Tile Day #3 - January 29

It's been a big day, and not just 'cause it's Someone's 5th birthday, either!  (Happy Birthday, Madness!!!)

Today started the actual tiling part of the tile work and boy is it so exciting!!!  We departed Grand and Pap's bright and early and were home in time for the tile guys to get there.  What a YUCKY morning, too - actually all day of it - cold, blustery, wet, gross - but they were there and ready to go.

I'll cut to the chase now, I know you're only here for the pictures!  But first a word about the dust (again, I know).  Just to demonstrate what I am talking about...

This is the faucet in the hall bath sink:

Yep, that line is where I dragged my finger through the dust just to show the sheer amount of it!  Now, it's definitely the worst in that little bathroom but trust me when I say that even the farthest reaches of our home have a thin veneer of this.  Can't wait to start cleaning that!

Ok, now to the good stuff!  I give you tile...

Here's how the new level concrete dried overnight (note the dust on the red walls of the hallway.  OK I'll stop with the dust talk):

 Prepping...

Here we go!!!

This picture (above) is the closest in terms of actual color of the tile.  It is a weathered wood color, so quite grey with some brown too.

Love, love, love this tile!!!!  They have the kitchen and part of the hallway to go tomorrow, and if the weather will cooperate, grouting may actually happen too.  We'll see...but whether it gets done tomorrow or Friday, well, it's ok because at least it is happening!!!  Whee!
 

Tile Days #1 and 2 - January 27 and 28

Oh. My. Gosh.

We thought drywall and popcorn removal created a lot of dust.  Ha!  That's funny!  Tearing out many, many square feet of tile creates A LOT of dust - an unbelievable amount, actually.  Whoever said we'd be finding dust for years to come was really probably right.  Oh goodie.

So, complaining aside, we are very excited to be at this stage of the project.  Monday started the fun with the tearing out of the existing tile...

This photo was taken at about  8:30 in the morning.

The above two photos were taken at about 10:30 in the morning.  Crazy!!

 The above pictures are what it looked like by early afternoon.

Things were flying right along and we optimistically started to think they could start laying the new tile on Monday afternoon when *screeeeech* things came to a halt.  Turns out, the actual slab of the house has some pretty major dips in it in the middle of the living room and at the end of the hallway.  The previous tile was able to be put down with extra mastic in the low places, so we were not aware of the issue.  However, the new tile is long, so not nearly as forgiving, so the floor has to be leveled out.  On Monday afternoon, the tile guys filled in the low parts and called it a day to let it dry overnight.

Tuesday morning, they "floated" a thin coat of concrete all over the entire floor - looks like this:

And of course, it has been rainy and gross and foggy all day today, so it is not going to get dry until the morning.  So we have no tile yet (patience!).  The good news about this, though, is that we get to spend the night with my folks, which means we got Mom food for dinner instead of having to eat out, so that's a bit of happiness in the midst of this mess.

And now they're saying we could have sleet and frozen roads overnight and into the mornings on Wednesday and Thursday, so we're just hoping that bridges will be open and everyone can get to where they need to be, aka our house to lay tile!

We'll keep you posted!

Week in Review - January 20 through January 26

Hi again!  It's been a while since I last updated, sorry about that!  I had to travel for work the week of January 20 and upon returning home, immediately went back into renovation mode and just haven't had the time...And, it felt like there wasn't much to say, but as it turns out - there is!

So, let's review.

Monday, the Drywall dudes finished the final touches on the drywall and ceiling, took the plastic down, put the lights and fans and air duct vents back up, put the doors back on their hinges.  So that's all done.  Yay!!!

Tuesday, the tile and grout and stuff got delivered taking up some of the last precious square feet of space left in the garage, but it is still very exciting!!

Also on Tuesday, the nice Bagster people came and picked up two more Bagsters-o-debris - see pics below!  Still fascinating to me that they have a machine specifically made for this one thing.

An artistic black and white rendering...

On Wednesday, it was determined that the tile project wouldn't start until Monday the 27th because to start it at this point in the week would mean we'd have the house torn up for yet another weekend, so...we wait.  (Patience is a virtue I hear.)

Thursday, we had a bonus project happen.  Our heat pump power control/defrost board died and the whole pump was covered in ice when the Mister got up in the morning.  So he got to have the heating and air people come out and fix that.  Which is fine, we need heat this winter - good Lord!

Friday, I got home (and after being where it didn't get above freezing for lots of the week, the mid-40s felt kinda good for about 5 minutes and then I was cold again, or still.) and that afternoon, the counter guy came to make the template for the quartz.  In my imagination, I had pictured a guy with a measuring tape and a pencil and a sketch book or something.  Nope.  Way cooler than that.  He used this computerized laser level on a tripod thing and set up sensors on the corners of the cabinets and it took pictures and also did a CAD drawing of the counters to be fabricated.  He then used a measuring tape and a pencil and a sketch book to double check everything (thank you for being extra sure!).  It was a very fascinating process to watch.  Can't wait to see the final product!

 The little block things with the bright green on them are the sensors that the laser thing used to make the points on the drawing.

Saturday, number one niece was in town, so we did some shopping at some favorite stores - Lowes (where they are starting to know us by name), Target, and finally HomeGoods where I got the most amazing deal on the coolest stools EVER that will go under the new peninsula - but you'll have to wait to see those...Oh, and a 15 cubic yard dumpster got delivered.  That was interesting to watch too:

Truck showed up with the smaller dumpster (ours) inside of a larger one, so he had to get the smaller dumpster out...

 Then he put the smaller one back on the truck and put it in our driveway.

Then Sunday.  Oh Sunday, day of rest...not this week!  We had to finish moving everything out of the front of the house so the tile could start on Monday.  Sleeper sofa, washer, dryer, refrige - you know, the easy stuff.  Thankfully a good friend was eager to help and he came and spent several hours helping move the heavy stuff, wrap it in plastic, stash it in the last one square inch in the garage and on the back porch and so on.  But, they got it done!  And then they got to take out the toilet from the hall bath that is also being tiled (failed to mention this in the Scope Creep post, but it should have been included)...here's the only photo from all of this fun:

 

We got by with a little help from our friend!!

Next up:  Tile!!!

Cabinet Day - January 19

With the drywall (mostly) done Saturday night, and the tile being delivered Tuesday - we had to get cabinets into place this weekend...which left us Sunday to do them.  And our original plans of keeping the original cabinets and just adding the monster wall cabinet got shot down when we ran into the moldy wall.  Those cabinets had to go.  Sooo, we brought out our newly acquired skills and our usual fearless confidence regarding these types of things (how hard could it be?  It's the Suddenly motto!) and we got busy installing some cabinets.

As we had been out of the house most of the day Saturday while they were spraying the ceiling with the knockdown stuff (twice), we had already acquired all the stuff we needed - cabinets, wood screws, 2x2s, etc.  First day of this entire project that we didn't have to make a bonus trip to Home Depot or Lowes!  That's a miracle in itself.

We started with the sink side because we had two cabinets to install there and plumbing to work around.  (About a year ago, we had a slab leak and ended up having our entire house replumbed.  They ran pipes through existing cabinets, which wasn't a big deal until we had to remove some of the cabinets.  That was fun.)  So, in a stroke of brilliance if I do say so myself, we figured out that if we would put 2x2s between the wall and the cabinets, we would have enough room to let the plumbing run behind the cabinets and we wouldn't have to do a bunch of plumbing work.  Yay!  So we mounted a couple of 2x2s in a nice, level way and installed the cabinets (it sounds so simple but getting those dern cabinets level was interesting).

Behold:

Nifty, eh?  Oh, and in the little cabinet against the wall, we installed our very exciting trash and recycling cans!!  No more cans on display under the awkward microwave cabinet!  Hooray!!!!

So, so, so groovy!

Oven cabinet time.  You'll recall from a previous post the absolutely fantastic deal on the cabinet for the wall oven and microwave.  That thing is a beast, and after trying about 5 times, we got it into place, level, and mounted to the studs in the wall. 

And yes, there are currently three different colors and styles of cabinets in the kitchen, and when the cabinets that I bought for the laundry room (at Habitat ReStore for twenty nine bucks!) get picked up today, the color and style count will go up to four.  But never fear.  We're painting the cabinet boxes and ordering new doors for everything (except the oven cabinet, those doors are the right style already).  Once that is all in place, you'll never know they started out as the hodge-podge collection they are today.  Except you will know because you read all about it here.

So this coming week is new tile week.  I am traveling to the great white north so I will probably miss all of that fun, or at least a good part of it.  I feel sorry for the husband, bird, and dog who have to live through the removal of about 700 square feet of existing tile.  But it will be worth it in the end.  Right?  Right!


 

Drywall Days #2, 3, and 4 - January 16, 17, and 18

If anyone ever tells you that removing popcorn ceilings is the messiest thing they've ever experienced, believe them. It's no joke.  And it is a lot of work.  And it is really smelly when they prime the ceiling after taking off the popcorn. (Kinda like living inside of a can of spray paint smelly. They make you leave your house while they paint the primer on the ceiling and you have to wait several hours before you can go home...and even if it is 38 degrees that night, you're willing to sleep with the windows open because you're afraid to sleep with them shut.)

But it is done and it looks really, really good!

Unfortunately these pictures do not do the whole situation justice.  It is hard to capture just how messy things were and how much dust was floating in the air, but it will provide a feel for it anyway...

Time lapse:

I love it, and it is easy to see how the room is going to look now with all the gaping holes in the walls gone, and the wall around the fireplace fixed.  Very exciting and such good progress!!!

Now, on to cabinets!