Friday, January 04, 2008

Reno woes, or "Cry Me a Ceramic Dust River"

My hubby and I are renovating our master bathroom. We started just before Christmas (what were we thinking!) and are technically half-way done. Thus far we have...

- removed the old vanity
- removed the shower unit
- ripped up the old, peeling, cracking, vinyl floor and the crappy 1/4" plywood beneath it
- reoriented the sink drain and faucet supplies
- installed stop valves on the sink faucets (there were none; older house)
- ripped out tiles which were above and around the shower
- drywalled where we had to access the sink drain
- installed the new vanity
- installed cementboard, new tiles, and grouted
- installed a new faucet

What we have left to do...

- build a shower curb out of 2x4s
- custom build the shower floor (so many steps to this!!!!)
- tile said floor and curb, and tile shower walls
- install baseboard (should have done this before we installed the vanity, whoops)
- fix the drywalled hole *wince*
- wash aaaaaaalllllll the grout off the tiles, as it is very gritty
- prime and paint

We can at least use the toilet and sink again, but the shower has a ways yet to go.

Doing It Yourself certainly has its pitfalls, and a potentially steep learning curve. Lesson number one for bathroom projects: don't grind ceramic tiles in your bedroom, even if they are tiles for the on-suite bathroom. Just... *shakes her head* just do it in the basement or the garage or something. *brushes ceramic dust off her clothes for the millionth time in the last month* The shit just never goes away. Note to self: buy some TSP to wash down the walls, and the shelves, and the hangers, and the furnishings...

It was such a relief when, ceramic dust notwithstanding, our bedroom stopped looking like a construction zone: toilet on a plastic bag in a corner, tools next to it looking lonely, pieces of chipboard and cementboard lying against the wall, furniture crammed next to the bed to make way for the movable workbench, a clamp underfoot in a bed of crumbled cement, bits of tile and wood shavings. Oh, did I mention we slept in the guestroom while this was going on? ;-)

1 comment:

Cryptical said...

Ahhhhh....truly the joys of DIY renovations are never-ending. And isn't it odd how one project emboldens you (rightly or wrongly) and always seems to lead to the next, ever more ambitious project? :)