morale booster

As you may recall from an earlier post, this is what the bathroom

looked like when we bought the house. Sorry to show you again.

This is the work we did the day we got the keys. We started

demolition on the shower. This is where the dream of never

going to the laundromat again would become a reality.

With help from mom, we scraped all of the linoleum off the floor.

We also started to see pipes that we would plumb ourselves.

One could say we removed too much plaster, but let's not.

This is where that stand-up shower was. We had to add subfloor.

Notice the plumbing is in for the washer.

We decided the toilet was in a bad spot in the original configuration.

It's funny how when you're so deep into a project, moving something

like that doesn't really phase you too much.

It wasn't, however, without struggle. Here is Dad under

the house conquering his fears.

Don't go under without a headlamp.

The old hole is conveniently placed so that you can see the

fantastic DIY plumbing job.

First tiling experience. If you tile a floor with small tiles, don't make the

mistake we made. We did not level the thin-set mortar seams between

the concrete backerboards enough. Consequently, we have some uneven

tiles. What I like about this picture and the next is that we didn't

know it yet.

Someday we'll devote a post to all we've learned about plaster. Besides hiring Ramon to do our electrical work, we've hired one other person, Mike Casas, aka the Plaster Master. Having spent so much time learning how to do plumbing, we had to be out of our apartment and into the house in a matter of days and Mike came to the rescue. Not only did he give us walls, he educated us on how to do major plaster repair. A true craftsman, he allowed us to film him and take notes so that we could learn how to do it ourselves.

After Mark masterminded the plumbing in the tub area to accommodate

not only a shower but a tiled niche for shampoo and other products

(the plumbing had to be routed around that box), it was time to do some

more tiling. The bright pink stuff is a waterproofing membrane.

We can't begin to tell you how hard tiling is.

Sometimes you have to come up with solutions like this.

This is pre-grout.

It took about three weeks to get this much tiling done.

load one--what a day

We took many baths while we waited for this thing to arrive.

We're sort of proud of this box.

Dad constructed a really nice sink cabinet based on our specs.

Mark makes plumbing look easy now.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo