Remodeling

The first of (hopefully) many installments of remodeling photos. I have been without a good camera for a lot of the work I have done so far, the little camera that I was using for landscaping photos sort of quit on me. So, this is the kids bathroom, or hall bathroom. This is the one that Eric and the kids were working on drywall in. I finished all the drywall behind the toilet, around the shower and mudded/sanded and painted this bathroom. I have a few photos of that on a different camera card. Here, I am putting the toilet back down. Eric pulled it up, and set it in the tub. Then I laid morter and hardibacker on the floor, laid tile, grouted around the toilet area imediately (though not all finished tiling) and then put the toilet down. By myself. Okay fine with a phone call to a friend Amanda.


You can see this is where I ran out of morter. The problem with this is that it causes tile shifting sometimes, and the corners are not perfect because of it. People likely wont notice. Laying tile isnt hard, but it can be wearing and is time consuming.


Now it is finished, though I dont have a grout photo yet. The tile has to dry for 12 hrs before you grout. The rubber mallet and scrap of wood is for tapping down each tile after laying. The spacers keep the tile and equal distance apart for grouting. I did get the toilet installed AND it doesnt leak! I was very proud, I have installed toilets before but only when my husband was on site.


Another angle of finished. I am using my new camera and still getting used to it, some of the lighting is different than I meant for it to be, and also I am getting pretty fuzzy photos with the telephoto lens.


Now this is my bathroom-the master bathroom. For some reason the previous owners had a small stand up shower, and boxed in the other half of the tub/shower space with drywall and just wallpapered it. I guess it was cheaper? So we pulled out the shower, Jeremiah (Amanda's husband) and family came up and installed a nice tub for me in the space. He built a small shelf around it because there was space, due to drain issues, and it makes a nice area to tile inside the shower. I will be tiling these walls. The piece of backerboard here is waiting to be put down.


You can see the curve on the floor where the carpet used to come inside the bathroom at just that area. There were several layers of sticky tile on this floor, Tad scraped them up and threw them away. He has now finished since I took up the toilet and the backerboard is partially down for tiling.


I dont know why the ply board was painted in here, but it was. There is a problem in the corner by the tub with the drywall and it will require a patch. Tad did a lot of the work in here, he takes the vents out for me. The vents here are an older style and they take a lot of work to detach frmo their space, and some bad words are used by me. Tad just takes them up now without mentioning it.


Here the toilet is out. I cannot take the toilet up in 1 piece, I take the tank off of the back and then pull up the bowl. My flange is broken here, not sure if I need to take this one out/install a new one or if it is still usable. Eric will tell me tomorrow when he brings his ladder for me to borrow. I need to cut in paint next to vaulted ceilings, and I am simply not 20 ft tall.


The toilet had to go somewhere! The kids bathroom toilet was in their tub as well, now that shower/tub is being used. We bathed in here, or showered in the laundry room shower while the kids bathroom was being worked on. I plan on having mine done in about 3 days so the toilet wont live here long.

I have photos of the laundry room as well, the before, during and after. It still needs baseboards, but the wallpaper was removed, mudding and patching occured, the tile in there and laundry were done by myself and Frank last yr and it looks amazing, the shower we left alone. It is just a stand up shower, but there are 4 bathrooms here and 2 others have tub/showers. I painted the laundry room and bathroom.


For those who have been to my house, you know that paneling was used in excess. The maker of paneling should be shot. Some had come loose in the hall and foyer, and these 2 areas were excessively dark. The dining room has some paneling but not totally and it also has vaulted ceiling, french doors and it is open to kitchen and living room so it isnt so bad. Our bedroom has 1 wall of it which I will fix if I have time, but again there are windows and light walls as well. The hall and foyer were mudded, it takes 4 x and still the lines showed though I thought they were sanded well. This section shown is not yet painted because I had a wooden cabinet there that I had to sell first.


This is now the hall, it used to be like the previous picture without the mud lines! I still have some tape to take off of the door frames but it is a huge difference. Took 1 layer of primer and 3 of paint to make the difference, and it isnt perfect but it is so much better. Dark doesnt sell well, and we want to sell.


Another hall shot-bit fuzzy due to getting used to the camera. There were no baseboards in here, but I couldnt mud/paint all the way to the floor so we will put down baseboards.


This is the foyer, the wall on the left was actually a hideous gold print wallpaper from sometime ago. That was after I peeled 3 layers, the last one wanted to stay so I primed/painted over it. We are going to paint the door red-its on the list.


And here is our half wall when you first walk in, this was also paneling. The wall on the other side is a very dark beige color, this new color is called beige but its more like a cream. I will paint the guitar wall as well, the whole living room, kitchen and dining room will be painted this week in between tiling my bathroom floor and walls, homeschooling, college, making children's wardrobes, running errands to do paperwork (getting ready to cross through canada) and cleaning up from the shop burning down.

We are staying busy and getting closer to the end of this deployment! We are very excited about it... It is hard to be patient but at least I have work to keep me busy.