Renovations: Christina's Room

Guest Room #2's Bathroom

7/1/2005- 3/19/2010

(Note: This was Beth's daughter, Christina's room until she moved out in 2009)

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7/1/2005	We've just returned from dropping Christina off at the airport for a month-long trip to visit her father in Florida. This will give us the much needed time to completely rip apart her bathroom while she isn't put out by all of the noise and dust. Our hopes are that she'll come home to a completely renovated area, which she'll no doubt completely trash because she's a teenage female. Beth has informed me that this is normal for them and I have accepted the fact that arguing this point is futile. I am outnumbered.
7/4/2005	Spent most of the working day tearing out Christina's shower stall. It was cracked and broken and no amount of silicone was going to stop water from leaking into the walls. Found a new assortment of wallpaper from back when the shower was just a steel tub. It's all mildewed so the walls are going to have to come out. I'd like replace them with concrete board and do an interesting tiling job on the walls but we'll probably just keep it inexpensive and line it with fiberglass. The wood floor immediately surrounding the tub has rotted areas from decades of water being splashed out and trapped under the old linoleum floor covering. This isn't really a problem since the floor has to be leveled anyway. The tub is stable and as safe as can be but leans away from the drain so I'll have to jack it up from the veranda area below and level it. This is going to be a major project.
7/5/2004	I hate failing at anything so today was just a big waste of time and effort. Jacking up the tub is not going to work. That thing has got to weight 1,000 pounds and the jack slipped out from under it on three occasions. Each time I thought to myself, "Well, this is it. Sayonara!" Luckily, the tub stayed where it was supposed to each and every time. New game plan: chop it up and install a new, light-weight model. Beth will be home soon. We'll eat and then go tub shopping. Tomorrow will be a day of screaming metal saws and big chunks of tub being tossed out the window.
7/6/2005	It's 1:00 and I've just removed the element of danger where the tub could have fallen through the floor and killed an innocent washer & dryer. I feel incredibly manly right now, having swung a sledge hammer and beaten that old tub into small pieces. Sledge hammers are one of the last traces of our Cro-Magnon legacy.
7/8/2005	Since yesterday was a complete bust due to running around and buying materials, today is now proving to be very progressive. The floor is all ripped away now and the slope of the room has measured out at 3.5" from side to side. I'm correcting this by cutting adaptive lengths of 2X4's and setting a cutting line with a level. It seems to be working and I'm hoping to have the new flooring on by this evening.
7/11/2005	A good friend of ours passed away and I took an extra day off to build a memorial website for him. This pushed the progress on the bathroom floor back a day but now it's on track again. The leveling process is coming along just fine. So far there have been no rude surprises so either the house settled 80 years ago or the guys who installed the tub just weren't thinking about what they were doing. In either case I noticed that the original porch floor had no cross bracing so I'll be adding that while I'm in there. I'm also replacing almost all of the older square nails with screws to give the flooring more structural integrity and reduce the chance of it ever squeaking. When an older floor squeaks it's usually caused by wood rubbing up and down the shaft of a nail. Screws never squeak.
7/17/2005	Shopping day. We settled on a vanity, counter top and shower stall for Christina's bathroom from Lowe's. Once again, we tied it on the roof of Beth's car and lugged it all home. The fun never ends.
7/18/2005	The clock is ticking and it seems to be speeding up as the work slows down. Over half of her walls are now stripped and about 50% of the ceiling is out, too. Tomorrow is an absolute must in regard to having the room thoroughly demolished and clean so that I can start getting the walls and insulation in as quickly as possible.
7/19/2005	Great progress today. The room is stripped and ready for insulation. Good thing, too. The heat radiating from the roof is unbelievable. It feels like you have a sunburn when you're standing in there. I've counted 19 bags of rubbish so far. We'll be needing to rent a truck pretty soon to make a dump run.
7/20/2005	The insulation is partially finished. It would be completely wrapped up except that nothing is a standard size in this (&(^# house and I have to cut and tape lengths of insulation to create correct sizes. It can't be smashed into place because air has to get in the insulation fibers or it won't insulate and it then becomes useless. What do I have here, two weeks to finish? Piece o' cake. (Yeah, right!)
7/22/2005	Nothing is working out. The drywall shattered in several places, so I scrapped that idea and decided to give it a 'boat hull' kind kind of look by running small boards the length of the room.
7/24/2005	We didn't get much done yesterday because we decided to hit an estate auction where we picked up an 1888 Barrister's Chair after a short bidding battle with an old battle axe biddy. It looks great with the new desk in the study. Today was a different story. While Beth spent many hours getting the cleaning caught up I was able to complete the ceiling in Christina's bathroom and get about 1/4th of the drywall up. It would have been more, but the drywall is all stored in the veranda so each cut has to be made on the first floor and then that piece is taken upstairs where I have to cut it again because it wasn't cut correctly the first time. Actually, that only happened twice but it felt like it happened a a lot. The temperature difference in the room was remarkable as each sheet went up. This is going to be one of the best made rooms in the house when it's finished. I have about 14 days left, and only 10 of them are free for working. Tick tock, tick tock...
7/26/2005	Made lots of progress today. All of the walls are up except for the two small ones that will contain the shower area. I got the mud started so tomorrow will be a day of sanding, mudding and getting the floor prepped and painted to get ready for the new tiles. The floor still needs some bracing but they're more for noise reduction and keeping the wood stable for the tiles than for safety.
7/27/2005	Most of the drywall joints and corners are now filled but still need a little more work before they can be painted. The ceiling is primed as is the raw wood floor. The highlight of the day was using a torch to burn off all of the old peeling paint around the doorway. It smelled horrible but came off fairly quickly and I had a strong exhaust fan mounted in the window so it was tolerable. It will be painted tomorrow and the new linoleum floor tiles will all be put down. I'd imagine tomorrow's picture will be a real change of pace for readers but it will be this coming Sunday's pictures that should really look good.
7/29/2005	The vanity is in but needs to be connected. The ceiling is about 80% finished. The tiles are in. It's starting to look like a real bathroom except that it still looks like a wood shop. One week to go until Annette comes to visit and Beth wants it done by then so that she has her own bathroom and shower to use. The pressure is on.
7/31/2005	The room is now primed and most of the moldings have been put in place. The ceiling is finished but needs two coats of paint as do the walls. Three full working days left to go. It may be just enough time.
8/1/2005	The shower unit looks like it will be a nightmare to install. We'll see.
8/3/2005	Making it just under the wire, the sink and toilet now work and we're ready for our first Floridian guest, Annette. The shower will have to wait but she'll at least have a half-bath during her visit. Of course, even this didn't fly without a hitch or two. The cold water line to the sink had a leak and had to be welded a second time and the feed line for the toilet wasn't tightened enough and leaked all over the place including through the floor and onto the massive stack of drywall below. After about an hour of tweaks and turns it was wrapped up just in time for us to head off to Baltimore to pick her up.
12/10/2005	Finally got back into this room with the colder weather upon us. Put in the rear walls and corner of shower after first installing concrete board. It's starting to look hopeful, but this shower unit has the absolute worst instructions ever printed. I'll try to remember to put the name and model number here later on in the hope of helping others avoid this nightmare. In the meantime, the ceiling above the stall is now buckling a little, but I don't mind. Caulk is on sale.
12/19/2005	The shower stall is finally assembled but not in the way it was supposed to be. That would have been impossible since nothing fit together properly and none of the screw holes lined up at all. Just getting the door to function was an act of pure improvisation. If the thing doesn't leak I'll be amazed. I'm into the plumbing at this point. Now, I normally hate plumbing, but now I really really hate it. Nothing is going right and I keep getting pinched and/or burned at every move. If I weren't so pig-headed and cheap I'd be tempted to call a real plumber to come in and do this crap while I do something more pleasurable such as having my fingers bashed with a hammer. If you want a good perspective on this project's timeline, no problem. Last year at this very time, we started Christina's room and bath so that it would be ready when she got home from visiting her Dad in Florida for the holidays. Now the goal is simply to let her take a shower before she leaves to visit him again. I will be very happy when this part of the house is completed.
12/21/2005	It took the better part of the day to wrap up but Christina's shower is functional, and was christened last night with its first use. I wish I'd photographed every version of the plumbing I created throughout the day, but I was too busy losing my temper, and loudly reciting every obscenity known to man. I must have sounded as though I was preparing for a spelling bee hosted by Larry Flynt as I shouted out each word, used it in a complete sentence, and then repeating the word when finished. I'm confident I actually used several words in contexts never before heard as I repeatedly dashed down into the cellar to turn on the water only to hear Beth and/or Christina yelling that it still leaked. I'd cut away the offending section of pipe, and replace it only to have the same frustrating results again, and again. The bottom line was that I finally got the job done, and the kid was able to not only use her own shower for the first time, she immediately moved all of her showering articles up to her own private bathroom, and transformed our bathroom into a nice, neat place. I didn't care about that, though. My goal was to fulfill a promise I'd made to myself. and I did it. Never again. Never. Installing shower stalls is the worst!
1/4/2006	I still have to wrap up the trim, and take care of a few other little details, but I have a bad head cold right now. This has put the entire house on hold for days on end.
3/1/2010	And here we are, just four years later! Since Christina move out of the house about 18 months ago I now have lots of swinging room to take care of a few details. The ceiling is now being completed. The window is now caulked. The doorway to the closet has been sealed off. The linoleum floor is being carefully cleaned up so that it can be polished and sealed. I finally hung up a towel rack, too. What's it been; five years since I started this room? Not bad. Hey! You can't rush perfection.
3/4/2010	Today will be a good day because every last task will be completed other than the final paint job. There's a lot to do, but I have a load of time to complete everything. I'm also working on the Master Dressing Room, so I'll keep busy in there while the last of the joint compound is drying. If it dries quickly enough, who knows? I may even be able to paint by this evening. It would be nice to have this one completed.
3/5/2010	It's so damned close to be finished! I have just a little more drywall work to take care of, and then some painting. I'm so sick of this room I could throw up.
3/8/2010	Got a bit more done today. Did some first-coat painting around the stall. Put down a the floor molding by the door. Kind of dull, but last night I dyed Beth's hair red on top, and jet black underneath. Looks pretty cool, but the chemicals gave me a killer headache. I'll stick to carpentry. It's safer.
3/10/2010	So very close to completion. All of the ceiling moldings are now in place. I've caulked everything, and filled all the screw holes with Bondo. The Bondo will require a few minutes of attention with the orbital sander, but that's almost inconsequential. Any last-minute fixes in the drywall are completed. I created a custom MDF piece to hide a bad area in the left-rear corner of the shower stall, which is shown in the photo section. I even found a nice old board in the debris from the Landing area that I was able to reuse to fashion a fancy cover for the old transom in the Veranda. I'd used my router to create all of my own moldings, so before putting it away I cut the board on my table saw, and then routed its corners, and glued on an appliqué'. The seams in the bathroom ceiling need a tiny bit of caulk here and there. I'll put it on as needed while painting. The paint and caulk will mix, a chemical combination I've found to be very effective when done in small areas. After that? The floor will need to be cleaned up, and shined with a coat of Future Floor Wax. When Beth walked in from work she went upstairs, and said, "This is exactly how I pictured it! It looks great!" So, between this bathroom, and the Master Dressing Room's progress this week, we'll probably have two more completed rooms. It would be nice to have them done by this Sunday, March 13th, as it will mark our six-year anniversary here at the house. That alone makes me want to really push myself to complete them, and the only thing that might slow things would be work. I have a job interview tomorrow morning with a temp agency. It's not exactly a career move, but in this economy beggars can't be choosers, and we really need the money more than I need a bathroom with a shiny floor.
3/13/2010	Happy Anniversary, house! Six years! While the bathroom did not reach completion when I'd hoped, we did indulge ourselves by buying a few squares of 1" glass tiles. Beth has been taking note of glass tiles whenever she's seen them, and when Beth gets a notion in her head there's really no point in resisting even if I wanted to. In this case I was in full agreement because I also like the look, and I completely trust Beth's taste when it comes to "resale" decorations. She has a solid track record for identifying all sorts of structural, and aesthetic strategies that would appeal to just about anyone, and I've learned to give her opinions my complete considerations. Glass tiles often come in a square-foot flexible slab with all the tiles glued onto a sheet of plastic mesh. They can be adhered onto flat or even curved surfaces, but out needs demanded that we cut them into 1' x 3" strips. We then glued these strips over the sink as a mini-backsplash, and above the shower stall as a decorative border. As we completed this work, Beth decided to also cover the interior bottom of our medicine cabinet. (You can see pictures on the photo page.) The glass pattern is alternating greenish-blue shades with some random black tiles mixed in, which will match the bathroom floor. The glass tiles added some much-needed color to an otherwise black and white room, and they look fantastic! Even though the tile pads were cut down into fourths, cost was still a real consideration. The shower stall required two full sheets. The cabinet was 5 tiles deep, so it also required two full sheets. The vanity backsplash is 3' wide, so it needed only one, but that's a total of 5 sheets, and at $9.97 each, plus tax, this small accent cost us $52,84! On top of that, we needed white grout, so add on another $15 taking the total to $65.00. To be 100% realistic, I may as well add on $5 for fuel, so let's call it $70.00. $70.00, just so we'd see a couple of 3" high accents when we use the bathroom. Was it worth it? Hell, yeah! It made the difference between a beautiful bathroom, and a beautiful bathroom with style! When I go in there I honestly can imagine being is a small bathroom at some nice home in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It has a "clean" feel, and then walking out into the adjoining Guest Room is such a perfect transition with all the beautiful antiques that the illusion of staying in a top notch bed and breakfast makes me want to stay in the Guest Room to relax for a while. It was most definitely worth the expense, no doubt about it.
3/14/2010	We took the day off. I still grouted the backsplash just to see how it would look. Couldn't resist. It looks great, but I'll have to remember to do a better clean up when I do the other two areas. I'm a first-time user of the grout that comes out of a tube (much like a silicone tube), and it dries to a deceivingly tough finish. Sometimes the lessons this site can teach others come though my own mistakes. I hope this one helps.
3/17/2010	I must have spent 5 hours taking paint off the tiles with a solvent. What a pain in the butt! I really need to start using tarps. I wish I could wear protective gloves for the chemicals I'm using, but I'm allergic to them. I therefore have to choose between hives on my arms, or a few small areas of chemical burns. I choose the burns every time. I have an extremely high pain threshold. so the burned areas feel like minor abrasions for a couple of days whereas the hives are so itchy that I literally scratch off my flesh. Being a diabetic, it takes many weeks for even small cuts to heal, so why bother with gloves? My hands are fairly burned this morning, but not so badly that I can't finish cleaning up the floor. I need to get this completed so that I can put a protective coat of Future Acrylic Floor Wax down, and then the bathroom will be all but completed so that I can move on to finishing the closet next door.
3/18/2010	7:20 am: Picking up Sasha from the vet's office in a short while. We had her spayed yesterday. 10:53 am: Sasha is fine. Brushed out both dogs to thin the effect of the shedding of their winter coats. Might have to work on a chapter of "The Cadaver Dogs." Hmmm. Have I ever mentioned that project here? It's a book I've been working on for over ten years. 1:00 pm: Can't let a day go to waste, and the pups are just sleeping the day away, so I decided to do a little work. I started in a small corner, and did a thorough cleaning of each floor tile. Wherever I found small nicks or chips, I used Testor's black model paint to touch them up using a fine-tipped paint brush. Testor's is an enamel. It dries quickly when applied in small amounts, and will be tougher than the linoleum itself. Once I'd cleaned up six tiles (six sq. ft.), I applied Future Acrylic Floor Finish by hand using an old sock that has long ago stopped shedding fibers. This won't be how I'll normally shine up this floor, but for the initial sealing process I wanted my nose at ground level so that I could remove any possible hairs or flecks of dust. Again, Future is acrylic, so applying it is the same as puring a layer of plastic over the floor. Anything that gets into it will be there forever unless the floor is stripped. I finished off half the floor before Beth came home from work, and we were both extremely pleased with its "wet" look. The floor was dry, but the glossy shine was perfect. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to add a "how to" section in the photo page for restoring really crapped-up linoleum floors.
3/19/2010	It's finished. Yes, there may be a few changes in decor yet to come, but my end of the work is completed, and it only took four years, and eight months. I'm sitting here thinking back on the entire process, and it's truly gratifying to be able to say that it's not only finished, it's also a truly fine piece of work. My earliest recollection of the room is from trhe day before we settle on the house, and did our final walkthrough with our Realtor, Deborah Palsha. She had said, "I don't know what's with this room. There isn't a straight line in it, and it appears that the decor was done in, what? Five stages? Six? Seven? Nothing matches. You'll have a lot of fun with this one." And now I can honestly say that we now officially have another room that will give us a feeling of real pride when our friends and relatives see it.