Archive for the 'Home Improvement – Master Bath' Category

Page 2 of 2

Bathroom Wall Tiles Grouted? Check!

Published on Sunday, August 19, 2007 in Home Improvement, Home Improvement - Master Bath and Photos. 0 Comments

Well, against my better judgment, we got the bathroom wall tiles grouted this weekend! It’s not that I’m not overly anxious to get this project completed…it’s that I didn’t want my hubby to hurt his already tender back. Last weekend’s attempt at this project did not have a pleasant nor desirable result, and I didn’t want to re-live last weekend.

Thankfully, this weekend was different!

My hubby does fabulous work, especially for someone who’s never been trained in the fine arts of tiling. The shower walls turned out great! The colors we chose really work together well, and now we just need to pick a wall-color, and we’ll be on our way to checking this remodeling project off our list.

wall tile design

Here is a picture of the tile design he did. We chose Rialto Noce (a dark beige color), Rialto Terra (a terracotta color), and a greenish (smaller inset tiles). The grout is Antique White. The window base will be white, to match the shower base, toilet and trim. We also picked up some ideas for paint color this afternoon.

As I type this, my hubby is grouting part of the bathroom floor. Because there were two tiny wall tiles that couldn’t be attached to the wall until we had the floor tiles installed, he is only grouting part of the floor. Once the mortar dries on those two pieces, he’ll finish the floor grout and hopefully have just enough left over to grout those two tiny lines. (We know it will take more than two batches of the special grout we’re using…and it’s always a roll of the dice to see how much grout we’ll have left at the end. That’s why we’re using the same grout for the walls and the floor.)

He’s grouted a floor before, for our Main Bathroom Remodel Project, so my assistance is not required. Yesterday, I got to supervise. Yippy skippy. I actually like supervising projects. It’s always good to have a second pair of eyes or hands, especially when you’re doing something you’ve never done before. For me, it’s the tiptoeing around his feelings that gets to be a bit tedious. I need to be very careful in how I say what I say. In his defense, my supervising voice sometimes comes off as being that of a know-it-all nag, whether I mean it to or not. I’m the oldest of four; sorry. It’s in my DNA.

When the floor is grouted, all we have to do is paint the walls and install the fan/light and window sill. Oh, and we get to re-install the toilet. And to think that used to be a big deal. We’ve done so many things now in our various home projects over the years, that it’s amazing what we used to be afraid of and what we don’t even consider to be a real task anymore. Rip out a whole section of drywall and replace it? Piece of cake. Install a toilet? Child’s play. Grouting a floor? Been there; done that…twice.

Every item we check off the list gets us closer to a functional Master Bathroom…and I can’t wait!

I tried to run away from home today…

Published on Monday, August 13, 2007 in Claire, Drama, Home Improvement, Home Improvement - Master Bath and It's a paycheck. 1 Comment

So, today has been challenging.

My hubby threw his back out this weekend while working on the tiling project. This is so bizarre for him. He’s relatively athletic and very healthy and has never had back issues. He first tweaked his back on the Wednesday of our trip to Santa Fe, and after a day of pushing Claire around Bandelier in the stroller, we thought that’s what did it. This weekend, he was scrubbing the tiles, in preparation to grout, and it tweaked again…only this time, it was bad. He was completely incapacitated all weekend, and he worked from home today. Luckily, we haven’t had to go to the doctor, and I think it’s actually getting better.

I wanted to take him to the ER this weekend for some pain relief, but he refused to go. I told him that when his pain was worse than his feelings for the ER to let me know. We never reached that point. Like I said, I think things are improving.

Claire decided that since Daddy was home today, she would refrain from taking a nap this morning. At least, I hope that’s what was happening. I’m not sure how many files I’m going to be able to do if she foregoes many of her naps from here on out. I’ll adjust. I always do.

And the files? Hmmm…where do I begin? I’ve been completely inundated. My hubby thinks that when I complain about the files it means that I, 1. want him to fix it, and 2. hate my job. Neither of those things is correct. I don’t want him to fix something he can’t, and I actually love my job. I know I should be working, but I’m only writing this blog now, rather than making calls, because she is standing in the play area in my office screaming at me. She wants to be picked up. That is a trick. She really wants to play with everything on my desk and try to type her own emails, regardless of whether I am here or not. I’m on to her ruse.

Speaking of screaming…did you know that Claire screams at the exact frequency they use on my phone service to skip messages in voicemail? Awesome. I was trying to listen to them, and they kept stopping and jumping ahead and doing wacky things. How bizarre. I finally figured out what was happening, and if I listen to my voicemails with the mute button on, things work perfectly.

Claire did take a relatively long afternoon nap, so I can’t complain too much. I was able to get a lot of files done, so I don’t feel as though the entire day was a waste. I didn’t get as many done as I wanted to, but it is what it is.

When she woke up from her nap and started screaming at me, I took her to sit on Daddy’s lap. That’s when I decided to run away. But, I only made it as far as the mailbox, when I remembered that I hadn’t checked the mail yet. I love checking the mail. So, I did that and forgot I was in the middle of running away. When I got back in the house Claire was having so much fun playing with Daddy (He was playing her “Draw Elmo!” game on the MagnaDoodle.), that I was glad I hadn’t made it very far. I’m such a big talker. I could never run away without those two…and then, what’s the point, really?

Of course, Daddy had to finish up some things for his work, so she’s standing in her play area in my office right now, screaming for me to pick her up…again. It looks like my workday may be coming to a close sooner than I anticipated. I was ready for a break anyway. ;)

Floor tile installed? Check!

Published on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 in Home Improvement, Home Improvement - Master Bath and Photos. 0 Comments

We got the floor tile installed last night!  Here is a picture of the progress so far:

Tiles installed over heating element

Installing it over the heating element was pretty tricky, but not as bad as we thought it would be.  We used a plastic trowel, so as not to nick the element, and it actually went very smoothly.  It helped that we’d painstakingly fastened the mat to the floor.

Now, all we need to do is grout all the tiles (wall and floor) and paint the walls!  (We’ll refinish the cabinet and sinks later…our main goal was the shower area and the floor in front of the sinks.)

The end is in sight! 

The insane twister game

Published on Monday, July 30, 2007 in Claire, Home Improvement, Home Improvement - Master Bath and Photos. 0 Comments

We had a great weekend! 

We continued working on the Master Bathroom Remodeling Project, which has included gutting that bathroom, installing tiles on the shower walls, putting in a heated floor and then tiling the floors.  We have the tiling of the walls done, and we’ve been working on the floors.  All the cement backerboard has been installed, and this weekend was devoted to the installation of the heated flooring system.

Saturday, my handyman hubby got a lot of the floor tiles cut and then our babysitter (we’ll call her Molly) came to play with Claire while we went out downtown with a couple of friends.  Claire was so happy to see Molly, and when we told her we were going bye-bye and would be back later, she wouldn’t even stop playing, and just said, “Bye-Bye, Momma!  Bye-Bye, Daddy!”  Kinda like, “Okay, great!  Get outta here, already.”  It was pretty funny.  Molly said she was great and cried for “not even a minute” when she put her down for bed.  Whew!!   

Sunday, we got the rest of the floor tiles cut and the heating element installed for the heated floor.  We wanted to get all that done plus the floor mudded and tiles installed on top of the element, but we didn’t get to that point until 7:30 p.m.!!  The heating element is pretty straight-forward, but tricky.  It’s very delicate, so you have to be very careful with it.  We checked the conductivity three times, and it still works (in theory), so we should be good to go.  He is coming home early today so that we can mud and install the tile.  We’ll test it one more time after that, and then it should be good.  (We’ll probably test it again after we grout, just to be sure nothing gets nicked in that process, too.  After the floor is grouted, it should be okay.)  We just have to be sure that no one drills through the floor and into it, in the future.  

We are both sore and exhausted today, but we consider it a great weekend.  I’m so glad we got the heating element installed.  Putting it down was like this insane game of twister.  On one hand, it’s simple.  “Roll it out. Fasten it to the floor. Install your flooring!”  On the other hand, there are all these “rules” that apply, which make it not so simple after all.  For example, the blue wire can’t cross itself (“Don’t cross the streams!!”), and it can’t be closer than two inches to itself.  It needs to be 4 to 6 inches from the walls/showers/toilet, etc. 

It comes in a big roll, woven into an orange mesh.  You lay that down and then cut (or remove) the orange mesh to free up the wire to do turns and flip it around to fit your area.  You use hot glue to attach the blue element on the floor and double-sided tape to stick the orange mesh to the floor.  Oh, and try not to step on it as you’re doing all this.  (Which means you have 4 inches of walking space along the wall and maybe three inches between each element ‘loop.’  Oh, and don’t accidentally stand on the double-sided tape with your bare feet.  And?  Hot glue is really hot.)  

My hubby is really intelligent when it comes to projects, but he could just not get his head around how we were supposed to cut the orange mesh and flip the mat to get the starting point where we needed it to be.  (Oh, that was another rule!  The end of the mat connected to the wiring had to be at least one foot from the shower opening AND had to be as close as possible to the opposite – inside – wall, which is technically in the middle of the mat).  I’m not a genius, by any means, but for some reason it was very clear to me how we had to do this.  (Luckily!! Or, we’d still be there scratching our heads.)  He just didn’t get it.  He handed me the scissors and told me to start cutting.  (Gee, no pressure!!)  So, I did, and by the time I got things kind of laid out the light bulb went off in his head, and he got it.  Whew!! 

   A little more complicated      Heated Flooring - longer section

 Anyway, while the tile-cutter was working in the garage, I took Claire to Target yesterday for groceries and found the cutest swimsuit outfit for her (for our trip to Santa Fe).  She insisted on wearing the hat throughout the rest of the visit to the store, and the nice lady in the check-out scanned it first so that it could be put back on the Princess’ head.   

Oh, speaking of Claire…you may be wondering where she was during the insane twister game?  We set up the pack-n-play from the trip so that she could see us and play with her toys.  It worked like a charm!

Distracted by the fancy pictures

Published on Monday, June 25, 2007 in From the offline blog, Home Improvement and Home Improvement - Master Bath. 0 Comments

We got a lot done on the bathroom this weekend. We got one wall almost tiled completely! We’ve never tiled a vertical surface before, so we knew there would be some learning curve involved. It’s going to look NICE. My handyman hubby does such good work. I know it doesn’t sound like we did a lot, but if you were to see it, you’d realize. Of course, he wanted to get the whole thing done, but that’s just not possible. He’s gotten exponentially faster at it, and we should be able to finish it next weekend. (And, then it’s on to the floor!)

One reason it took so long to really get in the groove yesterday with the tiling was that we were using a tiling book we got. We didn’t realize that the REAL title of the book was “The IN-Complete Guide to Tiling.” Ack! There were some very key elements left out of the book. I ended up pulling some ‘how to’ guides off the internet, and we got it all figured out. It was pretty comical (looking back now), and it all worked out in the end.

Normally, we pull our guides off the internet anyway, but this book looked really cool, with its fancy pictures. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but not including all the words (to crucial steps) is worth about two hours. And, that’s a lot! :)

Oh well. Like I said, we got back on track, and it’s going to look great.

Father’s Day Weekend Update

Published on Monday, June 18, 2007 in Claire, Father's Day, From the offline blog, Home Improvement and Home Improvement - Master Bath. 0 Comments

We had a good weekend! As predicted, I could barely pull my hubby away from the bathroom project…but you know what I realized? He’s not really happy unless he’s covered in dirt, goop and/or bleeding…so it was the perfect way for him to spend “his” day! :) (He cut his thumb, but we got the bleeding to stop, and I don’t think we’ll have to amputate.)

We got a lot done! He got all the cement-board installed on the floor in front of the sink, and then he got all of the seams and screw holes in the entire bathroom mudded on Sunday! Because it was so hot and dry, the dry-time was incredibly short, so he had to work fast! (Side note: Our attic fan is really working! It wasn’t too hot in the house yesterday, even though it was in the 90s!) Luckily, we don’t have to deal with the humidity!

Luckily (Unfortunately?) ;) I got to help him, because a lot of the work corresponded with Claire’s naptimes. It actually went really well on Sunday. Saturday was a different story, and he had to cut a couple pieces twice. You would have thought the world had ended and that the whole entire project was RUINED. He’s so dramatic. He ate lunch and I helped him look at the mistakes that were made, and we found a way to adjust and make it work. He’s such a drama queen sometimes, and it’s always exacerbated when he’s hungry. :)

Saturday night, we grilled with some of our friends. Their son is going to be 4-months old at the end of the month, but he still seems so tiny! He is such a cutie. Claire was REALLY GOOD with him. She kept patting him gently on the head and saying, “Ohhhh, baby.” And, she’d ask to give him a hug, and he loved it. He’s at the stage where he’s really starting to smile and laugh and “talk.” He told her all kinds of stories.

Last night, after finishing up this stage of the bathroom, we all went out to eat. Daddy had requested Thai food, so we went to one restaurant, only to see that it’s closed for remodeling! So, we went to another, and we had a great time. We discovered that Claire LOVES brown rice, and she ate her entire body weight in it! We also had them do up an order of Yakatori (just grilled chicken) for her without the sauce, and she thought that was okay, but we couldn’t tear her away from the brown rice. The restaurant was very accommodating, and we had a great time. She, of course, wanted to try the sushi, and I’m just not ready to go there with her.

After we got home, we placed a video call to Granny and Grandpa on the webcam, and they had a great time playing peek-a-boo and talking with Claire. Last time we did that, she was very confused and kept looking for them in the rest of the house. This time, she seemed to understand that they weren’t really here. :)