Friday, August 17, 2012

Open for business in the bathroom

So just as we hoped, we managed to finally cobble together a working bathroom before we left the island. After a couple of days of tiling and grouting, the floor was in and the shower walls were finished. So we called a plumber and had them come and install the toilet, shower fixtures and vanity/sink. The day before we left to drive home, we went up to check it out. It was strange and wonderful to see clean, white, new everything in there. And clean, clear water in the toilet bowl (a surprisingly exciting development!) and coming out of the faucets.

There are still plenty of details to finish in here, like:

* Install baseboard trim
* Install a new window
* Install window trim
* Hang a shower curtain
* Hang a towel bar and some sort of storage on the wall
* Put a door on the room (there was a crappy old hollow-core door there originally, which is now gone; the space issues demand an outward-opening centre-split door)
* Install a baseboard heater (in the more distant future)

Anyway, here is the room's progress:


The tub, as found originally (note the bucket catching drips where the roof leaked)

The tub again

Self-explanatory, but not the gross moldy insulation that was falling through the ceiling

Ew

At the beginning of the demo process

The ceiling as we found it

The plumbing gets replaced

 
New subfloor and insulation, and the new tub in place


Floor awaiting grout

Tub and tiles in place, floor tile laid but not grouted


Ta da! A toilet and sink! And they work! Oh, and I primed the walls (this pic also shows why a shallow vanity was important)

Finished shower tiles and installed faucets (might have to do something about that rather sad showerhead in the future)

Look! Clean running water!

The cute vanity


Friday, August 3, 2012

Kid Concerns

One of the reasons we find it hard to get a lot of work done on the house when we're in PEI (aside from the fact that we're supposed to be on vacation) is the kids. The place is a real construction zone, and hardly a safe place for a 2-year-old, 5-year-old and 8-year-old to play. There's lots of space for them to run around outside, but not much to keep them busy for long. Thankfully, my ever-helpful mother-in-law Gloria has been taking care of them a lot.

Today was the first time they've been there for longer than just a few minutes. While I finished up the bathroom tile, they played outside. So Chris got sidetracked and I lost my tiling assistant. But for good reason, I suppose. He quickly cobbled together a makeshift treehouse for them out of scrap wood. Andrew spent a long time up there with a pencil, drawing who-knows-what (my guess? aliens!). Behold:


Pretty bare bones, but young kids are easy to please. Andrew and Cameron also spent some time exploring the house some more. I could hear them in the basement checking out what all was down there and making up all sorts of imaginary things.

My latest plan for kid fun at the house is something I found via Pinterest and can't stop thinking about. Here's the inspiration photo: 


via desireempire.com here
 All over PEI you see these abandoned boats, from big fishing boats to little dories, sitting behind barns or in the middle of someone's yard. Now it's just a matter of finding one (ideally for free) that I can park on our property and fill with sand. A large enough boat could even serve as a play structure for them. Just think of the pirate games they could act out. Ahoy!

Vanity Affair and Bathroom Progress

So, one year ago today I wrote this post. It's funny to look back at that, because we're not much further ahead now. It's also funny because I talked about my plans for the bathroom, and had purchased a vanity and faucet. I was in a rush to get to the Fun Part last year, and so I ran out and bought a bunch of stuff we weren't quite ready for. Now that we really are almost ready to install it all, I've gone and bought different stuff.

It turns out that the vanity I bought was too deep (I should know better than to not measure properly), so that if you were sitting on the toilet your knees would be pressing up against the vanity doors (hmm, maybe this would have forced certain members of our household to spend less time in there). The bathroom is much smaller than I had remembered. So, off to Home Depot I went yesterday to buy this same vanity my mother-in-law has in her tiny powder room. It's teeny-tiny (only about 10 inches deep), but modern, and has a bit of storage for toiletries or tissue. I like it because it's clean and simple.


So since I bought the new vanity, I also had to buy a new faucet to suit it. I'll never find the link amongst the 700+ faucets on the Home Depot site, but it's very similar to this one (also simple and modern):

I'm also no longer completely enamoured with the splashy floral shower curtain I talked about in last year's post. While I do still love it, the reviews on the Urban Outfitters website say that the colours bleed when it gets washed. So I'm looking at other options, and a wide horizontal stripe in a fresh colour is really appealing to me right now. But obviously a shower curtain is something that can easily be changed, so I'm not worried.

But the big news is that we're almost finished tiling the bathroom. My mother-in-law and a family friend spent two days tiling the tub and shower in May, and Chris and I finally tiled the floor today. We'll go back in another day or two to grout it, but here's a sneak peek of both:

 
 




As soon as the grout is in and dried, we hope to get the plumber back to install the toilet, sink/vanity and shower hardware. And then finally, finally, we will have a functional bathroom. Just in time to leave it sitting there for another year. *sigh* In the meantime, we need to dash out and get some primer and basic white paint and get that done in here before the toilet and vanity are installed.