The Light at the End of a LONG Tunnel

This weekend I started to be able to see the light at the end of the dark basement bathroom tunnel... literally. Dave and Ryan worked all day Saturday getting the drywall and concrete board up so that Dave could hook up the pot lights so they wouldn't have to use a spot light anymore!!! Its such a HUGE change to be able to have lights in there without hooking up an extension cord to a lamp!! This was probably more exciting to me than the drywall!!!
This is the progress they made on Saturday! (the yellow board is the concrete board and the tile will go up the walls that far, and the other is the drywall, the entire shower is done in concrete board as well)

The wall that the vanity and toilet will go on.

The shower with its own pot light.

The small slit on in the yellow board is where a grate is going to go so the radiator heats up the bathroom. And above that, the hole is the last remaining piece of drywall that needs to be done... but at this point the guys were tired and dinner was ready to eat!

This is looking from the shower to the other end of the bathroom. See we have 2 light switches, the first is for the lights in the toilet/sink area and the second is for the light in the shower. There will be a third switch for the heated flooring as well. Below that the holes there are #1 for an outlet in the bathroom and #2 I believe is for the thermostat for the heated flooring. Then on the wall to the right is where the 2 vanity lights will go with a mirror in between.

And this is the doorway and eventually we will have some type of door... I'm still hoping for this type that I mentioned in a previous post. But Ryan wants to use the door we already have... so I may incorporate the door we have into that type of a design...

This is a huge improvement on the muddy hole this was about a month ago... alas now its a dusty nightmare!!! But when dealing with drywall its always going to be super dusty!! At least we have radiators so the dust is contained in the basement!!!

Water + Walls = WOOHOO

Yesterday was a VERY exciting day in the Guerin household!!!! The plumbers were here bright and early to start finishing up the plumbing in the basement bathroom. Now I was so excited about this I totally forgot that we would have NO water ALL day as they finished it up... it made my plans of baking many batches of cookies a little bit of an issue as I couldn't clean my dishes... but I still managed to get in 2 batches of cookies!!

The last time they came they put in the drains for everything but needed us to concrete the floors and frame the walls before they could proceed. This time it was installing the hot and cold piping for the shower, toilet and sink. By mid afternoon they were finished and we had water in our bathroom (which is a good thing! haahaa)... which is slightly a key aspect of a bathroom!! This is the plumbing for the sink as well as the electrical for the vanity lights.

To give you a better idea this is the plan. We have an amazing mirror that my grandparents gave us as a wedding gift that I have been saving JUST for this purpose! The vanity lights will go where the arrows are. And underneath we will have either a pedestal sink (which we were given for free) or eventually hopefully I will actually have time to convert a desk we have into an awesome vanity.

Right after the plumbers left Ryan and Dave were hard at work installing the concrete board in parts of the bathroom. We are using concrete board where the tiles will be and drywall for the rest of the walls. The plan is to have about 4 feet of tile running up the walls and the rest of the wall will be painted.

Look at that progress!!!

The boys finished the concrete board in the toilet/sink area of the bathroom. We now have to put concrete board in the entire shower area other than the ceiling. We couldn't do that because we have to fix the framing in the shower. Originally we wanted to do a small bench in the shower but it isn't going to work out so we have to adjust the framing in there and we ran out of wood so that project is on hold till next weekend. You might notice on the right side of the shower door a long piece that isn't covered. That is our radiator, we have left an opening in the walls where we will put a grate so the radiator will heat the bathroom. This was the easier (and cheaper) solution than getting someone in to move the radiator.

Now I LOVE to drywall... I'm pretty good at it too!! Go here for a wonderful picture of me drywalling! But with Ryan and Dave working on the concrete board on the walls there was very little space for me to help out. SO I worked on cleaning up the dust and dirt that had accumulated in the basement. Ryan snapped a wonderful picture of me lifting the lamp wire up with one foot while balancing on the other foot to sweep up the dirt. This is quite a talent when you have a big belly!! haahaa!!!

Anyway that's the great progress we made on the basement bathroom this weekend! We also managed to finish up a few other minor projects but these will come in posts later on this week!!!

Living Room/Spare Room Reno - Part 2

The first weekend in May last year we started the gutting job for the living room. It took 5 guys, a bunch of beer and an entire day to gut the living room/spare bedroom down to a skeleton. We found MANY 100 year old cobwebs. As well, we discovered that our saging ceilling was the cause of shoddy work... some idiot had the roof being held up by a 2 by 4 on its face... UM DUMB!!!! Not only was it being held up by a 2 by 4 but the support beams on either side of the beam were held in by 2 nails... yes thats right.. 2 nails!!! We were both surprised the roof hadn't caved in yet!!!! MEGHAN AND RYAN TO THE RESCUE!

The problem with older houses is that the frames aren't 16 inches apart like they are supposed to be. Also the framing was all done with actual 2 by 4's (old school 2 by 4's are actually 2 inches by 4 inches, where as new 2 by 4's are a little less than 2 inches by 4 inches). SO we had to add lots of wood to reframe the rooms as well as put supports in for the roof. To do this we had a friend come in and fix the roof for us since that we thought we should have a professional do. Our ceiling is now supported by 2 two by tens which were glued and nailed together. Its not going anywhere now!! We also decided that we would make the spare bedroom an office as well. So we put french doors from the living room to the office/spare bedroom so we could open up the doors to make the rooms appear bigger. So we had the doors framed in. This picture is looking from the living room into the spare bedroom.

Next was the fun part, insulating and drywalling. We put insulation on all exterior walls as well as in the ceiling to help keep the cold out! Then it was drywalling time!!! I am become a pro drywaller!!! It took us a couple of months to get to this stage because we didn't have a lot of time to get around to the drywalling.

Once all of the drywall was hung it was time to get Ryan's brother in to tape and mud the drywall for us. He did a fantastic job!! Finally after 4 months of living in the kitchen it was the august long weekend and we took the entire weekend to finish the living room. We spent the Friday sanding down the walls to prepare them for painting. The Saturday was spent painting, now we have extremely high ceillings in the two rooms so painting the ceilling was a serious workout!!!! It was August and there was no a/c in the front of the house, so every hour we'd go hop into the pool because we were dripping in sweat!!! AFter the painting was done it was time for door frames and doors and baseboards. Ryans brother did our flooring when we were away on our honeymoon as a wedding present which was great!!! We had bought laminate flooring to install but hadn't had the time to get around to it. We had some left over flooring that we used to cover the bulk head that holds up our ceiling. It looks fantastic!! And TAH DAH our new living room/spare bedroom!!!!

These are the doors we used as the entrance to the office/spare bedroom. We bought a Minwax dark stain and stained them to match our new floors.

This is the spare bedroom/office. We painted it a pale green (picture doesn't show it) and added brown curtains to the french doors (which we stained) so when people stay over they have some privacy.

This is the living room (looking at it from our hallway). We painted it cabbage green which is basically a bright lime green and we LOVE IT!! We had to tone down the green with dark furniture but LOVE the living room! (this picture has bad colouring too it, but you can see what we did to the bulk head)