Master Bath Project: Day 8

Saturday came and we were ready to hit it hard today and tomorrow. For some reason my right big toe was hurting and I was thinking it was from kneeling down and bending it. Nope!! It seems I have an attack of gout. So today was a very painful day.

On top of that, overnight the foam that they sprayed under the tub continued to expand and now the tub was lifted about 1" above grade. I called the plumber and within 20 minutes he was back at the house and fixing the problem. Gotta hand it to them, their service is really good. Even with all the issues we still managed to finish the framing of the walls.

Another set back we are dealing with is the size of the tub. When you buy a shorter tub you also buy a much narrower tub. We really did not realize it until the plumber had set the tub. I mean it is really narrow. Luckily "A" came up with another great idea. We are going to frame out the front of the tub so that the shower curtain can be moved out about 5 more inches. This should make it a little better.

Not sure how much we will get accomplished tomorrow, if anything. It all depends on how the toe feels.

Master Bath Project: Day 7

Not much to report today except the plumbers came back and installed the tub. Yep that's about it. We went and bought more supplies; thinset, lumber for framing, more tiles, redguard for water proofing.

Found out the plumbers took my box cutter, I am sure it was a mistake as I left it in the bathroom. Did a little framing.

It seems this project will never end. We will not finish this week and now the goal is to be complete by next week.

Master Bath Project: Day 6 and front wall

The plumbers arrive on time which was great, we used Courtesy Plumbing. They had really high reviews on yelp.com and they did live up to it.  I really love it when we hire people to work on our house because I cannot wait to see their faces when they realize what they are up against.  It seems no one has ever encountered an entire house framed out of re-bar. When they don't have a place to tie into studs the look is priceless.  Much like what it costs me because it takes them three times as long. Hmmm maybe not so funny after all.

While they were working "A" and I decided to finally paint our front wall. It had been driving us crazy, "A" really bad, because it was a yellowish beige and the tall wall was really really spotty. I also needed to finish grinding off the bolts where the security bars were and then patch up the holes.

Before

Before

After

After

We started around 0900 and finally finished about 1430. The plumbers wrapped up their part about 30 minutes later. Unfortunately  they need to come back tomorrow because I had to patch up the hole were the old tub was. You see the tub moved over almost a foot and this left a nice hole that the new tub would not cover. So I still got to do some concrete work. That took me another hour and a trip to Home Depot for metal lathe.

 Tomorrow they will finish hooking up the tub and then it will be all on us, just as we like it.

Master Bath Project: Day 5

Sounding like a broken record we are feeling better today. The concrete guys came and took care of the floor. I am really glad that I decided to have them do it since it took two guys 4 hours from start to finish. They mixed the concrete bucket by bucket and it was a lot of buckets!

Tomorrow the plumber comes and depending on when he finishes we might even get to begin installing the wallboard.

They used 6 or 7 of these

Master Bath Project: Day 4

Today was much like the 2nd day. Nothing really got accomplished. The concrete guy came over to give us his quote. Unfortunately it was much higher than I thought it would be, but I always undershoot what it costs. "A" was right on target, as usual, on what she thought it would be.

I can't complain too much because how many contractors would come the next day you called for such a small project?

Tomorrow they will start around 0730. And on Thursday the plumber will come. Then it will be a mad sprint to the finish line.

Master Bath Project: Day 3

We are feeling much better today so we wanted to get in as much work as possible.
The first thing was to dry set in the new tub and get an idea as to where we would need to cut the wall out.  That way I can re-frame it and attach the durarock for the tile.

So this is where our adventure begins....

I score the wall with my handy dandy grinder and proceed to carefully knock out the wall. It seems that the bottom half has been replaced with drywall and plywood from when they installed the other tub, I guess. While they were at it they decided to insulate the wall by shoving as much batting as possible from the bottom  since they did not remove the top half of the wall. Why would you insulate an inside wall (on the other side is a bedroom)? I have no idea.

 On the left side were the plumbing pipes are they must have been running low on plywood because it was all patchy, but evidently they were not short on screws because they used so damn many. And the plywood kept going to the left all the way to the door. Why? I have no idea.

Finally I got all the wall off and with time left in the day I wanted to get the floor prepped as much as I could before the plumber came Wednesday to move the pipes and install the tub. I had to scrape what was left of what I guess is old mastic from other layers of who knows what. It was coming up pretty easy and as you can see by the rings it appears that when they initially poured the extra layer of concrete they just laid the tile right on top of it. Why? I have no idea.

 Well as in the photo above the floor is cracked and loose, sooooooooo it has to come up. Damn Damn Damn!!! Actually it wasn't too hard, except for where the tub was. That stuff will not come up with my hammer and crowbar. So now I don't think I can do self leveling (space is way too big) so I have a call into my concrete guy to come out and break up the last bit and pour enough so that my tile will be level with the hall floor.

     I could rent a small jack hammer, break it up, then teach myself how to lay and level about 67sqft of concrete at the correct height......not this week. So plumber is on hold until Thursday and Wednesday I will have the concrete poured.

When scoring the wall it was the only way to get rid of the dust

Conveniently located

Safety First

What I could not remove

Master Bath Project: Day 2

Nothing was accomplished today. We are still feeling the affects of whatever it is that we had. Not sure if it was food poisoning or the stomach flu or whatever.

We are feeling better. "A" made chicken soup and biscuits which helped a lot.

 Hopefully tomorrow will be a productive day.

Master Bath Project: Day 1

The master bath demo has began. We both took next week off and our only focus is to have this room done before we have to go back to work.

Unfortunately we started off with a rough patch, both of us having a mild case of food poisoning.  Because of that, we did not get as far as we wanted to today but were still able to get it gutted. The hope was to take out the drywall/plaster where the tile is to be attached. This way we can frame it with studs and then have the plumber move the pipes and install the tub. 

To get the drain out of the tube I had to shove channel locks into the drain then use vice grips to turn it. It worked!

Thankfully we are both feeling a little better and should be OK by tomorrow.

Necessity, the mother of invention.

After the Storm

Saturday and Sunday we had our biggest storm of the season. Not sure exactly how much rain we got, but it was easily over an inch. The big thing was the wind and all day today it was blowing fiercely for San Diego standards. Since we live on the canyon it was even more intense. I would guess that it blew at a steady 30mph with gusts into the 40s.

My main concern was the two eucalyptus trees in the back. But it seems that they held up OK. I have a lot of branches on my back patio and side yard from the eucalyptus trees and the ash tree.

Yesterday and today at sunset there was a nice break and that provided for a few nice shots from our nice new windows.

Saturday

Saturday, this is actually a picture of the sky, I thought it made a cool picture.

Saturday Sunset

Sunday Sunset

New Windows

Monday we finally had the remaining windows installed. If you remember we we had the first series installed May 2010 and we used the same company, Vinyl Masters.

It really is nice to have the bars removed and a clear view of the canyon. Now we need to shop of real window treatment and get rid of our "temporary" paper blinds.

They were able to save the original center window from the breakfast nook and dining room for which we are grateful. We are not sure what we will do with them but I am sure we can come up with something nice.

We also need to fix the outside trim and paint over where the bars were.

Office

Office

Office Before and after

Master Bedroom

Master Bedroom before and after

Breakfast nook

Breakfast nook and dining room windows