Thursday, August 30, 2012

Gratuitous Girlie Pics








Who are these girls with the long, long legs?? I'm afraid they might not be babies anymore.

How old do you think they have to be before we can send them out to pick us up a pizza?

Monday, August 13, 2012

Bathroomageddon 2012 - The Aftermath

So, here we are. I can say that we have a bathroom. I can't say that it's finished. It is functional, and I have taken two whole showers in it (whole in that the faucet didn't fall off mid-way through because the anchor bolt was missing, scratching the tub, scaring me half to death, and forcing me to finish washing the soap out of my eyes in the bath. That is why it isn't three whole showers). We are moving our stuff in and cleaning everything up, so it's pretty much finished.

Let's just say that our contractors had too many excuses and not enough work ethic. They dragged and dragged, were absent more days than they showed up to work, had to be forced to redo so many things that were obviously wrong, and had a million reasons why we were crazy and they weren't screwing up. They were supposed to be finished so many different days, and finally we just snapped. They didn't finish last Thursday, which was their drop dead last day to work on our project because the project manager was getting married Friday and the crew were all attending. So the tiler and the painter said they'd be back on Saturday to wrap up the last bits of finish work. Then the main contractor and owner of the company said he'd stop by on Saturday, too, to look at the (other, previous) scratches in the tub that the sub-contractors had made, so we were expecting them all between 8 and 9 am on a weekend day when we could have been doing something else.

They did not show up. They also did not call. Mike called them three times and left messages, one of which said that if they did not show up that day and finish the job, we would get someone else to finish it and subtract the cost from the money we owed them. He then also sent an email detailing what was left and repeating the threat. They did not come. They did not call.

The following day, Sunday, we cleaned everything up as there was still saw dust and paint sanding dust and grout dust and paint splatters EVERYWHERE and the garage was trashed. Mike hung the towel rods and put in the door knob and the exterior of the shower light and attached one of the electrical socket face plates. He also hung up a temporary shower curtain rod because we are supposed to have one of those fancy double curved curtain rods that screws into the tile, but not only did the tiler not install it on Thursday like he promised to do, but the box is actually missing several pieces of the mounting hardware. So that's just a major snafu all around. Now we have to order the pieces from the manufacturer, and Mike will have to drill into the tile to mount it. Fingers crossed!!

And there are still several things left to do. A new electrician of our choice will be coming this week to put up the light fixture over the medicine cabinet, which should have been easy enough to do ourselves except the box it attaches to in the wall is not really centered over the mirror and vanity. He'll also have to fix the main light switch because it is so deep in the wall that we can not put the face plate on. We will have to sand the drips and smears out of the paint on the door and repaint it ourselves (or hire someone to do it, but we'll probably do it), attach the cabinet hardware to the vanity, and tile the backsplash (it is only about two pieces of tile, but still)! There's also a weird hole behind the toilet we have to fix somehow. Oh, and the stairwell is pretty beat up, so it will have to be repainted, at least in spots. Sigh.

Well, that's the painful part. As for the look of it, I think it turned out as I had wanted it to. Once the pain and anguish blow over and the memory of the turmoil fades, I think we'll enjoy how clean and fresh it is. So without further ado, here is our new bathroom...

(Well, OK, with some further ado: I just feel the need to remind you that I am neither a professional designer/stager nor a decent photographer, so please don't compare these photos to anything you've seen on houzz.com! Yes that's our bath soap in the picture and our toothbrushes don't match the decor. I did remove the potty seat and the wet washcloths draped over the tub before snapping the pictures. Go me!)

Notice the missing drawer pulls and backsplash

There are also no tiled-in corner shelves in the shower. Thanks, tile guy!

Pretty new door, no switch plate

The radiator cover looks much better, and the pipe that used to stick out
 of the floor and burn your foot is under the tile now. Pretty!


Floor tile - duh. Do I have to explain everything to you? Geez.
I think I need to mop it again; there's still some white paint dust in the grout lines.

The medicine cabinet - maybe my favorite part of the new bathroom.
So much storage, so many mirrors!

No light.

That is one of the missing drawer pulls on the counter top as an example of what they will look like.

We need to get the little ring that goes here and probably figure out how
to make the hole a little smaller. Grout? Caulk? Who knows.
  
I'm still kind of mulling over the wall paint color. I had initially thought I would paint them a very light pearl grey, but then we ended up choosing grey tile for the floors and that seemed like gloomy overkill for a room that doesn't get much sunlight. But now it seems VERY white, so I may go back to the grey. I'm going to live with it white for a while and see if I change my mind. Overall, I think the black and white and grey and yellow look nice together and kind of classic-meets-contemporary. Hopefully it will hold up well over time. The girls give it four thumbs up!

Monday, August 6, 2012

Bathroomageddon 2012 Update

The bathroom is awful. Awful. I hate to talk about it. It makes me ill. I went up to NH last week with the girls just to escape from it (and take showers and not have to tell the girls to stop hollering up the stairs to the contractors about unicorns who like tea parties), but it didn't get finished so I'm back at home having to face the beast again.

There was just so much trouble trying to coordinate all the subcontractors during the last two weeks - the plumber, the electrician, and the carpenter - that very little actually got done each day and the delays piled up. Add to this a series of screw ups - yes, you do have to put insulation behind the wall board; we insist you start over - and the project is just crawling.

Here's where we are now. The tiler is upstairs right this second putting in the tile, so hopefully I'll actually have something to show you by tomorrow!
 
The new door (with no trim around it)

Walls!

The plywood is mock-ups Mike made of where the vanity and toilet will sit - slightly off kilter from centered on the wall, but whatever. At this point, whatever.

Mike found this behind the shower. It says, "Remodled 1975 by Joe Luongo 53 yrs. old."