The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Alright, here's the latest!  I've gotten a significant amount of work done on the bathroom, considering how much time I am able to commit to the project.  I'm almost able to visualize what it will look like when it's finished.  After my last post I worked on leveling the floor.  It would have gone really smoothly, but for one small problem.  I thought I had sealed all of the holes that the leveling compound in it's liquid state could leak through, but I didn't bother to test it and it ended up raining down into the crawl space.  Maybe you can see one of the holes in this photo, just to the right of the water supply.  Oops!  Guess I'll have to do a little more additional patching.  Otherwise, it worked great!  Very easy to use.

The overall state of the floor.

On the bottom right hand corner of this picture, where it's a darker blue/gray there's a noticeable hump in the floor.  I'm hoping that just by peeling the vinyl off at this spot and doing some skim coats with the floor patch, it will be gradual enough as to not cause a problem.

OK.  Take a good look at this picture:

Can you see my mistake?  If you can - good for you.  If you can't - thank you (although it might just be because the picture is too small).  I'll just tell you this: it's the result of poor planning when I was framing the wall behind the plumbing.  It is just a little too long and altered where I started tiling from.  It doesn't really bother me except that I know somewhere down the line the owner of the house is going to say "what was that person thinking."  I can honestly just say, I wasn't.

I just realized that I didn't take any pictures of the tub surround before I started setting tile!  Not that you're missing much.  I used Wonder Board tile backer and of course was constantly singing the name in my head to the tune of "wonderboy."  You can add that to your construction themed repertoire which also includes such classics as "rock the cat's paw" and "sledge hammer."

The tiling itself is going very well.  It's not as tricky as I imagined, even with the extra shelving.  I still have to go the rest of the way around the room, but that should go relatively quickly.  

Tub and surround.

During this time, we also had some electrical work done.  The bathroom received some attention in addition to the fuse box turned breaker box and a handful of other things.  Previously, the bathroom had only an overhead light with a switch.  There was no outlet, let alone a fan.  Now there is an overhead light/fan, an outlet and a vanity light!  How exciting.  I don't have to run an extension cord from the kitchen to plug in my tools anymore!  To cut costs, I made the hole in the ceiling for the fan.  Now I know why they would have charged $150 for it.  It was so nasty!  Luckily there were no animal skeletons that fell on me (that happened once when I took down a tile from a drop ceiling), but the insulation, which is just pulverized newspaper, was so dirty and dusty and I couldn't keep it from falling directly on me.  I can't wait to do it again when I have to duct the fan later this spring!

Did I mention I broke the toilet?  That sounds more dramatic than it really is.  What happened was that in an attempt to adjust the ancient mechanism in the tank so that it wouldn't constantly run, I broke said mechanism.  As a consequence, any time someone wanted to flush, they had to manually turn the water on at the supply until it filled the tank and then flush, or else flush with a bucket of water.  I finally got around to putting the new toilet in the other night and when I was almost done, I realized that the old water supply line was too short.  Not a consideration that had even crossed my mind.  Luckily I made it to Home Depot at 8:45 - fourteen minutes to spare.

I also thought I would mention that I went on a dump run.  While it may not interest everybody, I thought it worth noting that it wasn't as cool as Seattle area transfer stations.  It was cool in that I didn't have to pay, but I also didn't get to throw the trash into a pit and there wasn't a giant scoop, to smash things down.  However, I didn't notice a sign telling me not to salvage anything, so in the construction material pile I found this good looking butcher block remnant that just needs a little love.

The nalgene is just for scale - I didn't pick that up at the dump.

Yesterday I cut the plywood underlayment for the floor and it fit so nice that tomorrow I plan on cutting the Marmoleum with the plywood as my template.  I'll try and get those pictures up soon because I would like to get others' opinions on what color I should paint the walls. 

As always, thanks for reading!