Bathroom Progress

Well, it's been a few weeks since I reported our bathroom and plumbing issues. Since then, Craig & his dad have fixed all the plumbing problems on their own, including moving the upstairs toilet to an appropriate-looking position. Allow the photos to explain:

Here's the original position of the upstairs toilet. When the upstairs loft was added on by the previous owners, the guy just placed the toilet directly above the one in the downstairs bathroom to keep the pipe in a straight line. In reality, turning the pipe would not have been difficult and would have prevented this ridiculous looking toilet position, which is left of center, partially in front of the window, and 1 foot away from the wall. It looked like it was out in the middle of the room. Ridiculous.



So now, in this current picture, here are a few things to note: the new position of the toilet centered up against the wall (hooray!) and the small vent on the floor to the right of the laundry basket. Since we're renovating anyway, we decided to add a forced air vent in the bathroom floor to get rid of the space heater we'd been using. The vent runs directly up through the downstairs bathroom through a new wall we created down there. (You'll see that further down.)



Craig was an inexperienced plumber, learning as he went, but he was genius enough to fix it all and I'm so proud of him.

So now, we're in the midst of remodeling the downstairs bathroom. To view a "before" picture, see the December post "When it rains, it pours". Craig's cousin, Jim, is doing the majority of the work. He's framed in the new beadboard ceiling (dropped a bit lower than before) and constructed the new wall that will be between the tub and toilet to facilitate the upstairs floor vent. These were taken in the middle of last week:





The new wall will also allow the shower curtain rod to run from wall to wall, instead of making a bend and being suspended from the ceiling (again, see the "before" picture for clarification). Since the above pictures, I spent 6 hours removing wallpaper on Sunday, allowing Jim to put in the cove molding and trim as well as finish and prep the walls for paint.





Tonight, Craig picked up the floor tile and grout and plans to put that in himself this weekend. Following that, I get to paint the walls and beadboard. We had to special order a smaller tub size to accomodate the new wall and that isn't scheduled to be in till the end of the month. So Jim will return to place that and finish the baseboards later. We've picked out a new pedastal sink, mirror, and accessories. Mostly, I'm looking forward to having a toilet on the first floor again, in light of my frequent trips as a 2nd trimester preggo.


In other household updates, we have made progress on the basement/office transition and will soon be readying Will's new bedroom. Here's a few old photos of the office/den as it was. The door in the first picture is a walk in closet with built in drawers and shelves. That will become Will's clothing closet and eliminate the need for dressers.







It currently looks the same, only empty. Will's going to be using a full size bed frame that goes with Craig's and my bedroom set (we have a king size bed), a small night stand handed down from my sister, and a new toy/book storage unit that he got for Christmas from us and my parents. The room really won't hold much else. I've had fun purchasing new bedding and room-darkening roman blinds for the room. We still have to put in clothing racks in the closet and patch a few soon-to-be holes in the wall once the TV and pictures have been removed. I'll post more pictures as the room is completed.

So our unfinished basement has become our new office area out of necessity. There really is no other place. But it's not so bad. We got a new piece of indoor/outdoor carpet for the floor and set up the desks with all the computer equipment (Craig had to run new cable and electrical). It's sort of the overflow storage for a lot of stuff, not to mention the laundry room, but we actually kind of like it. It feels like we just added a huge living space to our home. The other side of the basement is our workout area.



And just for kicks, I thought I'd take another step back in time to our first pregnancy and major, indoor renovation: the kitchen. It makes me relax a bit now to think that ANYTHING is better than that. About 2 months before my due date with Will (which was June 16th), our kitchen project had just begun. These pictures were taken towards the end of April 2007 once we'd torn out some of the original cabinets, Craig had built the new soffits, and we'd begun drywalling everything. Dust was everywhere!





Here's me with a big 'ole belly, priming the walls:



This picture was taken 11 days before Will was born, after paint, in the midst of cabinet installation, and before granite counters, tile floor & backsplash...



When Will arrived, the cabinets were in... but I didn't have floors, counters or a stove... So like I said, ANYTHING is better than that.

Here is the kitchen now:



There's a lot more to it than that photo offers, but you get the idea. It was worth it in the end, but the project itself was very painful. At least this time it's a smaller scale project. And it is SO NICE to come home from work and see progress made on the bathroom. We're still doing some of it ourselves, but Jim has helped expedite the whole thing.


Ah, the life of being homeowners...