 | I may have done other things this past week, but the only thing that I remember is kicking this bathrooms ass. Some of you might know that I'm helping my pop-pop Teddy by slowing renovating things that he would like done. We've done the kitchen and downstairs powder room and he has us scheduled to paint the living room ceiling this fall. Also, he wants Troy to nail a stray nail in the gutter, remove/replace some asbestos siding and paint the 20+ foot close-line poll (I think he's going to have to stand on my shoulders. He's tall, but damn, not that tall).
Oh, Pop-pop, why the fuck not. Your awesome. He's one of my most favoritest people ever, and since my mom is gone, my sister's (primarily) and mine main concern. He's old and can't really see dirt anymore (hahahahahahahaha), but the best and I would gladly do it all over to make him happy.
Anywhat, here is a photo diary of what went down.
Friday, 3/4/07 - Monday, 3/7/07: Home, Pa: Bathroom Renovation.
We started this renovation like we start all of them: with the best of intentions, hoping for the worst but planning for the best & absolutely no concept of the time involved. I think that if it wasn't for the floor we would have gotten done by Troy's lofty goal on afternoon Sunday.
The renovation started early Saturday morning around 7:30. It was 70+ degress with plenty of sun. We were optimistic.For more photos of the whole process, and a detailed and somewhat entertaining tale of the process, go to my flickr page.
The before:
I know, cute! I love this bathroom and I really loved the floor that is in this photo. It was very George Jetson - white with pink and blue squares. All gone now. The whole thing was 50s all the way.
After we ripped the hell out of the bathroom, this is what we were left with. The contractor who put in the sink and the toilet about 12 years ago was a prick and cut the hell out of the floor. The area below was cut into 15 pieces when it should have been 3. This is when we understood the full gravity of how much our weekend was going to suck.
We could have done the floor in a easier way: dropping new sub floor and laying linoleum like in the kitchen. But linoleum sucks and the glue to hold it down with is maddening. Maddening!!!
We went the route of adding new planks. The bathroom is only 5x9. How long could it take? Forever is the answer.
(You can see where the original toilet was attached to the wall. Awesome!) There was 3 layers of wallpaper on the walls (one was linen! one was Oriental!) and luckily it all came off easily. Atleast one layer dates to 1929.
Sanding. I'm pretty sure if I end up in hell, it will be on sanding duty. Going to the gyno is way more fun. I would still rather sand than have a baby, if that tells you what my priorities are.
My boogies were black despite the dust mask.
I'm not afraid of color and I really wanted a yellow room. This is called Buttered Toast, but it is more sunshine than country crock.
We also added wainscotting. This was another circle of hell, but we are way better at it after using it on the 12x13 kitchen that we did last year.
My brother, bless his heart, helped the best that an 11 year-old can do. He's going to be chubby like his sisters until puberty is over.
This photo of the floor is deceiving. You can't tell that the nails that they use are old, steel and a million inches long. You also can't tell how the boards go under the wall 2 inches. Nor that this is right over the kitchen table that we could have landed on at any time. My klutz gene must have taken a break for the weekend and I didn't fall once, although I did scrape my arm nastily while trying to pull up a board.
We could only take up 3-5 boards at a time so that we still had something to stand/kneel/rest the very-fucking-heavy-antique-claw foot tub. Yikes. This is the beginning of the floor switch.
Another major problem was that the floors in the house were all layed at the same time. This is a half-double in a mining town. All the houses on the block look the same, but are slightly different. I guess it's an old-time sub-division. But not shitty with yuppies.
Point being that the floors run across the span of the house, under ways and doors. This means that we had to do something of a hatchet job cutting the wood to install the new stuff. This included installing another joist. I'm positive that we needed a building permit for this kind of work, but fuck them. My hometown is corrupt and our money wasn't going to be stolen by the treasurer of the borough. It was going for Pizza and KFC.
Here is our new joist. I always wanted to use a joist hanger. I have now.
The next joist is probably under my heal. This supports both the new and old boards and saves someone from the excitement onto falling into the kitchen sink.
Here is the finished floor minus the toilet. Even though it looks like we're almost done, that is not so. We still have about hours of painting, installing and hooking up. You'll notice the toilet is still chilling in the backyard.
Tre, thank jebus, helped me paint while Troy cleaned up and pulled nails out of the old boards. Here is a nail. These are a son of a bitch to pull out and only proved to me that my boyfriend is strong and I am weak. And that I love crobars.
Tre thinks that she's a contractor/foreman. She's missing the pencil behind the ear but she did the work of a dude three times her size. And most importantly, she fed and watered us all weekend and went for trips to Home Depot/Lowe's when I know that she would rather have me punch her in the face instead. Thanks Tre!
Here is the finished product. I'm going to take more photos when it's all set up. This was about 10 p.m. monday. We worked on it until about 11. Then we left the mess for Tre to clean up while we made the 1 1/2 drive home.
We stopped for Chili Dogs and Mountain Dew. It helped alot. As did the Gorillaz and Franz Ferdinand.
Here is a comparison again: Just because I'm super fucking proud of all of us:
This really is enough to show how much work we put in. In just 72 hours with no sleep but full bellies. I didn't get to visit any other family while we were home, but I got to hang out with my brother, sister and Pop-pop and play fetch-antagonize Edie so it ended up being a good time.
And besides, I can't even remember how tired I was nor how much hard work we did. I know that everything was sore and there was an amazing amout of stress and anxiety, but it's nothing when you see how great it turned out.
Ok. So it wasn't anything death defying. And it probably wasn't even that interesting to most of you all. But there are a lot of pretty pictures. (Again, check out flickr for more!)
Til next week: Kiss my Ass!!!!!!!!!! |
