Henbogle

Today, we got the beadboard panel up on the back of the shower fixture wall, made baseboard and ceiling molding for it, painted them and will install by the end of the day.  Whew!  Dan cleverly marked the heights of all the interior framing in the wall, then took photos for future reference.  Then up went the beadboard and we closed it up.  I’m so happy to have that done.

Dan is working on adding an outlet in the beadboard cubby under the mirror.  No more plugging in the hair dryer next to the faucet.  GFCI outlet or not, that just gave me the heebie jeebies, especially after i saw the episode of Six Feet Under where the cat electrocuted her owner by knocking the hot rollers into the tub while the owner is bathing.  Mercedes would do that, if she had the chance.  Anyway, I love this new feature, it might be my favorite part of the whole renovation deal.

We’re almost done.  What’s left, you ask?  Dan is working on re-fitting the door to the frame.  He had to make a new piece of molding and install the strike plate so the door would latch.  There’s a little more caulking to do, then I need finish painting the door frame and the back of the door.  And we need to pick a new color for the other side of the door, and all the doors on the first floor.  That’s got us both stymied.  It needs to be a shade that looks good with all the colors we’ve got going in the house.

When we moved in we both knew we wanted color.  Most of the walls in the house were an uninspiring off-white, which did nothing to enhance the warmth and charm of the pine wainscoting.  So we added color and lots of it.

We’ve got

The pine wainscot, very similar to this color, throughout the houseThe living room color, Behr Fox Hollow green,  This image looks a but dusty to me, it is a piney green shade.

Then in the kitchen we have Behr Beaverwood, a nice taupe shade.

And finally in the dining room we have this great red, Ralph Lauren Maleya Red.   All these years later and I still love this shade.

We’ve got furniture painted in all the above shades plus this delicious greeney blue, Sherwin Williams Teal Stencil.

So, suggestions for the doors?  They are currently a muddy off white/tan/cream shade, blech.  I suppose one option would be to strip them, but… no.  If I had a handy staffer to tackle these jobs, maybe, but I think paint is the answer.  The question is the color.  I’d love to hear your suggestions!

Vacation week has arrived at last, and as is our wont, it will include some DIY projects, namely finishing up the bathroom renovation!  We decided to recruit a trained professional to install the tile shower surround, but Dan and I spent today preparing for it by removing the last of the hideous blue shower.

We were both dreading this, recalling how painful the floor tile removal was, but it was not bad, actually.  It probably took about 3 hours to remove all the tile and clean up, and another hour and a half to remove all the nails, screws and old caulk and take the paneling off the fixture wall.

By the end of the week, the bathroom should be finished.

Over the weekend, we got the bathroom walls and ceiling painted.  We did the ceiling first, and I was a little concerned about the yellow, but once we got the walls painted, I really like the colors.  The silvery gray walls and white beadboard look fresh and crisp, yet the floor, yellow ceiling and vanity really warm the room.

I’m an awful painter, so naturally I got some gray paint on the ceiling and the freshly painted light fixtures.  I also dripped some of the freshly painted radiator cover, sigh.  Painting it was a HUGE PITA, but I am glad we did — except all the other radiators in the house now look awful.  I hate the fact that something so expensive is such flimsy crap.    Still on the to do list:

Caulking– the tub and baseboard, outside corner baseboard, vent cubby baseboard, vanity toekick/floor on toilet wall.

Paint touchups–  Ceiling, vanity window trim, vanity toekick, light fixtures, paint drip on radiator cover.

Painting — wall behind shower fixtures (brown wall seen in above photo), door trim and door

Repairs — re-make door trim so door will close & latch, hang door.

Shower — yep, that’s still as yet unloved and untouched.  Tile, shower niches, new valve and trim, buy and hang new shower curtain rod.

Before I made this list I was feeling pretty good about things.  Unfortunately, over the weekend I pulled my hamstring pretty badly while painting, so now the burden of the rest of this is on Dan.  We have decided to hire someone for the tile job, though.  More on that later.

Cranking along on the bath project, today we worked on the window trim and finished off the beadboard trim.  I even have a sneak peek of the new paint color!  Before adding the trim, we painted the walls to give us a nice base and to make it easier to do the final painting.  It doesn’t look all the spectacular yet, but the gray really pulls out the gray in the new curtain and the marble mosaic tile.

After a couple of coats of paint, we installed some molding and a cap to the beadboard, first giving the gap between the beadboard and the sheetrock a heavy bead of caulk to seal the drafts.  Once the trim was installed, Dan caulked it well with some latex paintable caulk.  Once that has cured, I’ll give the trim another coat of white paint, and touch up some of the other places Dan caulked.  I can’t get over how good it is looking, even if I do say so myself.  It is back to work for both of us tomorrow, but maybe this weekend we’ll get the ceiling painted.

Today I finished the new beadboard cupboard doors for the bathroom.  I sanded, painted and installed the trim, then hung the doors with a little help from Dan this morning.  I’m not wildly happy with the hinges, but they came from the local Habitat ReStore and were a budget friendly $1 per set. The other hinges I liked were a non-budget friendly price of $7 each, not including shipping.  Hmmm $5 or $63 plus shipping?  My inner cheapskate won that round.

All said, I’m really, really glad I decided to spend the extra money to make new doors.  I hated the old doors, and really love these, especially the yummy yellow doors on the vanity.  I am absolutely crazy about the color.  I have an old painted bureau in the laundry room which I think will get the rest of that yellow paint.

Back to the bathroom.  As per usual when working on these projects, installing the trim on the cupboard next to the vanity and squaring it up means that now the piece of wainscot between the vanity and the cupboard needs to be trimmed a little to fit, then re-painted.  Ugh.   I also need to trim the marble tile I purchased to go on top of the vent pipe cabinet.  I like the little extra bit of marble there, and it finishes off the cupboard nicely.

What’s left to do?  Well, Dan caulked the big window, and I’ve given it one coat of paint but it needs one more coat of paint, and then I need to sand, prime and paint the trim for the window over the sink.  Then the fixture wall of the shower enclosure needs to be sanded, primed and painted, and finally, the ceiling and walls painted.  That will just leave the tiling.

I can see the finish line from here, but there’s still quite a bit to complete before I can relax.  Still, I think I can take a little time off to look over my seed catalogs and get an order ready before all the Cheddar cauliflower sells out!

Over the weekend, Dan and I installed the sink.  With the new vessel sink, we simply needed to bore two holes in the plank top, one for the sink drain, and one for the faucet.  Once that was done, the sink sets atop the plank, and the drain is connected.  It uses a pop-up drain, which is not connected to the faucet.  The faucet drops into the hole and secures with a nut and the plumbing connected to the supply lines.

Of course, there were complications.  The hot water shut-off valve appeared to be leaking, and the new drain pipe leaked as well.  Sigh.

Astonishingly, the problems were resolved relatively easily.  Dan tightened the valve handle nut, and the drip dried out.  A trip to the hardware store enlightened us to the problem of the drain pipe.

A visiting canine used the old pipe as a chew toy, requiring us to replace it.  The new plastic pipe has a gasket molded into the end, eliminating the need for a gasket.  We had blithely popped in a gasket as the old one used a gasket.  Once Nick at the hardware store pointed out the molded gasket, and we removed the extra gasket, the leak stopped.  Success!

We’ve got the vanity 99.9% complete, we tiled but have yet to grout the backsplash behind the sink, I’ve made more beadboard doors for the vent stack cabinet and the other wall cabinet, I found some fabric and sewed a curtain, and we bought a new shower curtain.  I hope during this vacation week to finish painting the doors and get them installed, and we hope to paint the ceiling and walls, then I can add the trim between the beadboard and the drywall.

The shower surround, meanwhile, awaits.  After tiling the sink backsplash, however, I think our toes are feeling chilly.  I’m a pretty confident DIYer, but tiling is NOT easy, and getting all that tile level and plumb before the thinset sets up is a scary prospect.  It is a lot of tile, and any irregularities will be magnified by the expanse of tile.  Then there’s getting it all grouted.  And to get all of it done in a few days without having access to a shower?  Hmmmm.  We are currently re-evaluating.  If any Maine readers know of a good tile setter, please let us know.

Before

I’d never really given these old light fixtures much thought beyond “geez, are these ugly or what?”  Once we started on the project, I was going to replace them, but in looking around at fixtures, I find they are very expensive, expensive but feel cheap, or cheap, and look not-quite safe.  I looked at vintage fixtures on eBay, and YIKES! decided they weren’t for me.  Then, seeing all the lovely shades available on eBay, I thought, why not just paint ours and buy new shades?

During

And so that’s just what we did.  Shades, $3.97 each at Big Orange Box, and one can of Rustoleum, $4 and change at local hardware store.  Over the weekend, we took the fixtures down, I scuffed them up with some sandpaper, and we gave them several light coats of paint, beginning with primer.  Dan brilliantly pioneered the use of a cardboard box as a spray booth, which worked great.  We took them outside to paint, then brought them into the laundry room to dry.

After

It took a few coats of paint, and I still need to paint the screws securing the shades, but we have lovely new lights, and for about $50 less than the cost of one new light fixture.

I still hate the medicine cabinet, but at least it will match the room better than it did before.