one half, three quarters, one and done

And now for the afters. Layout sketch one last time


Formerly the vanity


now the laundry room


The photo is fuzzy but it gets the point across. Here you can also see the new trim installed around the doorway to mimic the original trim throughout the rest of the house; this was also matched on the window in the bathroom. We also built a litter box with cat door into the cabinet; maybe not the best idea for resale but totally worth it.

Formerly the laundry area


now the tub and shower


view of the other end of the shower, laundry room in the background


Formerly the shower


now the vanity


I have to say that post took almost as long as the remodel.  Congrats if you finished it!

one half, three quarters, one...part III

Moving on to the shower across the room which, although hard to tell from this photo taken from the previous vanity area, does extend out over the window. This was plumbed for the vanity and the toilet, to it's right, was kept in place.


removing the shower surround which really did not want to come out


The mess we found under it. That's globs of cement on the floor, the solution to an uneven floor under the shower. We had our tile guy properly level the floor in here.


The plywood over the window where the shower overlapped it. It was a bit nerve wracking watching Bryce try to remove this without breaking any glass but he did it.


We only removed as much drywall in here as was necessary for the plumber to install the new piping for the vanity and simply double-layered what was existing with new drywall. We installed new insulation where we had to remove the existing.


New water resistant drywall. Note how well we cut out the circles for the plumbing; I was seriously impressed with us.


Unfortunately (and I hate to admit this) I screwed up the planning of the vanity. I had the plumber center the piping for it using the width of the vanity we had purchased. I hadn't however taken into account the drawers down the side of the vanity and the fact that the plumbing had to come in off center. Another trip from the plumber, a slight modification to the vanity itself and some reworking of the perfect drywall later and we got it figured out.


vanity and flooring installed, walls painted


After photos coming next...

one half, three quarters, one...part II

What is now a full bath was once the laundry room, toilet and smallest shower ever made. Seriously, I bruised elbows washing my hair. As a refresher, here are the before and after layouts.


We'll start with the view from the previous vanity toward the previous washer/dryer. The appliances hadn't been moved in yet but note the shelves above are stopped short to not run into the window.


As it looked when Bryce came home to my demo


At the height of demo. The ladder and my foot are in the former vanity area, the wall there would eventually be torn down to just the studs.


Drywall going back up, plumbed for the new shower.


Luckily that's just a film on the windows you see in the above photo. I took it off and replaced it with the same satin etched look film I used upstairs. The window intersects the shower oddly but we didn't think it was bad enough to spend the extra time and money to remove it.


Like the bathroom upstairs, the tub didn't fit exactly so we created a ledge with the extra space at the end. Here the tub is in place and cement board installed.


We used the same tile as the upstairs bathroom. Tile complete, just needs paint...and trim and a light fixture and grout and...

detour

Moving on toward what is now the full bathroom but first, a quick detour to what was going on elsewhere.

My destroyed dining room and a life lesson- laundry detergent will eat the finish off your nice black dining room table. Yep.


The dumpster and 6 yards of debris that came out of the bathroom.


The base of the operation in the garage.


If you noticed the stack of drywall in the back you may be thinking to yourself, 'That's way too much drywall for just a bathroom.' You'd be right, but that'll come into play later.

So now back to the bathroom in question.

one half, three quarters, one

Starting back with the 'before' photo, looking thru the door from the dining room. One major reason for rearranging the layout was to further segregate the bathroom from the dining room using the new laundry room as a buffer.


after my demo. Also worth mentioning is the afternoon I spent removing the wallpaper; you'll see how that turned out in the next photo.


after further demo including a hole in the floor to give the plumber access for the new washer hookup (oh yeah, and all that drywall I removed the wallpaper from). Note the old pieced together insulation with 50's font and the electrical to the light run outside of the drywall.


We hired out the electrical and plumbing to the pros; here you see the new washer hookups, 220 for the dryer and the light switch and electrical now recessed. We installed new insulation and completed even more demo, including all the remaining drywall and the huge hole in the floor. The worst part of the project was the day I climbed down thru that hole to run the new vent for the dryer. Talk about creepy.


You may notice to the bottom right hand of the photo above you can see the blue bag of the time capsule I buried in the wall. If you want to see whats in it you have to buy my house and tear the wall down.


new drywall going up


View toward the floor after the drywall was complete. We hired Mike again to do the tiling and level the floor since of course it was off by inches. Here the hole in the floor had been filled and the floor leveled.


Travertine flooring installed, walls primered


We painted to match the dining room, Behr 'Silent Tide' with 'Decorator White' trim


Here you can see the storage cabinet to the left, the washer/dryer are to the left of it. Only trim left to do.


After photos will be in a later post (get excited!).

honey I'm home

Still scorned from the purchase of a hot tub in lieu of a more practical house project (I should have known to include stipulations in the deal) I decided to move onto the next item on my list and in the Spring of '09 let Bryce come home from a business trip to a demolished downstairs bathroom.

This would end up being the largest project to date and will likely (fingers crossed) remain that way. That being said, there was so much work done here I have no idea where to start so I'm going to do one area at a time, the now laundry room and then the now bathroom. Here's the before and after layouts; you can see how these fit into the house using the sketches to the right.


I of course started in on the demo without taking any before photos so the only ones we have were taken right after we took possession of the house.

Looking into the vanity area of the bathroom from the dining room


Slightly to the right to show the doorway from the vanity into the laundry/toilet/shower area


The shelving above the washer/dryer


The smallest shower in the world. Seriously.


And this is what Bryce came home to- the former vanity (compare to the first photo above). This was actually really neat because it gave away a few changes that had occurred over time. The hole in the wall that had been covered by the mirrored medicine cabinet is where the original medicine cabinet had been and below that was old plumbing from a vanity. To the left was a hole in the floor for the original toilet. It was obvious this was a half bath before the previous owners added on to the back of the house to include a stall shower.


I got as far as I could by myself but had a few big items left. The room eventually ended up down to the studs as much of the drywall was damaged during demo or poorly installed in the first place and was redone.

neighbor woods

In the Spring of '09 we signed up to take part in Sandpoint's Neighbor Woods Program, an attempt by the city to enhance the street scape with trees. We had to take a two hour long 'how to not kill your new trees' class and within a few weeks we came home from work to find three new trees planted in the right of way between our sidewalk and the street. There were likely trees in this location at one point so to have them put back helps restore the historic feel still existing elsewhere on the street. This project was already on my mind and now it was done for us and for free. Someone was even sent out the following fall to stake the trees for the winter.

Here you see our three new trees and the mature trees in front of the neighbor's house behind it.


The sidewalks had recently been replaced also as part of a city program to enhance the walkability of the town. We did a little more landscaping each summer and the outside of the house was really starting to take shape.