Knobby-Knob

I was cleaning up and putting tools and supplies away today, and tomorrow I'm going to be spending the bulk of the day trying to clean the layer of dust that is now sitting over every-single-thing in our apartment. If I had to do this over I would listen to Bec, and put up plastic, cordoning-off the construction zone. What's done is done however, so in the meantime, here are some details of the glass knobs we put on the cabinets and door. I hope my next bathroom post is the final before and after pics!

Summynose

The bathroom progress over the last two days has been little loose ends - grout, installation of the light fixture, some caulk, sealing the floor tile. I thought a cute Aussie was more fun for today. Tomorrow I'm going to paint our old door and install new hinges and a new glass knob to match the cabinet knobs. A couple of paint touch-ups and quite possibly...it will be finished. Oh my goodness...

MCXVII

Whew. Just a little more. I finished plastering and painting the ceiling last night and was set to do a lot more finish work today, until my downstairs neighbor called from JFK having forgotten her passport. I suppose it was good practice for fastest-way-to-JFK, but I'd have rather spent that time cleaning up the floor or something. Anyway, I gave the dust a first pass and the room is coming together.


We're a little bummed about how dark and bulky the cabinet over the toilet appears, but we're thinking that once we get some towels, bathmat and chatchkis and other evidence of human activity, it won't be quite so view-commanding. Maybe.

Here's a happy accident. I cut the hex tile off at the doorway a little too short, so when I set the marble saddle (the wide piece at the threshold) there was a 3/8-1/2" gap - too wide to not look weird once grouted.


So I cut some of the glass mosaic in half and shoved 'em in that gap, and lo and behold: looks like I was planning that detail the whole time.

Stumbling to the finish line...

Same Day, Sort Of

I just finished painting the walls. I'm pretty bushed.

XXII (XXIII?) - So...Tired...Must...Press...On...

I'm so close to being done, but not yet there - it's a bit frustrating. It felt like a step backwards yesterday to cut a hole in the ceiling to install a new exhaust fan, but it needs to be done, and I'm glad Bec suggested I do it before I proceed with painting the walls.


Once the fan is in and the hole patched, I'll be able to do all the painting including the ceiling in one shot. At least opening-up the ceiling gave me a pretty cool glimpse
of the duct-work and timbers that are hidden above our dropped bathroom ceiling.



The last couple of days with a functional shower have been a wonderful if not a bit maddening preview of a return to normalcy around here! I'm going to wrap this up so I can get working and hopefully get the ceiling all taken care of this afternoon. We watched Sarah Marshall last night, which was mostly hilarious with a spotty turn towards relationship malevolence, which I do not enjoy. There was also an unexpected appearance by Paul Rudd, whom Becky has dubbed "my boyfriend". He's charming. What can I say.



...Okay, I typed the previous this morning, and since have installed the fan and am currently waiting for the first layer of plaster patch to dry before I go back to finish.

Day XX - Shower

I am about to take a shower. No ordinary shower, mind you; probably the most earned shower I will have ever taken. Becky took the inaugural this morning and came out with rave reviews. Good pressure out of the new showerparts. Spacious feeling due to the clean new tile, added light in the ceiling, the removal of intrusive shower caddy and hand-held showerhead with it's coils and such. Needless to say, I'm very excited to both enjoy my weeks of handiwork, and join the rest of the daily-bathing adult population. I'm going to go now and use this shower. I will post more later about today's work. Here we go!

XVIII - More Color Samples...

XVII

Paint samples before deciding on a color and here's why...



Yeesh. Guess we'll see what 7+ has to offer!

Day Sixteen - Grout

Grout! Oh baby, it's coming together. Shower soon.

Two Weeks! Two Weeks!

Today, at 2:50PM Eastern Standard Time, I placed the last wall tile in its spot. Man did that feel good. There's still a whole bunch to do before it's finished, and a couple of little tile details on the floor I need to take care of, but moving past the noise and mess of cutting and gluing tiles all day long is a huge relief.


Becky had a great idea for capping the edge of the shower tiles with quarter-rounds I bought to edge the floor. It makes the transition from tile to [what will be] painted wall more finished looking. I'm glad I went back and redid the tiles framing the soap/shampoo niche as I can now say free of hyperbole that it looks a zillion times better.


I had the end of the project clear enough in my mind that I was able to take the time to make dinner for the first time in days. Pasta with a braised short-rib ragu. It was pretty worthy.

Day Thirteen - Clog Free...sorta

Joe came this morning with his son Joe, and installed the sink, shower fixtures and straightened the toilet. It was really nice to have some parts of the final picture completed. The fixtures operate smoothly and solidly, and they're nice and shiny.


Much of my worry was relieved when Tony the sewer guy came by and unstuck the boulder I'd grown in the tub's drain. We talked about Scrubs, Friday Night Lights and Willie Randolph.

Apparently, this is the face I make when I'm stressed, hungry and eating my breakfast that I made hours ago, moments before Joe arrived to get to work. I will try and avoid that combination of circumstances and thus, this face, in the future.


I messed up the edging around the shampoo niche. It's going to set me back a bit to redo it, but after so many days of hardwork, to not set it right on account of a couple hours and dollars...anyway, I'll fix it tomorrow. I think the tiling will be done by the end of the day. I will rejoice. Sushi tonight. Yum.

Day Twelve - Still Still Tub

Mini melt-down this afternoon, slow going, but then a strong finish in the waning hours of the day. Chicken, beans and rice for dinner. We're getting verrrry close to finishing the tile...I can taste it. Literally: the tile saw spews a lot of clay dust into the room. The plumbers turned the tub problem over to a sewer guy who will be here tomorrow. That news was part of the melt-down. Tomorrow is a big day!

Days Ten & Eleven

I thought the shower would be entirely tiled by the end of today, but no. Ugh. Mike works with a diligent perfectionism that is fun to have around, and I think we should be done with the shower tomorrow. There is an obstacle though. The tub is stopped-up and filled with water from work and cleanup. I sure hope we can get someone here in the morning to free-up the drain so we can get back to work.

Day Nine - Moving Along

Mike and I spent most of the morning trying to clean and make some sense of everything outside the bathroom. Becky was coming home from Lexington with her dad and brother after lunch, so we cleaned as much as we could before then. Progress+*Neatness*=Illusions of Competence! After a quick look at what's been done so far, Dan and Josh headed back North. Mike and I tiled most of the long wall around the sink before Bec noticed that the light switchbox wasn't high enough to clear the belt-line of the tile, so we'd wind up having to cut into the tile to fit the switchplate. Blech. I moved the box up in the wall about an inch and Mike patched around it. I found it cool: that task in itself, had none of this renovation been going on, would've seemed like kind of a big deal that I'd pencil in an entire day to do, but as it is we cut the power and had that thing at proper height and the wall around it patched up in like an hour. Once again there was pizza. It was good. Tomorrow we hope to make it through most of the remaining tile and we'll all go pick up paint samples for the wall color.

The Day of the Crooked Toilet

Day Eight was kind of stressful. My brother, Mike, was on his way up from Virginia to help for the next few days. The toilet was set to be installed at around 4, so I had to tile and grout the wall behind the toilet before then (so I wouldn't have to take the toilet back out to work on the wall behind it). I was anxious to get going on the tile, and then I noticed I was short one bucket of tile adhesive. I'd also resigned to chipping out the marble threshold so I could reinstall it with a 1/4" eave to then sit flush with glass tiles on the face of the slab. This meant more grout needed of the same color, and I'd used it all already, so I needed to drive back to Bensonhurst to get a small bag of the same stuff. I get pretty antsy when I'm ready to go on something but I have to do another task first. I got back a little frazzled from driving in a self-imposed rush, tried to relax and then threw the tile up on the wall. Mike arrived when I was about 3/4 done, he watched me saw a few pieces to size and then it was finished. Ready for the toilet. We took the dogs for a walk to Taqueria and picked up some burritos so we'd have some motivation to test said-toilet once installed. Joe's guys were unloading their van just as we got back, and they came up and put in the toilet. They made a high-craft job of it, using plaster to seal the edges. What I didn't notice until they were gone, is that it was crooked. Twisted so it's not facing straight ahead. It kind of lolls to the left like a distracted dog who won't look you in the eye. After an hour of—is it crooked—enough to complain—it's crooked, right?— I called Joe and left a message that I was sorry to be so picky, but the damn thing isn't on correctly. The bright side is that it has an amazing flush. I told Bec I was thinking of stepping-up my coffee consumption just to spend more time with our new toilet. Fran came over to give Mike and me a lesson in applying the joint compound to corners, as we'd never done it and Fran has spent countless hours learning from his mistakes on his house, so he could help us avoid doing the same. We spend the last couple hours of the night finishing the first pass in the room with the plaster, and felt like we got much better as we went along. It was relaxing and I went to bet feeling much better than I had earlier in the day. Joe called this morning and assured me he'd straighten out the toilet when he comes to do all the final installs.

Whew.

One Week - Floor is Done (well, almost)

It's been a week since the first destructive hole was struck in the wall, beginning this project. I'm not too far off the schedule I originally planned out, but as expected, there's always the unexpected. I grouted the floor last night and it looks classy. I thought I was done but this morning I realized I set the threshold back about a 1/4" inch too far in the room. It looks fine, but I need a little bit of an overhang off the concrete slab on the hall-side of the threshold, to put glass tile flush on the face of the concrete bed. It's not terribly noticeable, but it will bug me if it's not done correctly, so I think I'm going to chisel out the threshold and first row of hex that sits against it, and do it again right. Kind of a pain, but at least it won't affect the toilet's installation this afternoon - woohoo! IN-MY-HOUSE! IN-MY-HOUSE!

Days Five & Six - The Floor

The thing about working on the floor, is the working on the floor. After the last two days I can say that if I were granted a wish to be a Major League ballplayer, it most definitely would not be as a catcher. My knees and back are stiff and sore as hell after yesterday's 12 hour marathon. The good news though, is that the tile is down, and down pretty. Before doing any of that though, I had to fill the divots and missing chunks in the cement bed.

The bed itself was in pretty solid shape so I elected to keep it there and patch, instead of removing it in chunks and replacing it with new cement backerboard. Less carrying of concrete chunks is almost always a good thing, I think. So by Monday evening the floor was patched, level and ready to go for putting down the tile on Tuesday. I must say, I was feeling cocky and capable when I woke up yesterday. I didn't think it would take too long to put down the tile, especially since this would be the first time I'd have a wetsaw at my disposal. The day ahead seemed spacious and I thought I'd be done by dinner. I laid all tile in its place, dry at first, and determined the amount and spacing of the black hex flower details. Bec and I exchanged some pics and opinions of the arrangement and decided it was set to go.

I drew a map on the wall assigning each sheet of tile a number, including the small pieces for weird areas at corners and around the toilet flange, and this was probably the smartest thing I've done to this point— definitely of the project, possibly of my life.



I would've been lost when things got messy and tired. Next, I wanted to make all the cuts on the saw that I'd need to put down the tile so I wouldn't have to stop and waste valuable workable-thinset(mortar)time, and so I wouldn't disturb my neighbors (power saw cutting rock: loud and shrill). It was 8 o'clock or so at this point, and even though it took longer than I expected, I thought the rest would be cake. HA! wrong. I spent the next 6 hours crouched on the hard floor, meticulously fixing the tiles to the ground according to the drawn map, and my goodness were the black hex flowers a pain in the ass— mostly because they weren't as thick as the rest of the tile, so I had to apply extra thinset to them and then carefully place them in place, tamp them down with a flat board and mallet, then use a tiny screwdriver to remove the squeezed-out thinset. The first couple of these I had only the loosest grip on non-panic, but by 1/2 way across the floor I'd got in a rhythm and did a better job. I can actually see them improve in their application from the starting point at the toilet, to the end at the doorway. I had a small charge when the bucket of thinset I used made it all the way to the end, with barely enough to put down one more tile had I needed. Whew. I made a lot of crunching and groaning noises as I stood up, had a beer and a slice of cold pizza, walked the dogs and went to bed. When I woke up this morning, the apartment was a disaster, but the floor looks great and the tile is all where it should be!


Next up: grout!

Day Four - Walls without Toilets

Will had to leave in the evening for Providence and Fran has a job, so with Sunday we wanted to get all the walls up, since it would be no fun at all for me to try it by myself. The room now looks like a room again - all the walls in place, *including* a new niche in the shower for shampoo and soap.





We framed an opening for a concealed plunger cabinet in the small wall next to the toilet but now I'm faced with two problems. First, that cabinet is now where the toilet paper roll used to be. I need to find another spot for the tp that's within easy reach, but not directly under where the hand towels go, since nobody wants to use pre-moistened toilet paper (well, possibly they do, but that is the subject for a future entry on bidets and their conspicuous absence from the American bathroom). Second, I had to remove the toilet to put in the wall behind it, and it's not worth putting it back in, only to take it out again for putting tile down. So - I made a trip to the gym this morning immediately on wake-up to take care of some business. I will be thrilled to have my toilet back.



All-in-all I'd say it was the best day of progress yet— deeply gratifying to put up walls and have it all take solid form. We couldn't get our hands on a fake skeleton on such short notice, so we put a drawing on the wall behind the medicine cabinet.

Day Three - Starting the Walls

This morning I went to Classic Tile and Marble in Bensonhurst to pick up the subway tile and its various trim elements. The picture there is what I think the arrangement will be, the manila yellow on top being the manila folder I placed the tiles on for the picture. We'll probably paint the walls above the tile a bright blue or pale green. We took care of the final details inside what will be the walls— framing for the medicine cabinet, moved some electrical doodads around, and planted a fake skeleton for future mystery-making discovery. By the end of the night Will and I got a couple of pieces of sheet rock on one wall, and are ready to do the rest of the room tomorrow. The dogs I think, have already had enough of all this. The apartment is just about as messy as it's been since the days after I moved in. Does Rhoomba make a Shop-Vac? I could use it.

Day Two - Electrical and Plumbing

I suppose it's good to know your limits and when to turn to the pros, especially when the result of not doing so could be very bad things happening inside your apartment's walls. So this morning I had Beckford, a really nice guy, come over to add wiring for a recessed light above the shower. Shortly before Beckford finished up, Frank and Joe(also very nice guys) came to overhaul the plumbing leading to the shower and sink. Midday when the apartment was buzzing with people, dogs and progress, it felt really really cool. Fran and Will came over, the pros finished, and Becky left for Lexington after completing her second semester of school with possibly the first actual 'A+' I've ever seen on paper— way to go, babe! Fran and I picked up all the materials we'll need to start the walls tomorrow, we ordered a couple pizzas, brought all the goods upstairs with Will, then we ate those pizzas. They were delicious and there are leftovers.