Days 33-40 - Our Plumber Is Our Hero

This house became our house almost six weeks ago.  From that first demolition day til today, hardly anything remains of the original fixtures inside!  By next week we should be able to say, "Welcome to our 'new' house."

As much as we like to "Do It Yourself", this house - especially the plumbing - has taught us to appreciate the value of professional help a lot more.  From that big gash in the major waterline to an incredibly heavy old tub to leaky shutoff valves, we are thankful for the pros.  Even the laminate floor install turned out to be a blessing since the professional installers did way more repairing and leveling than we would have thought to do.

This past week we definitely need them again.  The "plumber" we've been using is really more of a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to home repairs.  His son helps and his brother is a trim carpenter so between the of three of them, they can accomplish a lot!  We hired them again to come out Monday to install the new banisters for the stairway.  It looks amazing!  The balusters we chose are metal and have two "twist" designs in each rod.  We put these in upstairs on the landing and on the bottom half of the stairway.  One thing I really appreciate about this crew is their attention to detail. On the bottom half of the stairs, they put a baluster every 3 inches so little Maria can't fall through (the previous balusters were 9 inches apart!).  On these balusters, he lined them up with care to create a perfect diagonal line between the tops of each twist descending down the stairs.  It's a small thing, but I love the precision.  Daniel had sprayed the new handrail and newel posts white over the weekend.  They need touched up, but it's already a major improvement!  Here are some before (taken before we even owned the house) and after photos.  Carpet goes in on the stairs next week.

Daniel has finished tiling over the gross old counters and it looks great!  He also put in a small 4 in. back splash matching the counter tile.  Right now the edge of the tile is pretty sharp so we're going to soften the edge a bit with a tile grinder.  The hardware for the cabinets is "coming soon". We chose a granite composite sink.  Supposedly they are excellent for resisting scratches and staining.  I'll let you know if that's true once we move in.  Daniel put in new white trim around the window.  And now appliances have all arrived so this place is starting to feel like a kitchen again!

 

Just a reminder of what it looked like before we bought the house:

Daniel pulled out the old sink and planned to hook up the new one himself the next day.  The next morning when I went to the house, I found a slow leak coming from the water line, flooding the cupboard and pooling... you guessed it, on our beautiful new laminate floor.  I had terrible visions of warped floor boards in my head as I scurried to wipe it up.  So much water had leaked that it was dripping through the basement ceiling.  We set up three fans to blow on the floor for the next 18 hours and prayed for the best.  Thankfully, none of the board have warped so far.  Since John (our not-really-a-plumber plumber) was already coming Monday with his brother to do the other work, we just added this shutoff valve repair and sink install to his list.  I'm glad we're finding all these leaks and getting them fixed BEFORE we move in!  Shutting off the main water valve is not as much of an inconvenience when you don't live there.

John was also tasked with installing the over-the-range microwave.  He was a lot cheaper than Lowe's install rate and, as with so many of our projects, there were issues.  The electrical cord that had connected the previous vent hood was actually dangerous and a fire hazard.  So John and his son ran a new breaker for the microwave and installed a new plug.  Again, thank goodness for professionals!  Had we done it ourselves, we would have never known it needed rewiring.  It's possible we could have burned the house down when we started using the microwave... gulp. 

John's son handled the drywall repair.  He was able to blend the textures pretty evenly.  Now we just have to paint those areas (again). 

I attempted to install the new light fixture in the powder room while Daniel was at work.  Sometimes I like to pretend I know how to do these things...  I really do think I could have done it myself had it not been for issues with the mounting screws not fitting the box.  Apparently they had used an outlet receptacle instead of the larger box for a light fixture - weird.  We found some other screws to fit and Daniel finished the job.  I'm going to put up a mirror in here instead of replacing the medicine cabinet.  We didn't patch the hole though since it will be covered by the mirror and leaves the option open for a medicine cabinet later.  So if you ever come over for a visit... don't look behind the mirror!

A tip on bathroom vanities - We chose the Allen + Roth Norbury vanities in different sizes for all three bathrooms.  The largest vanity for the guest bath had a cracked counter due to being shipped without the center support piece.  When we went to Lowe's to exchange it, 2 out of the 3 other vanities were also cracked due to shipping!  The powder room vanity was supposed to go in Monday.  It had a hairline crack in the sink.  Surprise surprise, the other two vanities in that size at our local Lowe's were also cracked.  Aargh!  I ended up driving to another Lowe's 30 minutes away just to get one vanity that wasn't cracked.  Overall, I love how these vanities look and so far (without really using them) they seem to be of good quality.  I think they just package them poorly for shipping.  So word to the wise, if you're picking one of these up, make them open the box to check the counter and sink before you take it home.  Save yourself the extra trips to the store.

So as you can see, the house is coming along.  I've started the cleanup process, and it's going to take awhile.  Just the amount of dust on all our furniture will be a lot to clean up.  But fortunately, I have friends to help!  Faith came on Saturday and we spent some quality time together sharing a bucket of soapy water.  Good company makes every job easier!

By this time next week, we hope to be moved in!  Wish us luck.  We'll update you after the move. It's starting to make more sense to update the blog weekly so I will be shifting to more of that type of schedule.  Daily is a little too much for this busy gal!  I got tired of staying up past one in the morning writing. :)

In the mean time, keep dreaming!

Day 28-32 - Harder Than It Looks!

Friday
The installers were back at it Friday to finish laying the laminate floor.   They had poured a few areas with self-leveling concrete on Wednesday to even out the sub floor.  But by Friday, a few areas were still not completely dry and set.  They'd never seen that happen before and even called the  local sales rep for the product to come out to take a look.  Not wanting moisture to seep into our new flooring, they came back Monday to do the last two areas that still were showing moisture from the drying concrete on Friday.  We are very happy with the floors!  Here are some before and after shots - excuse the dirt. The walls in the hallway look kind of yellow in the photos, but they are the Autumn Mist color that is in most of the house.

Saturday & Sunday
Guess what!  I got to paint more!  Thrilling stuff folks.  But it is nice to have fresh paint everywhere.  Over the weekend I focused on painting inside all the storage closets - hallway linen, over the stairs,  master bath linen, coat closet and pantry.  We're using a semi-gloss white paint for all closet interiors and doors to help cover wear and tear.  I've never really painted with semi-gloss before, but let me tell you, it is slick!  The first coat I put on looked like a two year old had painted it.  I rolled, then cut and the paintbrush took more paint off than it put on.  The second coat went on much better.  And now the closets looks so fresh it made it worth the time I spent painting in places most people will never see! 

There's a neat storage closet on the upstairs landing that goes over the stairway.  I didn't realize it until I climbed inside to paint it but that thing is huge!  I stood straight up inside it so it's at least 5'3" tall and about 4 feet deep.  I'll be honest, while I was standing inside it painting I thought to myself, "I think we'll use this closet to store extra bedding.  Then as soon as Maria is old enough to really play hide-and-seek, I'm totally hiding in here!"  It's true, I'm still 10 years old at heart. 

Daniel sanded, primed and painted all the cabinet doors and drawers.  It was fairly nice outside so he was able to work on the covered patio.  I can't wait to open all the windows at the house when it gets closer to 70 later this week!

Monday
We're finally ready to start reassembling the kitchen.  As much as we would have loved new counters and cabinets for the kitchen, for now we are making the old ones work with just some sprucing.  Unfortunately, the drawers are in pretty bad shape.  One was actually supported by duct tape on the bottom...  Yikes.

 But we can make it work - it's what we do.  When we brought the doors back in to start reattaching them, we made an unfortunate discovery.  Somehow, when we detached the doors from the hinges, we broke the pin that held the two pieces of the hinge together.  It was a hidden hinge, but an outdated design.  After a quick trip to Home Depot, we found that the only hidden hinges available in the store now were the kind that require a cut out in the doors for the hinge.  Of course these ancient doors don't have the cut out so we had to put up visible hinges.

I'll be honest, I kind of assumed that to hang a cabinet door you just screwed the hinge to the door, then held that sucker up to the frame and screwed down the hinge.  Yeah, not so much.  It's a lot more difficult than I thought it would be!  Those hinges were tricky to get just right.  You'd think it was lined up, but it wasn't flush against the wood or the top was right but the bottom slid out of place.  Goodness.  The first three doors were tough, but Daniel got pretty good at it after that.  We banged up our paint job pretty bad so I will need to touch that up this week.

Daniel's dad had wired all the ceiling fans for us but left off the blades so we could paint the ceilings around the fan bases.  Attaching the blades was another job that turned out trickier than I would have thought.  There's very little space to work with the screws that attach the blades to the unit, and of course I kept dropping the screws.  I did get one fan finished though.  I love that I'll get to have a ceiling fan in the kitchen!

We're starting Maria off in the "family business" of home remodeling early.  I had her at the house for a bit before I took her to a friend who offered to babysit.  She "helped" me touch up the paint on the cabinets.  During the process, she managed to almost stick her hand in the paint bucket, eat my hair, and grabbed a paper towel for a pre-dinner snack before I got it from her.  Needless to say working on the house is much easier when she's with someone else!  But hopefully we can instill a good work ethic in her from the start.  You've got to work for the things you want and sometimes that means holding a baby in one arm while you paint with the other!

Keep dreaming my fellow DIY-ers!

Day 25-27 - Renovation Rollercoaster

Tuesday

As you may have read in the previous post, we heard a drip coming from inside the powder room wall where we had installed the toilet directly above in the guest bathroom .  The plumber came out to take a look.  Remember the 4 layers of vinyl flooring we ripped out?  Well when you only replace it with one layer, the existing flange for the toilet is now too high.  Hence the wobbly toilet and bad seal.  So they put the toilet up on shims and we are going to seal the gap with caulking.  Problem solved!  Or so we thought.

That evening we went back to the house to take a look at the toilets and new vanities that went in upstairs.  Everything looked great until we saw this in the powder room...

That's a wet sub-floor.  So the leak wasn't just caused by the uneven toilet.  Another phone call to the plumber and he was back that evening.  My fears came true - they cut into my beautifully textured and freshly painted wall and ceiling.  But the good news?  I didn't cry about it.

The powder room and eat-in area of the kitchen both have a hole in the ceiling.  There's a one-inch slit in the large drain pipe that carries the water away from both of the upstairs bathroom.  Our plumber couldn't fix it, so he referred us to a certified plumber who would have the right tools (a torch, I believe) to fix such a large pipe.  The piece he needs should be in Friday to get the leaking section replaced.  We'll see how my wall/ceilings look after the patch!

On the bright side, the new vanities look lovely.  While a double vanity is awesome, neither of the bathrooms have a ton of space where the vanities go.  We probably could have squeezed in one with two sinks, but there would have been hardly any counter space.  Any gal getting ready in the morning will probably agree that counter space is a more precious commodity than another sink.  All three bathrooms have coordinating vanities in different sizes/configurations based on the space.  The guest bath is on the left with the master bath vanity shown on the right.  It's a little different but I liked having the different height pieces for the master.

Wednesday
The laminate installers arrived at 9 am to get started laying the Pergo flooring in the entryway, powder room, kitchen and dining room. This was one of those jobs that Daniel definitely could have done.  However, it's a big job!  And time = money.  Lowe's had a special to install the laminate at just 99 cents/sq foot.  At that price, it was worth it to save Daniel's limited time for other projects!

When they got there, they were concerned about the unevenness of the floor.  They spent most of the day patching the floor and leveling it so we would not have transitions between the entry/hall and rooms.  They will be returning to finish on Friday.  I will be so glad to not have anymore sub-floor showing in the house!  We've been walking on that dusty stuff for 4 weeks.  Watch for before and after pictures in the next post!

Thursday
Good fortune struck for the Goodwins! Our kitchen counters are currently situated to accommodate a slide-in range, where the controls are on the front and the counter goes behind the stove to overlap a bit in the back.  Typically, a slide-in costs at least double a traditional range so we planned on cutting the extra counter before we tiled to make room for a regular stove. 

On Wednesday, Daniel was browsing the Lowe's website and clicked on a stainless steel Samsung slide-in that you had to "add to your cart" to see the sale price.  Regular price was $1,800 (way too much to be spending on a stove).  In his cart, the price showed as $647 before tax.  That's a great price even for a regular range!  He quickly took a screen shot, then clicked to purchase it before they found what had to be an error in the price. 

Today he got an "Oops" email from Lowe's saying they had to cancel his order and would be sending him a "we're sorry" gift card.  Daniel called Customer Service to say he that he wanted the stove and didn't want the order to be cancelled.  The gal told him the range was in stock at our local Lowe's and could be picked up today.  Daniel rushed to Lowe's and picked up our new $1,800 stove, which was supposed to be on sale for $1,500, for less than $700 after tax.  Now that's a deal! 

Here's a partial look at the completed shower.  Grout should be done by this weekend.  It's been a busy week for us in other areas of our lives so we haven't been able to do as much as we would've liked to.  The real world carries on even while we hang in renovation limbo.  We are hoping to move in about two weeks.

Keep dreaming friends!

Days 22-24 - Power Tool Convert

Saturday
I have a confession - I've been avoiding the blog.  These last few days have been, well, a little frustrating.  I avoided writing any new posts so I wouldn't have to admit it out loud!  But it's the truth and anyone who's done any remodeling to their home knows that some days just kind of stink.  Sometimes it gets hard and you think to yourself, "Will this ever end?"

Saturday we went to the house with the goal of getting one bathroom up and running - the guest bath.  Daniel had already laid the floor so all we needed to do was get the trim boards in and install the toilet and vanity.  No problem, right? So we thought.

We are putting white trim boards throughout the house.  While vacationing with his family in Branson, MO, Daniel convinced me he really needed a new saw - a Rigid 10" sliding miter saw - that was on a great sale at the Tanger factory outlet store.  Getting it home was interesting since he also had to get the giant stand with it, but we made it work.  Well I'm glad we got it now!  It works great for cutting the trim boards at a much more precise angle than his old saw.  I tried my hand at it.  One thing I learned, test to see where the blade is actually going to come down before cutting - don't trust the laser!

I worked on (in my opinion) the nastiest thing in the bathroom, the wax ring for the toilet. That thing seriously grosses me out.  However, it had to be done.  So I scraped up the old wax ring to ready the flange for the new ring.  The flange had a screw missing but I didn't think too much of it because I assumed it kind of all sealed together once the weight of the toilet was on it.  We kept the existing toilet because it was relatively new and just needed a good cleaning.  In our last house, the plumbing had been winterized two years before we bought it.  I scrubbed those toilets more times than I can count before the ring from the winterizing chemicals came out.  So I can handle a dirty toilet any day. 

Anyways we got the new toilet set with the new wax ring in place.  However, there was way too much wiggle in the unit after we had tightened the nuts to hold it in place.  This was probably my fault for not speaking up about the loose/missing screws in the flange.  Daniel flushed it a few times and no water appeared to be leaking so we went downstairs.  That's when I heard it.  A drip, drip drip was coming from inside the wall we had just replaced with new drywall in the powder room which is directly above that bathroom.  It sounds like we may have a leak.  I think I might cry if we have to rip out that beautiful fresh wall that was just textured and painted...  But we aren't sure so  our plumber is coming out on Tuesday.  It's possible the dripping sound was just inside the pipe and not actually dripping inside the wall.  I'm praying that's it!  We turned off the water and took the toilet back up.  To be safe, we are having the plumber install the toilet and vanity in this bathroom so he can check things out.

Sunday
Daniel worked on painting the doors of the built in linen closets above the stairs and in the master bath as well as the stringers on the stairs.  The wood was sanded down and primed, then sprayed with a semi gloss white paint.  Apparently the semi gloss is supposed to hold up better against wear and tear so it's what we will be using on all the doors in the house.  The carpet will cover over the edge of the steps.  We're still deciding what we want to do with the existing balusters and handrail.  Right now it's a bit dangerous at the top of the stairs with just a gaping opening since the banisters on the landing were removed by the previous owners.  So we will either paint or replace the existing pieces on the bottom half of the stairs, depending on what we find for the upstairs banisters. 

I guess what was frustrating about those two days is it just felt like not much progress was made.  The one major thing we tried to accomplish didn't go over well, and now we're worried about a leak.  We're starting to really feel anxious to move into the house.  There's so many of these small things (like painting a closet) we could do even easier if we lived there.  So hopefully we'll get to a place soon where we've achieved a livable status!

Monday

Today was exciting because I got to try something new - tiling!  Daniel is pretty good at tiling and has done it quite a bit.  That's how he convinced me to buy a new Rigid 7" tile saw on sale at Home Depot a year or so ago even though he had no projects going at the time.  It's turning out to be another good tool investment.  This new saw gives a pretty clean and accurate cut on the tile from the Restore for our master bath shower walls.  We decided to add a small accent row of the fancy glass tile from Home Depot.  We only needed 4 sheets of the accent tile, but those 4 sheets actually cost more than all the boxes of full-sized tile for the shower walls from the Restore.  I don't regret spending the extra money for the glass tile, but I do think it's kind of funny when you compare the cost.  That's why we shop Restore!  I'm loving how it's turning out and love it even more knowing I helped put it up.

I'll post another photo after we've grouted because that always makes a huge difference.  The only downside of this shower, no cut outs or ledges for all our soaps.  The existing walls just didn't really allow for it without going to a lot of trouble.  No worries though, I know I can get some handy suction caddies to hold our stuff.  Those ledges and cutouts just look prettier.  The tile will go all the way to the ceiling and I think it's going to look awesome!

I think Daniel is loving that I'm into our renovation project so much.  Before, when he would talk about wanting a new tool, I would always go through the whole spiel of, "Do you really need that?  Why can't you just use this tool you already have?  What specifically are you going to use that for?"  But now, I'm thinking, "Yeah we definitely need a table saw.  Maybe we could get one for our anniversary in May?  I'll have to watch the sale papers..."  It's a whole new me!  Congratulations babe, you've converted me.  Now that I see the difference that the right quality tool can make, I'm hooked.

The more I learn to do, the more I dream of doing!