Pre-Thanksgiving Update

I’ll be honest, these are a lot easier to write when you’re aided by a glass of scotch, which I have to drink, so that we have an empty decanter once we move…. I think it’s called subtraction by addition?

Anyway, things are really starting to take shape at the house. The guest bathroom is just about completely ready to go. The toilet and vanity are installed, and the tile is grouted. All systems go.

Really can not overstate how important these toilets are going to be to the happiness of this home. 

With grout!

We usin’ those fancy hotel-quality fixtures! 

The pace is slightly more deliberate in the master bathroom,  as it’s a much smaller space with a lot more tile. We seem to run out of grout every other day, and the staff at The Tile Shop is becoming a little too familiar with me (only the 7-11 guy and the sushi waiter should know me by name). However, we’re almost totally grouted, and hopefully the vanity is going to arrive any day now.

This is pretty much the update, though, TBH, the grouting and tile look awesome in here.

Another area making some rapid progress is the kitchen/kitchen island. As I mentioned a few posts ago, my father-in-law has been coming up to help us at the house. This weekend marks his third consecutive week up in NOVA that he’s been with us. This past weekend, he spent his last afternoon working on building the island for our kitchen. Basically, we’re taking a 27″ wide pre-fabricated cabinet, and connecting it to a wine fridge the size of a college fridge.

All the white wines. Maybe some fancy 750ml beers too!

Simple in theory, but, the fridge and the cabinet are wildly different sizes and depths. It was really impressive to watch him fabricate the “case” for the fridge to sit in. Using a few different types of wood, a measure, a square rule, and a circular saw, he had everything measured, cut and ready for assembly in about 30 minutes. Once the fridge is in the case, there’ll be a piece of granite on top, and it will look like it was literally custom made (it was!)!

The island from the dining room. 

The wine fridge is going to sit to the left of the cabinet shelves. Power’s already installed into the cabinet base.

More recently than the above pictures were taken (yesterday), the contractors put rockboard into the kitchen, and started laying tile today! Once they do that, we can actually go in and put the fridge and oven back in place and have a functional kitchen to cook things and keep beverages cold. It’s the little things man. I don’t have pictures of the tile, but, i do have pictures of the….rockboard. They’re about as exciting as watching paint dry.

We’ll be expecting that WONDERBOARD LITE  Rockboard sponsorship money any day now.

New drywall features the new power switches, and more rockboard!

While all of this has been going on, Lauren and I have been doing detail painting. Detail painting (you ask)? What IS that? It sounds, coool! Well it’s not. It’s tedious. It makes your hands hurt. More or less, I’ve been painting paneled doors, while Lauren’s been having a Dickins of a time painting cabinet doors. I didn’t take pictures of us doing that, or the paint, but, I did take pictures of Pepper after she bumped into a wet door. Luckily, she already has a “I’m a black dog who got into a paint trey” look going on, so it wasn’t super noticeable.

It was mostly on her nose, and apparently it was DELICIOUS.

Such a mix of shame and guilt. 

Now we’re to the bad news, and there’s no easy way to say it. This is going to be my last post until next weekend.

We’ll be heading up to NJ to stay with family through Thanksgiving (I’ll take pictures of us hanging out with our adorable niece and nephew for the update).

Hopefully, all of the things will be happening at the house while we’re gone. The movers come on Saturday to get furniture, and we’re officially into the new place that night. If they’re not ready, we’re going to be kind of a weird limbo. Obviously, some things are higher priority than others, but, we’re keeping our fingers crossed that when we get there next Friday night with a U-Haul, the main floor won’t be littered with boxes and trash, while the upstairs won’t be a construction zone.

Happy Thanksgiving Y’all!

Monday’s Weekend Update!

On Saturday, I promised a mega-super-ultra blog post on Sunday night. That didn’t take into account that I would be going out Saturday night to hang out with the Renegades on H Street, or that we would be at the new house working on Sunday for somewhere between 11 and 94 hours. We got a lot done, but the last thing I wanted to do was write you jokers a blog post.

Instead…. you’ll get my half-assed post tonight! Encouragement!

So, Saturday was a flurry of activity at the house as we had our normal contractors, me, Lauren and her dad and Pepper, as well as a dry-wall guy and TWO framers! With a few tons of wood and vanities and boxes and trash taking up all of the free room in the to-be living room and dining room, space was tight on the first floor. As a result, it shook out that our normal guys and the drywall guy were upstairs, the framers and my father in law got the main floor, and Lauren and I were relegated to the basement and spare rooms (basically, anywhere painting needed to happen. I legitimately felt guilty for all of the noise that was coming out of our house, as thing started bright and early, we were definitely those neighbors. When I said we painted, let me clarify, I spent the first half of the day painting paneled doors, which sucks. It’s a perfect combination of not enough flat area to need a whole roller, and enough texture in the doors for the detail work with a brush to be annoying. I finished like 4 doors in a half day. We have 18 interior doors in the house. Shoot. Lauren spent most of the day cheating, and by cheating, I mean painting walls with an auto-assist roller. It’s the power-washer of rollers. A pump connects a hose that runs from the paint can directly into the roller, which provides continuous paint to the brush, meaning that she flew through the basement in like an hour.

This took Lauren like, less than a minute to do.

While this was going on, the framers began the process of taking down the wall. I’ll spare details, but, there was a lot of sawing, hammering, and I’m pretty sure cursing under the steady rhythm of the classic rock station coming out of the boombox.

Maybe it’s the delirium setting in, but, this picture makes it look like the Fridge is in an old timey prison. Naughty fridge…

and POOF. FROM WHENCE THERE WAS A WALL THERE IS NO LONGER!

Instead, we have Forrest.

After a while, we ran out for errands and lunch. And the errands were epic, much like the lunch. When I say errands, I’m talking about my new TV. I’d casually been searching for a new TV to put into the basement, but not very seriously. Lucky for me, a Best Buy sale caught my eye and I ended up pulling the trigger on a 55″ (1080P HDTV) for a staggeringly good price (I’ll dedicate an entire post to the new TV). After Best Buy, we went for some Mexican, but not just any Mexican food, we went to Tippy’s Tacos! Tippy’s Tacos is a magically simply wonderful place and I have a picture to prove it.

It’s a very not good thing for me that this place is only a mile from our house.

By the time we got back, it was mid-afternoon and the crew at the house was petering our. Our drywall guy was history. The framers were sweeping up the kitchen on their way out. We chatted with Jefe and made our way upstairs for more or less the first time. We had movement! So much got done over the weekend in the full-bathrooms it was crazy! I’m going to post a lot of these pictures more or less without comment (other than caption).

Jealous that the shop-vac got to use the guest bathroom tub first.

Floor tile’d with spacers, awaiting grout.

Now, the guest bathroom has always been further along, but, this weekend we saw the master bathroom play some major catch-up.

I talked a lot about the custom “shower pan”, this is the stone that sits on top.

The algae looking film on the rock-board in the shower is actually a water-proofer that keeps moisture from getting into the walls.

We have floor tiles!

We have shower tiles!!!!!

We got new floor tile put in on Half on Main!

After Jefe and the rest of the contractors cleared out, we finished some smaller odd-jobs we couldn’t do until they were gone. In no particular order that includes:

Grouting the subway tile in the kitchen.

and…

Painting the master bedroom (hard to tell because there’s no ceiling light yet, but that’s a light grey).

I feel like I probably could have been a lot funnier in this post but, it’s late, and I’m le tired. Drywall dust fills my eyes, and semi-gloss paint has gotten into my bones. I’ll post today’s updates, tomorrow. It’ll be funnier, or not, I promise!

Week 2 In Review

Ugh… I’m the worst. The fame and celebrity that comes with having a home renovation blog went to my head and I thought I was above posting regularly or frequently. A lot happened this week. I’ve even got a super mega-post coming tomorrow (or maybe between like 6 and 70 short posts)! Unfortunately, this one’s going to be brief because I have to join the Washington Renegades in celebrating their second consecutive undefeated season. Tomorrow might hurt, say a prayer for me while I paint (also send me Aleve…like, a lot of Aleve and maybe some McDonalds).

Biggest things that happened this week? Our bathrooms made some major leaps. I’ll take you through the pictures below.

If you were wondering what’s on the bottom of the picture, that’s the custom “shower pan”. Basically, our contractor put down concrete, laid that dark grey shower sheet on top, then put in the Ol’ Miss Flag looking spacer in, which runs on a very slight slope ensuring that the water flows into the drain and not over the lip. It looks kind of like this:

After this, the “shower pan” was ready to be tiled! Also, so is the rest of the shower….

Next up is the Guest Bathroom! Little backstory, when purchasing a house Lauren made it clear that if we didn’t get a his and her sink in the master bathroom, I’d be relegated to the Southern Hemisphere (see: guest bathroom) in the mornings when showering. I think she should have waited to call dibs till after seeing the bathrooms. Without further ado, I present “My Bathroom” (guest bathroom).

As you saw on previous posts, the guest bathroom was further along than the master bath. As a result, so are the renovations there.

Most of these will be presented without comment, since they’re just OOH and AHH shots.

And to complete the panoramic…

For those detail oriented readers, this is a closeup of the accent strip that runs through the shower. It was actually totally different from what we ordered, but, the Tile Shop’s mistake is our gain (apparently).

I’ve got a lot more content/pictures coming tomorrow night. For now, it’s time to party!

Master Bath – Micro Spa!

This is our starting point for our….”cozy” and “intimate” master bathroom. Our plan is to knock out the vanity, incredibly carefully remove the toilet, jack hammer out the shower tile, floor tile, shower pan and sliding door. We’re picking out a new vanity that probably won’t fit because it’s normally sized, re-tile the floor and shower and to have a luxury micro-spa experience!