Day 2

Today I just worked on removing wallpaper in the bathroom. The main part of the bathroom is nearly done - the floral stuff has been coming off pretty easily. The water closet however... that has been trouble. It has 2 layers of wallpaper and the older, ivy layer is very hard to remove without damaging the wall. It doesn't peel into two layers like the newer layer does. Tomorrow I will go get one of those wallpaper removal tools (I really don't know what they are called). Then hopefully I'll be able to finish up the water closet and be more or less done removing wallpaper!

The Bathroom - Day 1

Today we started the bathroom remodel. First there are a few before pictures to show off how scary it looks. Yes, that's Danielle celebrating something with the dog in the second picture.

The first thing to come off was all the baseboards. I was going to remove the door casings too but it really wouldn't do a whole lot. Only one came off, and that's the one that wasn't cut quite right by one of the closets. Next we took off the small cabinet in the water closet, and that gave us a great view of what the wallpaper looked like when the place was new. I think the older ivy pattern is better, but Danielle thinks the flowers are less scary. In the main part of the bathroom the layer with the ivy is already gone, so for the most part we only have one layer to remove.

After that we still had a little time left so I decided to have a go at the wallpaper. The wallpaper we have is the type that has a vinyl coating on the surface, so it's coming off in two parts. The good news is that it's been coming off MUCH easier than I've described. If you've ever considered removing wallpaper you've probably been told countless stories about how horrible it is, but it's really not that bad. The outer layer peels off, then a spray bottle with some Dawn dish soap mixed with water will loosen the paper layer below. It carefully peels off leaving the sheetrock below unharmed.

There will be plenty of pictures of that tomorrow - we made great progress today and Danielle is amazing at this part of the project so we're ahead of schedule. We will probably be busy removing wallpaper for at least another day or two before moving on to something else. My goal was to keep the bathroom useable for as long as possible, but that won't be the case for very much longer.

The calm before the work begins

It's no secret that I've been doing a lot more planning than actual work this spring. That phase will come to an end soon. So far for the bathroom I have every major source of materials figured out, except for the shower glass and granite and I do have a couple of places I'd like to talk to sometime soon. The good news is that if everything works out I won't have to look far when planning for the kitchen work. The final unknowns are just in the details. Hardware and sinks. I may actually go with Lowes for the sinks because they seem to be a lot more competitive than the place I stopped by earlier, but there has been a second place recommended to me who I plan on visiting.

I also have a detailed project plan to work to. It should take about a month to do the bathroom and another month to do the kitchen. So right now I'm just waiting for the semester to wrap up and for timing to be just right... it'll happen soon.

Where have I been???

It's been a while since I posted. Way too long, so where have I been and what have I been up to? It all comes down to one thing. This spring I've been given a wonderful opportunity to work with the flight test program back in Seattle until sometime in mid-April or so. It's been an enlightening experience learning a part of the program and company I've never been involved with before, and being around live aircraft every day (as opposed to building them) is loads of fun. So during the interim I've been planning and learning. LOTS of planning!

For the master bathroom we'll need more or less everything. Flooring, shower tile, cabinets, doors for the hamper, something for the walls... everything is going except for the mirror and the jetted tub. Even the tub will need work since there's no access panel to the pump and whatever else makes it run. Fortunately the layout will remain the same. Danielle and I have put a lot of time and energy into figuring materials out, and I've worked hard figuring out exactly *how* to demo and rebuild a bathroom.

There's a lot of stuff out there you never think about. Like the shower pan - I had no idea what was under the tile, but it's a complex system built and designed to keep moisture from getting to the cement board. My biggest concern with the project is removing the existing tile. It's not original like the stuff I removed about 6 months ago that was a total nightmare, but that was a bad enough experience so that I'm going to try farming that part of the job out. The shower tile shouldn't be a problem since on the floor there it's installed on a mud bed that sits on top of a plastic barrier. Pull up on the barrier after you remove the tile from the walls, and out it comes!

Enough about the details - here are some pictures of what the materials we're considering look like. The marble is already on order so that's taken care of. The pieces arrange in a pattern and are of several shapes and sizes. It matches with the cultured marble in the bathtub much better in person. The two materials will not be next to each other anyway since only the actual bathtub part will remain. The front is seen in this picture which will be replaced with a wood panel.



Cabinets - we both like the dark wood look from an earlier post. The walls will be blue (to match what the bedroom) venetian plaster. Glass mosaic, countertops, shower tile and accessories are up in the air. Here are the samples for the shower tile and glass mosaic.



To be honest I'm not completely happy with either. The bottom set of samples look nice, but may be a bit too dark (but might give a good contrast with the walls...) For the top one the shade of blue seems odd. We will continue looking at tile after I get back in April.

In the meantime I'm going to be on the John Bridge Tile Forums a LOT because there's tons of knowledge to be gained there and I want to have a good plan for moving forward with this because after the bathroom is done we're moving on immediately to the kitchen!

Broken Garage Door

On our way out to a New Year's Eve party yesterday one of the garage door springs broke. I fixed it this morning, and here's a quick writeup on how to do the job yourself.

First the damage... this is what I came home to.


One dead spring, one broken safety cable. It's important to replace the safety cable because it's what kept the broken spring from flying into the wall, one of the cars or the door. If the spring is strong enough to hold up the garage door it's strong enough to do some damage to you or anything in the garage.



First open the garage door and secure it with a C clamp through the track. To attach the safety cable, first run the loose end through a hole in the framework by the garage door opening (you can see it in the last picture). Now thread the straight end of the cable through the middle of the new spring. Attach it to the framework indicated below by wrapping it through the holes and securing the loose end.



Now you can attach the spring assist cable. Secure the loose end of the cable in the framework located at the top of the garage door. Now wrap the other end of the cable back through the pulley attached to the spring.



The last step is to attach the looped end of the cable to the peg at the bottom corner of the garage door.



Now you can remove the clamp in the garage door track and reattach the garage door opener.

The first time you do the job it will probably take about an hour. But if you have to do it again the job goes by much faster. This is the second time I have repaired this kind of garage door and it took about 20 minutes.

Congratulations! You've saved yourself at least $100 or so by not needing to call someone out to service it.

Simple Redecorating

Since I don't have any big projects going on (the bathroom is still in early planning stages and the kitchen is only an idea), it wasn't hard for Danielle to talk me into doing a little something to make the living room a bit nicer.

So now the living room has new curtains. Thank you, Bed Bath and Beyond. Curtain rods from Lowes.





It's easy to focus on what we haven't figured out and forget about what we've done. What we know:

- Travertine in place of the existing ceramic tile around the fireplace - coming this spring.
- Stone in the bathroom... more travertine? Either on the floor or the shower surround? Some of the distributors online have great prices.
- Walls will may be some kind of plaster finish, either tan or blue?
- New bathroom countertop, but not sure what material...
- Still not sure about the cabinets but would like to get new doors for the hamper to match.
- Luckily we won't need to move utilities which is great news to us.

2010 is shaping up to be a huge year for us once we figure out the details behind all of these changes.

Bathroom Planning...

Since I'm away from home right now I don't have any fresh pics of what the main bathroom looks like right now. That's probably a good thing since it's still the same as the last pictures. How could I take down the awesomeness that is the wallpaper that's up right now anyway???




Ok seriously now I can hardly wait to change this room up, but I've never done a whole lot to remodel a bathroom before so this will be a totally new experience. We do have a few ideas though. For one, whatever color scheme we go with will need to play nicely with the main bedroom which will probably become some shade of light blue next year. I have no idea why it's a slightly darker shade of green from the rest of the downstairs right now, but whatever. The other big constraint is that it'll have to work out with the existing tub. It turns out that it's a color that works out really nicely with a lot of readily available shades of natural stone, it's also staying. Cabinets will come out, hamper will stay.

Anyway here are some ideas we're considering. This sort of color scheme for the shower with the tan and blue. We would also tile to the ceiling:


Perhaps this color for the cabinets? The trouble is, the hamper is painted white and removing the paint, staining and finishing it to match any wood-colored cabinets may be difficult if possible at all. So far I haven't found a good paint remover that will handle the original oil-based off-white that hides underneath a couple of coats of white latex. Existing cabinets will probably not be reused in order to add storage space in the space where a vanity seat would go now.


Maybe this sort of tile for the backsplash behind the sinks, but with a bit less yellow or green?


At this point everything is just ideas anyway. Comments or thoughts are welcome!