Bathroom Remodel - More Drywall

I still don't like doing drywall mudding but the results are looking good. There are a few small areas that I'm going to have to correct, but over all I'm pretty happy with the results.

We desided that we are going to add a knock down texture to the ceiling. We scraped all the terrible 'popcorn' off, but it being perfectly smooth is unlikely so a light texture just makes good sense. It'll hide the little issues.

We've also reconsidered doing wainscoting. We were considering it originally then decided not to do it. Now we are going to do it again. Of course that could change again before we are done.

I think we are about ready to get the backer board on the floor and get the Kerdi on the shower walls. That means tile shouldn't be too much further out.

Bathroom Remodel - Day 10

It's hard to take pictures in a bathroom, the space is just so small.

We've been finishing up the demo this last week. It's been a slow go. Mostly just because we are not in a rush, so we'd do a much as we wanted and then just quit for the day.

We did get the drywall all up though. Started mudding. I hate that part. Ugh. From the pictures you can see I still need to put up the corner beads.

You can also really see how big of a space we've gained. We're going to fill it full of cabinets.

We also got the tub out finally. I had to smash it to bits with a sledge-hammer. That was a mess. After inspecting the tub/shower plumbing we've decided to leave it be and just buy a new cover/handle for it. Two reasons: One, the work involved with changing the plumbing was going to be a lot because of how the house was built. Two, this is a lot cheaper. The set with bought for the bathroom wasn't terribly expensive, but it was overkill for the room.

So we have to finish the drywall, then it's tub time. We have to have the floor vent moved still too. That'll have to be done soon. We can't do the floors until that is complete.

Bathroom Remodel - Day 3 - A new space

Day three took a lot out of me. Sticking your head into a hot attic for awhile really takes a lot out of you quickly.

I was able to remove the fireplace ducting into the attic. Then I started rebuilding the ceiling where the fireplace went through. After that was done framing started going in. My buddy Dean gave me a hand with that, especially when we had to go get some 2x4s. I didn't think of needing them when we made our initial Home Depot order.

Framing everything in helps us see that we have a box that'll be about 22x23 in the corner now. It also makes the bathroom feel so much larger than it was.

We also closed up the hole into the den. We're not going to worry too much about how pretty it is because that wall is going to get cabinets in the future. The den will likely become the new dining room then too. Those are later projects though.

Monday (Day 4) we didn't do much more than pull the paper and boards from the floor of the den and clean up, since we are done in there. It's all bathroom now.

We had an HVAC guy come out today to seal up the old fireplace chimney and help us figure out where to move the bathroom air vent. Glad to have that done even if I didn't like having to bring in a 3rd party to do it.

Tonight we should be able to close up the new space in the bathroom.

So it begins...

So, we closed on our new house on Wednesday afternoon. The last few nights we've really not done anything over there. We moved a few things into the garage but that is it. The main reason for that is the work we are doing prior to move in.

1. New carpets in the basement. One room only had linoleum and that wasn't going to work. The other room, well, I'll explain that in #2.
2. Opening up the main basement room. There are two large rooms in the basement. One is going to become a bedroom, the other is going to be my theater room. However it was apparently a bedroom in the past, with a closet and door. Since neither are really right for a living space we started taking them out. There will be some drywall repairs needed but the end result will leave the room feeling larger and more open. This needs to be effectively complete by Wednesday. That's when the new carpets are going to be installed.
   The carpets need to be installed this week so we have some place to move stuff. Why not upstairs? That's #3.
3. New hardwood floors through out the entire upstairs (minus the kitchen). We are having bamboo floors installed through the entire upstairs. We elected to do the carpet removal ourselves. I'll have to get jumping on that after #2, but I think that'll be ok as we have a couple weeks before the floors can be installed.
4. Last but not least is the kitchen. It's not as significant of a remodel as our last kitchen but it's still pretty big. Luckly the cabnets are perbuilt this time so I won't have to spend so much time building them first. Even the doors are prehung so they should go up pretty fast. We'll be tiling the floor. The bamboo seemed a bit too soft for a room where metal objects could potentially fall.

So there is a LOT of work to be done. Today we started. We painted the bedroom downstairs. It wasn't bad but it was a rather cold and boring gray color. It's now a nice cheerful pale blue. We used the same color in our master bedroom as well.

The master bedroom was a bit more work. We had to remove all the base board (for the bamboo floor) and reove the carpet, carpet pad, tack strips and staples. It was actually easier than expected.

Finally, in addition to all the painting, we started removing the closet from the basement 'den'. That was nearly completely removed when we left for the night. I still have about a 4 foot wall section to remove (don't worry it's not load bearing) and I have to relocate the light switch. That is for tomorrow.

I have tomorrow off so I'll finish opening up the room and then get the drywall and mudding going. Wall patching will go easy enough, but the 'pop corn' ceiling will be a pain to repair. I need to do some homework on that. Then I should be able to pull that old carpet and prep the room for the new carpet. I probably won't get to paint, as the drywall mud always seems to take forever to dry and of course there is the sanding, however, I'll probably pick up some paint. I saw some returned paint that might work in there. If any of the colors work, then I'll be set. If not, meh, paint is cheap.

I'll try to remember to take pictures tomorrow.