Bathroom: Day 1

We have officially started the bathroom remodel.  I guess we really started it when Mitch tore down the walls to rewire, but today we started putting new stuff up.

Here are the walls down to the studs.

We put in some supports to keep the pipes and fixtures in place.  Mitchie was annoyed in this picture because I was taking pictures instead of helping him.  :)

Done and ready for wall.

Felt in place:

And then hardieboard in place.

Now we have to caulk and then start the tiling process.  Once we get the tub tiled, then we're going to tile the rest of the room and the floor.  Its going to be a looong process, I think.  I did also start with the process of taking the ugly brown tile of the built ins.

Ugly brown tile:

This is as far as I got today: those tiles are a bitch to get off.

We're going to sand it down and paint the built ins and trim white, have black and white tile for the wall and floor (pictures to follow...eventually, when we get the tiles up) and then pick a color for the walls.  I'm pretty excited about it. 

Painting the living room, new kitchen light

We installed a new light in the kitchen since Mitch was already rewiring.  I think its going to look much better once we actually get a chance to remodel the kitchen, but that won't be for a little while. 

Also, I finally got the paint on in the living room.  We still need to paint the trim and built ins in both the living room and dining room, but that might wait until after christmas.  We'll see how we feel. 

Primer on!

And paint on:

I can't wait to get the living room done, it feels like its been a mess forever.  The rat cage is going to be sitting in the living room until after we get both downstairs bedrooms done.  That is to say: a very very long time.  We still have some finishing touches and some trim to paint in the living room, but it is mostly done!  On to the bathroom next!

mudding and wiring

First, here is the most current photo of our new drywall section with all the mudding done.  we need to sand it and then we're going to paint that half of the living room.

Mitchie's day before thanksgiving project was to tear down the bathroom wall to rewire.  I wasn't expecting that, so I got home and found the bathroom a war zone.  Messy!

We've been using the Black & Decker book as a how to.  I guess I should say "mitch" and not "we."  I don't mess around with wiring.

The black wiring is the old wiring, the gray wiring is Mitch's new wiring. 

New light switch, not yet all the way in its home:

Last but not least, a beer can from 1938 and a ginger ale bottle from who knows when (sometime before 1965, when this company apparently went out of business) that Mitch found in the walls/crawl spaces while trying to wire.

Next will be more painting, then hopefully drywalling and tiling the bathroom.

Guest star: the Schoellenbach girls put up drywall

So Amelia came to visit me, and I put her to work putting up some drywall in the living room where we uncovered the windows.

Here is the wall with all the plaster and lath taken down:

Mitch and I putting up the first hunk of drywall.  He helped with the first bit, then went to work and Amelia and I took it from there.

Don't mess with a girl with tools.

Yeah, thats some nice drywall.

After drywalling, some celebratory carnage at Pok Pok.

Up next: mudding the joints.  Whoo hoo. 

Sweet new range!!!

Here is our old electric range.  I hate electric ranges, but she's done ok the month we've been using her.

Annnnd our fabulous new range, courtesy of our families via generous birthday gifts.  :)  Its a $1000 range but we got if for $720!

It has  sweet griddle attachement for the middle burner, as well as convection oven.  I am IN LOVE with it.

The gas company is coming tomorrow to put in a gas line so we can actually use it...

Bathroom time!

Our shower had horrible water pressure.  Fixing the hot water plumbing helped us have enough hot water to finish a shower, but it was still coming out as a trickle.  So we put in new fixtures. 

Here are the old fixtures:

We ripped out a section of the wall to get the new stuff in.  Eventually we are going to rip out the entire wall all around the tub, redrywall, tile, and all that good stuff.  But for now we just wanted to be able to take normal showers.

New fixtures, with some hella ghetto trash bags set up to keep water from leaking behind the walls.  But now we have awesome water pressure!  We are also eventually going to get new handles for the faucets - these are just the ones that came with our set.

Finishing up the dining room

I paid some attention to the built ins...the insides were pretty janky lookin.

Here they are all primed and ready to go.

I painted them the same color as the walls, and I'm pretty happy with how they look.

Starting to get furniture in now...

Next step is to get the dining table and hutch set up, then we're going to be getting our gas line put in, our new gas range, and putting new fixtures in the bathroom.