So...what the hell HAVE we been doing? Obviously not blogging right? Well, we have been crazy busy between our work (the stuff we get paid for), visiting home for the Holidays (yes - it has been that long since we blogged), working on the house and, oh yeah, growing a little boy. That's right - Tiffany and I haven't just been building a home, but also a person. It's official once it's on a blog or Facebook or something right? Not to diminish the amazingness of that announcement, the first image is of Tiff with her bump. He's coming, ready or not, in late May - so we've got a full-plate of reno before us trying to hit that timeline.I had a rough go in the bathroom with some other things, and I don't mean that I ate a lot of cheese (I know, that was pretty low-brow, but I was just feelin' it). As you may recall - the bathroom became a near complete gut-job because of the water leaks. Tiff and I spent HOURS chipping up vinyl flooring in layers; but that was nothing compared to what lay ahead of us - bottom line? Thank you Fine Homebuilding's remodeling magazine (Summer 2010 "best-of" issue) for giving Tiffany an idea that would consume the better half of my weekends for a good portion 2010 and the beginning of 2011. Of what do I speak? Tim Leahy's article on skim-coating plaster for a good clean, fresh finish. Tim, I am sure that you are a great person; and maybe, after all, it is my lacking in reno skills that caused all of this...but I am still suspect that this was some sort of joke that professionals perpetrate on us dumb DIY renovators.
When Tiffany asked if we could do it, I gave her a resounding "hell yeah!" - after all, Tim's article was there next to articles by Gary Katz and Myron Ferguson (two pros that I revere VERY much). Just by being in the same magazine as Gary and Myron, it was going to be how to do it right and we should do it that way. In the end, it appears that Tim either possesses some god-like level of patience or an abundance of time to kill, neither of which this dude posesses. Let me put it in perspective:
- The room is approximately 15' - D x 7'- W x 9' H (not including the bump-out for the tub).
- Using some cowboy math (total wall square footage - doors, windows, tub approx.) I get about 249 sq. ft. of wall.
- The weekend that I applied the layer of fibatape (like drywall tape, but 3 ft.wide) and first two coats of mud was approximately 30 hours in the room, or appx.7.2 minutes per square foot...which doesn't seem that bad until you are the poor bastard that is doing it (this is the case with many things, in my bedfordreno experience).
- Mind you, that this covered the two prescribed coats from Tim, which when primed and painted still wasn't quite there aesthetically - another weekend of dialing it in (you want this stuff to cure right before you prime and paint it) with another layer of mud in many areas, re-primer-ing (new verb courtesy of me) and more paint and we had something pretty good.
I wish I had a picture of me in my dustmask looking like "Casper the Friendly Ghost" after all of the sanding (and itchy as hell, mind you). This made the final-push 3am session of floor chipping before our contractor laid the wall and floor tile look like a cakewalk. Speaking of which, we used John Kerns out of the Bloomington/Bedford area to lay our wall-tile, Ditra underlayment/separation barrier and floor tile - credit where credit is due, he was awesome fairly priced (two excellent qualities in a contractor). So - we have floors, we have walls; next comes the cabinets, countertops, towel bars and mirror; a lot of which we completed over this last weekend. It feels good to start getting a sense of the space.
We had the countertops fabricated locally from Bedford Limestone, a benefit of living in the limestone capital of the US, and it cost us about a third as much as a Quartz top (BOOYAH DuPont with your fancy $65/sq.ft. ENGINEERED stone...ours was engineered by the earth and fabricated by a nice dude named Greg - mind you, you'll still probably get us for the kitchen). Aside from being local as well as a nice natural accent, the limestone is also a feature throughout the rest of the house. Getting it from the fabricator, I rinsed the stones in the bath and sealed them outside on the porch to prevent stains.
We ordered the cabinets from MasterBrand (where I work) in the Aristokraft line in Teagan Maple Sarsaparilla. Coming soon will be the upper cabinet above the vanity on the back side of the bathroom with frosted glass inserts - VERY cool looking (why am I installing the upper after the lower? Because I plan to use a set of "wicked cabinet jacks" that I am creating from plans on thisiscarpentry.com as I can't exactly have Tiffany hold it in place while I secure it...) We will also have a limestone countertop on the vanity with an undermount sink pretty quickly. Keep checking back on the progress and we'll keep the updates flowin'.
On a lighter, less reno-vatey note, we've also begun to hang some art in the house - afterall, it's what really makes a place feel homey. This is one of my ND prints in what we call the "blue-grey sky" suite or guest room #1 or "Not the Master, Not the Nursery...that other room with the bed" - named after a descriptor in the Four Horseman narrative...yes, we're Notre-Dorks, but we're cool with it.
We'll get back in the swing of blogging normally and hit you all with some images of baby furniture assembly soon.
