life – Bones to Beauty

Slow and steady…

I really hate this piece of the remodeling. Let me explain, when you are putting up walls, the sheetrock, mudding, dry time…seems like it always takes forever and zero progress. This is why nothing got posted last week and as we wait for mud to dry, we have done a little bit here and there. The shower, unfortunately is at a standstill because the shower pan will not arrive until the end of the month, which means we cannot build the one wall. So while I patiently wait for days to go by and mud to dry, here is what we have done.

Remember the atrium? We purposely left that “undone” because it is so much easier to make a mess with mud and sanding all at one shot. Happy to say, while we wait for mud to dry in the master bath, we did get the atrium all mudded/sanded and first coat of paint on. You can do some imagination as soon there will be benches, coat hooks, and some storage bins.

We also FINALLY finished the backsplash by the stove. What I wanted originally, no one was selling it anymore. Tried some that was similar and was not a fan. Used copilot to get some ideas and still nothing was hitting me and we ended up with what you will see below. We do have the caulking and trim work to do. I’m not sure I’m really happy with it, but that will give Chad something to do in a couple years if I really don’t like it.

I did order all of the master bath flooring this weekend as well, and if all goes as planned this next weekend, we should be able to put the tile down in the tub area. Fingers crossed! I say this as everyone knows, this house dictates what it wants done when it wants it. Meaning, we had a detour this weekend from what we thought we would be doing. I’m thinking we pissed off someone in the universe as Friday morning, we hear this nasty bang/crash. The washer decided to go ballistic and crashed forward (so beyond repair, broken tile, and a couple holes in the wall). Due to the running water, Chad picked it up before I could get a picture of it laying down, but hopefully you will get the gist. We were told one of the drum shocks broke, causing this chaos. So we have a laundry room to repair, but it is going to be at the end of everything now.

forgot to mention above – the washers will be removed, but we wanted to ensure the mortar would dry completely without incident. After the washer chaos, I’m not really wanting to get a new stove or countertops.

Progress and some set backs

Chad did have this past week off but was on call for everything after 5pm until 7am the next day and then on call all of this weekend. He did great but this weekend was not so friendly to us. He basically worked all weekend, and then chaos on what should have been an easy water line move. I swear I live in Mayberry – I love this little town, but if you want anything “modern” or “out of the box thinking” this is not the town! Let’s just say, Chad had to educate the plumber on how you could run a sink and dishwasher to the middle of the room without having the venting run into the attic/outside wall. I’m just glad I was working at that time, or I would have “mansplained” to the MAN. Needless to say, we received the quote for what would be half-ass work, and I said…absolutely NOT, I have a Chad, and we will just do it ourselves, and we are!

So, we have all of the walls up for the pantry, all walls in the pantry and expansion area have been mudded, textured and painted! In the main part of the kitchen, all of the lights are up/wiring where it needs to be and we started on the hole in the middle of the kitchen. We did find the hot water line and had to wait for my Amazon driver (adding days to the work deliverable) to deliver the tool to find the drainage line. That did show up, and now we know where we need to cut the rest of the way to move the lines. All good – but as I said at the beginning, Chad worked most of this weekend and although he lets me run the jackhammer, not the saw (see picture below); therefore, that will be next weekend’s work!

little more ceiling demolition for the can lights in that section of the room

main kitchen area with all the lights/new ceiling up

this now has a hole, and I’ll share that next week, but the hot water line is between where the cut is and the saw.

A little demolition, building and cleaning.

We seemed to do a little bit of everything this weekend but feel like we didn’t get a thing done all at the same time. I hate weekends like this because it is the little things that you have to do to move the project forward, but then you stop and ask yourself what you actually got accomplished. It is what it is, and next week we will have 3 full days and then Chad is taking that first week off in September….so good vibes in the universe that by the end of that week, A LOT will be done and I’ll be feeling good about the progress.

This weekend, we needed to get the dust down as every time you walk on the old floor, I swear a bucket of dust went in the air. We purchased a cheesy carpet cleaner (knowing we would ruin it) and cleaned the floors, that has helped. I have decided I’m going to get some remnants and put those down to help as well as the tile is the LAST thing to get done and I going a little crazy with this dust. We did get the rest of the ceiling down in the one part of the kitchen, started moving wiring, put in the extended AC duct work, demolished the walls of the old pantry and put up the walls to the new pantry! Here is to a fast work week so we can hammer a lot out next week!

This is the old pantry wall – that is halfway in.

I had to add this, you will be able to see this in the pictures to follow that there will be a hidden empty spot here. Not really as on the other side is the laundry room and we will cut out the back area to expand the laundry room by this little bit. It will be hidden for awhile though!

Tore it down to make the whole area the new walk-in gourmet pantry

That will be the new pantry – 5.5×11 and you can see the expanded duct work at the top middle.

Not our first rodeo, Home Depot!

Before I explain the heading, first a big thank you to Dylan and Ciera for the help on Saturday. This weekend was full of pulling up the tile, grinding the mortar down and getting the rest of the kitchen demolished. We did want to get the drop-down ceiling in the kitchen down too, but that did not happen as….wait for it… the rental peeps at Home Depot are idiots!

We rented the title jackhammer/cart to get the tile off and that went as expected. I then told Chad and Dylan to go rent an electric cement grinder so we could get the mortar off faster (we did this for the porch). Well, lesson learned, I should have went with them. They got suckered into a floor grinder that is supposed to be for mortar, but not really great for old school 1980s stuff. We tried that until I realized this was not going to work down the hallways at is MESSY. We ended up returning it Saturday evening and Sunday back to Home Depot we went to get the electric grinder.

I think now we will be cleaning and cleaning and cleaning, but the hard part is done, and we can now move to mudding and installation. Yahoo! I’ll start with the before pictures with the tile and then after pictures.