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 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!