: A Different Kind of Scraping - The previous occupants decided to paint high gloss paint directly onto existing high gloss paint without any primer. It didn't work well. If you looked at it funny it peeled. So Jenn and I scraped and scraped and tried to keep each other from tearing the drywall down out of pure frustration. On the eleventh day we called it and moved on to patching.
Day Eleven: Patching - The tub install had required the removal of two sizable chunks of drywall on either side of the tub itself. So I cut some drywall to fit, installed it, and Jenn plastered over the seams. We also patched up the hole where the old light fixture lived and a small strip that allowed us to run some cable to the fan/light/heater.
Thinking we'd be priming later that night, we started to get excited. The end was near!
Days Twelve and Beyond: The End Is Not Near - We discovered that the plaster was taking longer to dry than expected. This didn't come as a huge shock. We'd had to lay it on pretty thick to get a smooth result. But waiting for things to dry became the new frustration. Here's a quick rundown of the next several days. Imagine you're watching time-lapse photography. Maybe it'll be more interesting that way.
- Plaster dries, we raise our hands in thanks.
- Sand plaster - entire house now covered in fine, white film.
- Discover that we could do a better job with the plaster, apply some more.
- Wait.
- Sand plaster (see "fine, white film").
- Add texture which boasts a two hour drying time. Instructions clearly written by liars as it takes around four or five hours to change color (which is supposed to indicate its dryness). In some places it never changes color.
- Wait.
- Prime walls and ceiling. Primer supposed to be dry in 1 hour. More liars at work at primer instruction-writing facility.
- Thinking we're ready to paint the ceiling, we notice that the primer -- a chemical designed to bond to anything -- is not adhering to one portion of the ceiling. That one portion turns out to be the badly-executed patch by the previous owners. We rip part of the ceiling open and re-patch. This is hands down the most difficult patch we've had to attack and requires -- you guessed it -- more plaster!
- See "fine, white film".
- Finally, it's dry. Finally we re-prime.
- Finally we paint color onto the wall -- a rich, chocolate brown. We stand back and admire our work. You'll notice there's no brown paint in the pictures above.
- Realizing that a bathroom the size of ours becomes a cave when painted a dark color, we return to Home Depot and find another color.
- We re-paint the walls!
- We wait.
This whole plaster-sand-texture-prime-paint business took about a week. Maybe more as I've blocked out most of the associated memories. I'm only able to tell you about this much because I wrote despairing journal entries detailing the whole mess.
OK. That part about the journal entries was a lie. I was way too frustrated to write journal entries.
Day...I Have No Idea: You Think You're Nearly Done But You're Not - We moved the vanity into the bathroom to see how she fit which turned out to be "not very well". There was a gap between the countertop and the wall at the back of the vanity so we discussed possible solutions which included shimming the front of the vanity, sawing off a portion of the back of the vanity, and torching the condo and walking away.
We ended up shimming the front of the vanity a little and then affixing a thin strip of wood to the wall just below the vanity line to serve as a platform for a line of silicone sealant. We bolted the vanity to the wall and sealed away.
We installed the trim. Not much to say about that.
We installed the toilet and discovered that the hose that feeds the toilet was too short. Not only that, but they don't sell longer ones. Anywhere. I had to create my own! Does that seem fair?!
We installed the storage cabinet. Possibly the easiest thing we did in the whole bathroom.
I hung the mirror. Then I installed the medicine cabinet only to discover that -- should I want to open the medicine cabinet -- I'd have to move the mirror down 2 1/2 inches. Which I did. There's a story about anchors here but the wound is too fresh.
I spent last Sunday installing the faucet which I imagine will take an hour tops. (If I've done anything well over the course of this project, it's ignore recent experience.) It takes four hours. There are leaks. Those leaks are fixed. Parts are missing and then discovered attached to previously-installed parts. And I find that the pull for the drain doesn't actually fit through the vanity because I followed the instructions which said to center the faucet in the hole. Had I moved the faucet forward, the drain pull totally would have fit. But at this point, silicone sealant is drying on the faucet's base and I'm tired so I decide we don't need to control the drain right now. Maybe next year.
Jenn installed the towel bar, hand-towel ring, and toilet paper roller. And she caulks the toilet.
And here we are. I would sum up, but reliving the last several weeks has taken a lot out of me including -- but not limited to -- my will to live. Rather than continue and risk my life, I'll leave the summing up for another time.
Sorry for any misspelling or grammatical errors. I'm only an English major and know nothing of such things. What's proof-reading? I'll never know.