June 3

Ahh, pictures!

This picture on the left is the water closet (affectionately known as the "poo room") before we built walls, so circa May 28, 2012. The picture on the right is circa June 3, after we built the wall for the bathroom niche (yes, just like the one in the guest bath), and ran power and placed electrical boxes.



This is a shot, standing in the future closet, looking at the vanity area, with the window to the right. Notice sheetrock to the left of the window (formally dance hall paneling), and the shelf above the stub-outs for the plumbing, where the linen area will be. And the black and white areas you're seeing below on the floor are where the new floor tile will be! We had to commit a little more hardwood murder to do this. But just a little.

This is a shot, from standing in the master bedroom doorway. The closest stud in the picture is on the left. That stud is the corner of the wall to the poo room. (Remember Hobbits.) The new doorway framing you see on the left, with hardwood flooring underneath, is the pocket-door framing for our closet. No pocket door armature yet--we ran out of steam. But that will be soon, I think. Once we put that in, we can sheetrock the rest of the closet, finish it, and use it!             

The tube of caulk, yellow box, and "stuff" are sitting in the linen area, where we'll cleverly conceal storage behind the mirrors. Not sure what "clever" looks like yet, but we're brainstorming. You can also see the black boxes for outlets and switches, one of the plumbing stub outs for a sink, and pex water lines. Note: we're doing our part to reduce landfill waste--all the darker, yellower wood is cut-up scrap from the old walls of the old bath.

This is another shot from the closet, looking back at the poo room niche wall (if you look at the picture above, I'm standing where the orange bucket is, basically). The framing for the pocket door is mostly framing the shot. You can see the edge of the floor, the diagonal sub floor of the old part of the bathroom (where all the 1960s mud, wire lathe and tile was), the edge of the window trim on the left, and our bedroom in the back. I don't have a wide angle lens to make this look better, but hopefully it gives you a good idea.

So on Sunday, June 3, we set to work tearing out the subfloor of the 1980s addition/bath, and framing out a lot of new walls, removing the last vestiges of the old walls, and setting the last few boxes for electric, and trying to get wires through studs to feed them. We realized that we had forgotten one line to reconnect yesterday, but luckily, it was an easy fix. The outside electric box over our back deck was powered through the 1980s addition wiring. Because it has to be GFCI (water location outside), it'll now be on the last end of the run for the bathrooms. Chances are, we won't be running power tools at the same time I'm drying my hair, so I think we're fine on that point.

We basically ran out of gas after all that, so spent the last hour and a half of day before 7 pm (closing time for the dump) loading up the truck and taking the old vanity (complete with a 2" dead roach) and vanity top, along with the nail-ridden wood that we couldn't reuse, and the old plywood and vinyl floor, to the dump. A VERY good and productive weekend!

The next big things are going to be finishing up the closet enough to use it, and trying to figure out how to lay out the floor design with tile, and when. It all feels very close, but honestly, the sheetrock will take the longest. It always does. We'd prefer to hire it out, but we do it so piecemeal, it's probably not going to happen. If we framed everything out, and had it sheetrocked, mudded and taped, then it would be much harder to install the tile. But if we do the tile first, and then hired sheetrockers, there's a chance the floor could get damaged. Just not sure what to do at this point. But at least we're moving forward!! And we don't know when we'll have more time to work on things, but we're at a good point right now if we have to stop for a bit.