Day 18: Bathroom Remodel

Daylight savings time actually gave us an extra hour to sleep last night, and I took full advantage of it!  We still were up early, so we made a run to Lowe's (just to get our daily Big Box Store fix) before we headed off to church.

We revisited a discovery that we made last year, and I hope that this year we do something about it.  We learned in the past, and had proven to us once again today, that certain building materials -- most notably paint in cans, caulk, Bondo -- do not last from one year to the next.  The cans start to rust even in our air conditioned storage.  The caulk and Bondo harden like concrete.  At the end of this building season, all of the "left over" materials will hit the garbage rather than waiting for us to return to unusable items next year.  If we don't use it, out it goes!  We may try to save some paint by transferring it into plastic containers.  We'll give that a try.  The caulk and Bondo, however, have a one-season shelf life in this house.

New studs show the improvement to the tub wall.

This afternoon we met the "schedule" as planned by my time-conscious husband.  He did a small repair job around a couple of faceplates in the bathroom and then attacked the tub wall to install new studs.  We needed to rearrange the stud pattern to accommodate our new shower valve.  We still cannot install the system until we talk to Sarah, but we have a good start on that project.  We would like to get it in before the tub is installed on Wednesday.

Now the only thing one sees is the vent for the new fan.

Then we moved outdoors.  Rick took Bondo and repaired the soffit that we cut incorrectly for the fan on the south side of the house.  He also cut a plug to put into the old electrical mast hole in the soffit above the back slab.  We now have plugged, patched, and painted soffits once again.

Rick repaired the hole in the soffit; the wall repair
must wait until we have time and budget to hire a
professional stucco installer.

I hauled out the new baseboard and the molding.  After I sanded each piece lightly, I gave each a second coat of paint.  I took care of a scratch in the doorway to the bathroom also.

Steve and Chris came over for a visit and brought us some scrumptious-looking pie.  We will enjoy it for dessert this evening.

While the above does not seem like much, we actually crossed off five items from our "to-do" list.  The tub wall and the soffit repairs took quite a bit of time, but Rick is now content because he feels we are back on track with his agenda for this remodel.

We are hoping for a call back both from Sarah at the design center and from Nathan regarding grinding down the terrazzo floors.  If those two calls come in, we will be very happy.

Each day we make a little progress toward our goal.  We want to get the bathroom as intact as possible before Thanksgiving.  Just having the second toilet back in place and the vanity out of the Florida room will be a major improvement.  But this was enough for today.