Day 5: Bathroom Remodel

Today was supposed to be a day of rest, but as you can see by the title of this blog session, it turned into the fifth day of remodeling.

We started the day with a trip to Home Depot before church to pick up more electrical wire and supplies.  Rick discovered yesterday that the one ground fault (GFCI) receptacle we had in the bathroom was not working right, so part of the purchase today was a three-pack of GFCI receptacles.  Why three?  The three-pack was less expensive than just buying two single ones, so now we have one to spare if another one fails.

After church, we hung around a bit for Pastor Appreciation Day.  We like our new young pastor at church, so we helped him celebrate his day with his favorite dessert: pie!  I had a piece of cherry/rhubarb pie while Rick tried the raspberry pie.  I think I saw Pastor try two or three different pieces.  He REALLY does love pie.

When we got home, we had a quick lunch, and then Rick changed into work clothes.  Because we did not finish installing the additional receptacle in the bathroom yesterday, the power was out all night for our bedside lamps and my clock.  Rick also discovered that in addition to the master bedroom, the guest bedroom also was connected to that same bathroom circuit, so none of the receptacles worked in that room either.  Ah, the wonders of an old house!

New yellow wire snakes through the walls to power both the bedroom receptacle
and the two GFCI receptacles in the bathroom. 

After running wires and working for almost four hours, we now have a re-wired receptacle in our master bedroom, a replaced GFCI receptacle near the bathroom door, and a new GFCI receptacle in the main bathroom ready to power Rick's razor and the electric toothbrush.  Naturally, more of the attic insulation snowed down on his head, so clean-up was the usual pain.

While he was busy doing all of that, I was cleaning our much-neglected only functioning bathroom.  I also watered the palm trees (a daily chore) and the vegetation around the house, and then baked some biscuits for dinner tonight.  As soon as Rick completes his second shower of the day, I will put in our daily load of laundry.

Tomorrow we both will be back in the bathroom once again ripping down walls.  Our goal is to get all of the walls down by the end of the week so we can start the rebuilding process.  We had to take advantage of the open walls now to update the electrical and to add the services (fans, lights, and receptacles) that we wanted.  Tomorrow we will continue with the wall work.

This bathroom is taking longer than Rick expected -- but then, he always underestimates how long a job will take to complete.  It also is costing us more money than we anticipated; however, we went into this remodel with enough experience to know that ALL remodeling chores go over budget.  The added expenses are annoying but not totally unanticipated.

This is the last room we have to remodel in Gladys.  Then she will be finished, and I hope that we can start to relax and enjoy our retirement... until the next project pops up!