Dad to the Rescue!

So, you may remember THIS POST about my lovely master bathroom issues WAY back in December!! Well, my dad came to the rescue!! Poor guy, came down for vacation and we put him to work. But, you can see why...


All the darker center is rotten wood. I can't even tell you how many ways this bathroom was screwed up. The tile was horrible, the toilet was set all wrong, it was just a HUGE mess. But the good news...I have a working toilet again!! After 7 months of running down the hall to the kids bathroom in the middle of the night, I have my very own toilet back, I'm so excited! He broke out all the tile and cement board, cut out the bad wood, put in new wood, reset the toilet the right way, and we're good to go. Now we just have to re-tile it, but we are going to re-tile the entire bathroom, and David feels confident he can do that on his own, so now we just have to go tile shopping. What was going to cost us thousands in repairs has cost us next to nothing so far. My dad ROCKS!

Before and...During?

Well, now that summer is here, I've been toiling away on the house. The first week of summer we didn't do much but save gas by staying home and cleaning up and going to the pool. This week the kids are at Camp Dobulecreek again, so I've been using the time to get some much needed projects done around the house. Nothing is quite finished yet, but I'll show you the progress I've made so far.

First is a curtain I got for the dining room, nothing special, just that fact that we've lived here over 2 years and I finally got ONE curtain! (And Ricky likes it)

Then I took a bunch of kitchen cabinets off and started sanding and painting them. I'll post those pictures when I get closer to being done, which could be NEVER, I didn't realize how many cabinets I had, and they're all so big and it's just taking me forever to get them painted.

But I wanted to update the kids bathroom, less puppies, more grown up, and I like it so far. The blind in that bathroom was gross (like that when we moved in, not us!) so I found a cheap one to replace it at Walmart. And for future reference, no windows RIGHT next to little boy's toilets. I still need to paint the cabinet in there, I'm going for a darker brown, and hang new towel bars, but I like the paint color, it probably should have been a little more green, but it's close enough and I'm tired of painting.

Before:

After:

Now I am going to keep plugging away at those kitchen cabinets, and I have a light fixture in the dining room to paint, the projects just NEVER end!!

Bathroom Update with Pictures

I'm not done, but I thought I would post some pictures because I LOVE the way the cabinet turned out. I can't wait now to get going on all the other cabinets in this house, they were just so FUGLY to start with. I didn't have a before picture of the bathroom cabinet, but the kitchen cabinets are exactly the same so here's what it looked like before:And here's what it looks like now with new paint and knobs:
I still need another coat of paint, my holdup on that has been that I think this color might be a smidge too dark. I need to switch out the light fixture (my FIL said he would do that, thank God, I'm in no mood to be electrocuted) and make dinner for my plumber friend and see if he will switch out the faucet for me. There's a light at the end of the tunnel!! But then, the kitchen...

Bathroom Picture

How come nothing about remodeling can ever be EASY??? It's like one step forward, two steps back every time you turn around! For example...I wanted new fixtures, the toilet paper roll and hand towel holder is old and crappy looking. Sounds easy, right? Well, you would think so. There was a small hole in the wall where one of the toilet paper holder thingies was screwed in, so I needed one that was bigger than what we had to cover that hole, after buying 2 of them, I found one that will work. Only problem is, one of the screws that is holding that thing in place is stripped and I can't get it out. So now I have a dangling silver thingie. Then I made the curtain, and I don't know what I was thinking, but I made it too wide. So I hemmed it along the side again and guess what? STILL too wide. I found a hand towel holder thing I like, but it's not big enough to cover the huge screws that are in the wall to hold the last hand towel holder in place. I can't get one of the knob screws out to put the new knob on. And, to top it all off, I think I need something else over the curtain, like a valance or something, it looks too plain. And I think the color is too dark, and I still need a second coat. Wow, I am SO not looking forward to doing the kitchen, if these are the problems I have in just this tiny bathroom, imagine doing a whole kitchen? I'm scared!!

Bathroom Remodel Rant

Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. I wanted to change just about everything in the guest bathroom, so I didn't do anything until I had all the stuff I wanted, new light fixture, new faucet, new knobs, new curtain, paint, switch plates, toilet paper holder, towel holder, etc. Maybe I should have just done a bit at a time. Anyway, I finally got it all, then started painting the bathroom this morning, and I just want to say thank you Home Depot Paint Worker. Mr. One-Quart-Should-Be-Plenty-for-a-Guest-Bath Man. I had about a two foot section left and I was smushing that paint roller down, trying to squeeze every last drop of paint out of the roller, using the tiny amount of paint left on the brush I used for the cutting in, so now it's kind of splotchy and I have to get ANOTHER quart. Oh well, it's on there good enough for me to put the cabinet doors back on and put the switch plates and light fixture and the other things up. I got some fabric from Ikea and made my own curtain (don't laugh) I can't sew to save my life, don't tell my grandma and aunts who worked in a sewing factory, that gene just did not come my way. But, I'm proud of my little makeshift $6.99 Ikea curtain. So, pictures will be posted soon, you know me, it just has to be perfect.

And cross your fingers that I don't electrocute myself when it comes time to switch out the light, I have no idea how to do that, and David is busy with another of our home upgrade projects, he put a big double gate in our fence on the side so we can park our new trailer in the back yard.

Bathroom Remodel - Step 1

Unfortunately it's not the master bathroom, BUT it is something on my resolution list, and something I've been wanting to get done for a long time now. In the powder bath, I took the cabinet doors off, sanded them down with my new Black and Decker Mouse, and applied the first coat of Black Ink paint. Kilz One Coat my a$$. But, it's looking good! It will probably take two coats, maybe three. Then I have to paint the walls, put in the new light fixture that we have, the new faucet that we have, and I am still on the hunt for the right curtain. I know in my head what I want, it's just finding it somewhere. Okay, that seems like so much more when I have it written down, but hey, first step is done, that's what counts! Baby steps.

Bathroom Issues

No, I'm not having intestinal problems, it's MUCH worse!!

When we bought the house, almost 2 years ago, the bathrooms upstairs had linoleum, but we were told the toilets were set for a thicker tile, so there was a gap between the toilet and the linoleum, no biggie, the listing realtor (NOT our realtor, who was AWESOME) told us her boyfriend is a handyman, he could put in ceramic tile, no problem. So that was done before we ever closed on the house. When we moved in we noticed it wasn't a great job, there were huge gaps in the grout and the tile, they weren't spaced correctly, and there was some sort of glue or something all over the tiles that progressively gets darker.

Cut to September of this year, I notice a spot on the ceiling above the TV in the living room, which coincidentally happens to be right under the toilet in our master bathroom. No problem, we have a Home Warranty, so I call them, they send a plumber out. He tells me that the person who put the floors in, did it wrong, and didn't set the toilet back right. There was a perfectly shaped wax ring sitting there, it hadn't been installed properly, so over the course of the year and a half, water had seeped out of the toilet, making it leak onto the wood around it and leak down to leave a spot on the ceiling. So he put a new wax ring on, and put a riser on it to make the toilet level, since the floor apparently isn't.

So the other day I notice there is a steady seeping of water coming from the light switch in the living room. Right under the spot. I call the warranty people again, they send a plumber again, who tells me that the wood floor under and around the toilet has rotten through and he can't put the toilet back on there, for fear of it falling through the floor. Because of the rotten floor, water is seeping down the wall to come out of the light switch. Also, it gets better...none of this is covered by the home warranty. So, I have no toilet, a rotten floor, quite possible mold in my walls and no way to pay for it to be fixed.

At this point I just laughed, what else can you do right?? David wants to find the guy who put the toilet and floor in originally and see if he has contractors insurance, and get him to pay to fix all this. Problem there is, I don't think he was a "contractor" I think he was someone's boyfriend/handyman who did his girlfriend/realtor a favor. So I am hoping our homeowner's insurance covers this mess, but I don't know since it's water damage and all that.

I am choosing to look on the bright side. I could see this as one more punch in the gut (I've had a few this year) or I can see this as an opportunity. I have wanted a new, low-flush toilet for a long time now. I've wanted to redo the tile in there from day one, and I've wanted our whole bathroom to be tile, not just the toilet room (whatever you call that). Heck, I should throw in a new jacuzzi tub and a bigger shower stall for good measure. And while I'm on it, maybe I can finagle some new cabinets out of the deal. I want it all!! So, I'm not going to worry about it, it's in God's hands, and we know he does exceedingly abundantly above all we could ask or think!!