Month: February 2012

Construction is messy, isn’t it? Remind me again why we’re doing this??

You wouldn’t believe the dust build up … or maybe you would. It’s especially apparent when you have dark hardwood floors. When the sunlight shines through the windows and bounces off the floors it’s enough to make you pause, widen your eyes, and gasp in shock.

I have spent an insane amount of time this past week dry mopping and vacuuming the carpets than I have spent in the past two months combined. I know it’s part of the process but … wow. It makes you wonder just how much dust accumulates under NORMAL circumstances.

Kevin is cutting a vent hole in the front bathroom right now. I don’t know why our construction guys haven’t done it yet but I think the tile guy is supposed to come on Wednesday and we sort of need that vent hole since the front bathroom has been cut in half and no longer has one.

We’ve all taken a shower in the new shower now and I pretty much hate it. Not the shower itself, but the shower head facing the curtain is NOT going to work; Kevin completely soaked the floor this morning. We are going to buy a hose this weekend and hook it up so that it hangs on the left wall. That way, people can soap up and then spray off without constantly worrying whether the floor is being soaked or not. When Kevin designed the plans for our remodel, he never thought that the left wall would be rock and cinder blocks. We could have put the shower on the other side of the room, where the toilet is now, but Kevin didn’t want the focus of the room to be on the toilet when people entered the room.

Check back later and I’ll take you on a video tour of the bathrooms – when I’ve taken a shower myself. I’ve been busy catching up on some email requests this morning (because I’m still maintaining nine school websites after my “day” job) as well as doing about fifteen loads of laundry consisting mainly of towels. We’ve been going through a lot of towels wiping up messes and excess water.

*Side note: It rained a lot yesterday and our fireplace leaked A LOT. Like the most it’s leaked in, well, ever. Kevin went up into the attic to see what was going on and the plastic he had spread out in that area had completely disintegrated so that it was a waterfall up there. That’s next on our house-maintenance agenda – get that damn fireplace leak fixed once and for all. It’s been our Achilles’ heel ever since we moved into this house 19 1/2 years ago. The leak was so bad, it even soaked the hearth rug AND my new hardwood floor – I was pretty upset about that, but luckily, I heard the dripping and was able to clean it up before it had sat around for too long. It could have been worse; I could have waken UP to a huge mess and it could have soaked into the wood all night. In addition to the fireplace leak, we discovered that the faucets in the utility room had somehow worked themselves loose (Kevin thinks it might be because the construction guys have been turning the water on and off so many times this past week). I went to do a load of towels and was surprised to discover that they were completely soaked. Luckily, those towels had been there to soak up the water because again, I could have woken up to a room full of water this morning; when it rains it pours, I guess. (Ha!)

Oh well. We’ll make it work – “we” always do. (I.E. Kevin).

I’m too tired to take pictures of our evolving bathroom. It was one heck of a week.

Who am I kidding, EVERY week is one heck of a week.

I’m going to Branson tomorrow – with a nurse and an MA.

That won’t be awkward.

Anyway …

The front bathroom is coming along nicely. We have a toilet in the front bathroom and the shower is now functional, too.

*Side note on the toilet: It sucks. At least, it doesn’t flush as well as our old one did. Kevin told me it has something to do with yet another asinine government regulation – the whole can’t flush too much or we’ll kill our planet nonsense. How is it saving energy to flush a toilet five times instead of two? Seriously … government is so stupid.

Jazz will be the first one to break our new shower in tonight. We’re now exclusively using the front bathroom. The back bathroom was completely gutted today – much to my surprise and horror.

(Horror because I MEANT to clean everything up [i.e. toilet mainly] before they got to that part, but no one warned me and … UGH. Don’t you know remodeling bathrooms must be NASTY?!?)

The electrician came out and put the wiring for the sconce lights in the front bathroom … only, we hadn’t picked them out yet. I just got back from Lowe’s (Kevin is at band practice), and I picked out some sconces I liked. It’ll be interesting to see if Kevin agrees with my choice since we rarely agree on anything style wise and end up compromising (i.e. Kevin usually gets his way).

I also bought the mirror to put over our sink – WHICH, by the way, looks pretty damn nice in that bathroom, I’ve got to say. I wasn’t sure about buying a sink with a small cabinet but I’m so glad Kevin got his way (again) and talked me into it because it really does look nice in there. I also found a cabinet with three small straw baskets on shelves that I think will look pretty fabulous on the wall behind the toilet. I’m a little concerned about the walls – I think the wall guy is going to mud the parts of the wall he added/fixed and leave the rest of the walls to us. We (Kevin always gets annoyed when I say “we” when it really means “him”), textured the walls and though they looked cool, we’re so over textured walls, which means, “we” will have to sand the walls down and mud before “we” repaint. (Actually – I sort of like painting).

The construction guys are going to put a corner shelf in our shower. We had initially asked for a shelf to be built into the shower, but again, those dang walls are too thin to do anything like that, so we’ll have to compromise (again) and go for the corner shelf. Which is sort of cool, I guess, and is certainly better than having a shower caddy.

I don’t know when the tile guy is going to show up and do his magic – hopefully soon.

So the front bathroom is nearly finished – or as finished as it will be before we get in there to paint and add our own finishing touches. I’m looking forward to seeing how much of the back bathroom the guys get done before the weekend.

We have them.

I know it doesn’t look it? But the room is actually turning out to be bigger than I imagined. Of course, we don’t have the sink in there yet …

Still not crazy about the shower head on the back like that … but that’s as good as it gets, I’m afraid.

The construction guys taped off where our mirror will go …

Picture a small (think SMALL) sink/cabinet under the mirror. The electrician is supposed to come by tomorrow – we’re putting sconces on either side of that pretend mirror.

The guys also knocked out the back bathroom wall …

We’re moving that toilet and putting it up against the wall. The tub will go back in the area behind the toilet and the shower you see there now? Will be gone and we plan on putting a huge cabinet in that space for dirty clothes and bathroom “stuff.”

The guys are making progress. I have yet to even meet them. They always come after I leave for work and are gone before I get home from work. I told Kevin to thank them for keeping everything so CLEAN. I can’t believe how nice they clean up after themselves. It’s like we don’t even know anything is going on – they just shut the door and *POOF* no construction mess.

I’ll link to our construction guys when this is all over … I’d like to give them a fair critique of their work, but so far? I’m very pleased.