My Big Fat Renovation

[67ChevyRedneck]

Gate Closed.

I didn't want to tear up my good grass until I know what I'm doing for a step, but that ugly concrete "notch" will be covered up when I figure out if I want some kind of paver or stone.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Gate Open

[67ChevyRedneck]

So I got snookered into doing a renovation I didn't want to do (yet.) I just got my truck bed home and I was excited about working on it.

[67ChevyRedneck]

*ALL* I was going to do was install the bead board and trim in my bathroom so I could get the materials out of my garage where they've been in the way for a while now (yeah my wife and I don't share a bathroom, it's WONDERFUL!) She gets the master with the terrible stand up shower that I smack my elbows in every time I use it (she loves it) and I get the hallway bath with the huge tub/shower. The key to a happy marriage is separate bathrooms.

Anyway, there's always been separation between the tub and floor, I've caulked it a few times with little success... and I found out why. When I removed the lower trim the sheetrock moved... like, A LOT. I knew I was gonna cover it up with paneling, so I cut a section out... I honestly can't say at this point that I was surprised to see NOTHING supporting the outer edge of the tub and sheetrock. What really gets me is that when the tub was installed... the walls were BARE! It would have been so easy to add a couple 2x4's.

You can see the crack in the caulk from the tub being able to move a little in the 2nd pic.

[67ChevyRedneck]

So, what to do here? I HATE sheetrock and I really didn't want to redo the whole area around the tub. I figured the bottom 34" being secured was better than nothing, so I screwed a couple 2x4's securely to the floor, then screwed together a little knee wall kinda thing, then screwed that to the floor and adjacent stud. Ideal? No, but the current situation has lasted 16 years... this should hopefully get another 15+ out of it.

[67ChevyRedneck]

So... what to do about the other side? Can't leave it. But to remove it means to take out the toilet. I've become well versed on how long projects really take and last week when the owner of the engineering firm I work for decided to let everyone off for friday (giving me wed-sun off with holiday pay) I had the opportunity to get on this and just get it done right. To tile a floor correctly alone takes 3 days with dry times.

So up came the floor...

[67ChevyRedneck]

Almost forgot the "before" pics. I got a little excited and started to tear stuff out before pics. I removed the huge mirror which took out huge chunks of my wall with it... I've removed 2 other mirrors in the house and they popped right off the wall, one is even remounted in my garage.

I did the crown about a year ago as well as the larger suction fan/light combo, so it was already "done."

[67ChevyRedneck]

So on New Years Eve I pulled the toilet and posted this pic to facespace on the ole interwebs and got a ton of responses

[67ChevyRedneck]

Anyway, on New Years Eve I also leveled out the floor so it could dry. It was only a hair low by the tub, there's nothing more than a skim coat there, but for some reason it dropped almost 3/8" on the right side of the room... when I redid the bedroom behind this, I never noticed any drop to the floor... Because of this the tiles and thresh hold had cracked on that side of the room.

[67ChevyRedneck]

My wife actually only had New Years Day off and I had to buy supplies the day before, so she trusted me to pick out the tile. I texted her the pic below comparing it to the old tile and got approval. I picked out a matching grout color on my own!

If the curtain wasn't any indication... I decided to go bold on this one... Some will love it, I'm sure others will hate it. I'm hoping all the white trim will help balance it out. It's official "Clemson Orange".

[67ChevyRedneck]

On New Years Day I cut new cement board for the floor and laid out my tile pattern. I knew I would be slow, so I laid it all out and cut all my pieces with a borrowed tile saw. so I didn't have to spend time cutting pieces and coming back in. He's not on here, so I can say it was a total pile o crap. It looked like a $20 wet saw... it sucked... I was going to rent a good one, but he insisted... I had to cut like literally half of the 30 or so tiles to have an "even" pattern. It worked out well... I made a batch of thinset just large enough for the whole floor and it was still just barely workable when I was done.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Today I laid out the grout around all of the edges and started to install and caulk the trim. The caulk needs time to dry and I need to paint behind the toilet before I reinstall it.

This is where I'm at now. I hope to caulk the trim one more time, and let it dry. I hope to paint behind the toilet on sunday so I can get it reinstalled for the work week.

I was really proud of myself for picking a grout that went with the tile!

[67ChevyRedneck]

Getting closer to having this room done!

All of trim is up, the walls have been repaired and texture matched, primed, and the ceiling has been painted.

[67ChevyRedneck]

Just messing around...

[67ChevyRedneck]

I think they got the color name wrong... it's not actually "Clemson Orange" it's "Holy ****! That's Orange!"

[67ChevyRedneck]

Next up was to paint the crown:

[67ChevyRedneck]

I got the new light and cabinets installed. Soooo much more storage than before... when there was nothing... Now I can keep the sink clean and free of crap.

I took the weekend off for a "guys only" trip to Charleston without the wife's for a weekend of stupor, but hope to finish it this weekend. All I really have left is the trim around the tub and all of the wainscoting and lower trim needs to be painted.

[67ChevyRedneck]

I finished the bathroom last weekend and started working on the hallway.

[67ChevyRedneck]

More:

[67ChevyRedneck]

Last ones with door painted:

[67ChevyRedneck]

I had to build something to work on the stairwell so I didn't break my neck. I wanted to clean up and fix a few spots on the ceiling, caulk and fill the nail holes in the trim, paint the ceiling, repair and paint the walls, then paint the trim... so using/moving a ladder seemed unsafe and a lot of work for all the stuff I wanted to do, so I made a false floor.

When in use I have a couple braces I screw to the 4x4's to make sure those don't move and I have another sheet of plywood that pulls over the slats to create a full "floor." It works great. So far I've gotten the trim caulked and nail holes filled and the ceiling painted.

[67ChevyRedneck]

One of my final projects is the hallway. Like the rest of the rooms I wanted to jazz it up (stupid me) - I've created more work for myself than my wife has ever asked me to do.

This could have been a straight up crown/base caulk and paint job, but I just had to add the wainscoting because it looked really "boring" to me.

Here's what I started with when we bought the house. That incredibly cheap floating wood floor was installed over carpet padding... seriously...:



...and where I am today (the last pic is my ladder over the staircase on my false floor!):

[67ChevyRedneck]

I need to stop using my phone for pics, the quality sucks when they're shown bigger.

I have A LOT of caulking to do still, but really do hope to realistically have this completed over the next 3 weekends.

What's crazy is that when this is done I just have one closet to build/paint, 2 more doors to paint, and crown/base trim to paint in ONE room (everything is for the same room) and I'm actually done? What?

My wife would like the master bath redone, but after sharing a bathroom for 6 weeks, I think she's talked herself out of it

I plan to do that one in stages. Fix walls/ceilings. Paint Ceiling. Do floor. Do trim. Paint Walls. I believe I'm going to use that as a project for this next winter.

[esoxman308]

Awesome job!!

[67ChevyRedneck]

Thanks! I'm pushing hard to get this done! I have some stuff that needs to be done to the 65 Mustang before I feel good about driving it 3,000+ miles on the power tour, so I need to work on it very soon so I have at least a month to work out any bugs.

So I finished caulking the upper trim and top of the lower trim so I could at least get the wall color on this weekend. It looks really cool in person, so much better than the "contractor white" it's been the past 16 or so years.

Cauling/filling holes and painting all the lower trim will probably take a couple weekends. It's a lot more than what it looks like.