paint samples

Here's what I've picked out so far.

bathroom reveal

Woo hoo! One room is FINALLY done in this addition project. Well, actually it isn't - I never could find a shower curtain I liked so I bought fabric to make one. It's tucked away in one of those vanity drawers.

I'm so happy with how this all turned out. The paint color I finally chose is called Elephant Tusk, only it was a little light, so I had Hirschfield's remix it darker for me. My trim color is called Muslin - Benjamin Moore color. It's a really subtle creamy tan, just different enough from cream to be noticeable but not too dark that I can't coordinate with anything.

It took forever to find two mirrors that I liked. After traipsing through every store I could think of, I finally found these at Home Goods. They had three left and one was damaged. Whew. Got them both for $60.

I'm still trying to decide if I need to do anything with the window or not. It is an upper level bathroom, so privacy isn't a real big issue, except that the window faces the road. Maybe shutters? Just a valance? Not sure yet, so I'm going to leave it as is.

We found the faucets at Costco.com and I think they were $89 each. I love how they look, but I'm not thrilled that they don't seem to extend over the sink far enough, so there's often a lot of water splashed onto the countertop. Actually I'm not sure if I ever mentioned it before but the vanity itself came from Costco too. The price was hard to beat and they had a coupon for $200 off on top of that! We smiled the whole way home.

The only thing left to do in this room is the above-mentioned shower curtain and I need to put a shelf and some hooks up in the cubby opposite the vanity. (It was supposed to have been a urinal, but after painting in a men's bathroom at a church and realizing that I would just be cleaning TWO things, I nixed that idea.) Then, we were going to put a closet in that space, but I failed to communicate that to my dad when he was helping us put up sheetrock - by the time I realized it, he had the space already done, so it stayed that way. Perhaps if I find a cute cupboard, I'll slide it into that nook. We'll see.

Feel good to finally have a full-size working bathroom. Now on to the bedrooms - flooring, trim and doors.

breaking down walls

Getting a start on opening up the old part of the house and the new. Wonder how many child labor laws we're breaking here. He couldn't have been happier though, busting up concrete blocks.

Once the wall comes down then we have to finish off the opening. Glad that's hubby's job and not mine.

hot water!

Once again, asking tons of questions has solved a problem. I called the manufacturer of our water heater because everyone else was convinced that was the problem. And, since the beast isn't that old, I really didn't want to have to replace it.

The guy (who was sweet as pie on the phone) ran me through some trouble shooting and when those all came back negative, he asked me one question that made all the difference: "Do you have all of your faucets installed?"

What?!? How would that matter? So, I said no, this was not a typical construction project where everything gets put in at the same time and the homeowners move in and everything is honky dorey. There are no faucets in the laundry room sink, the master bath showers and sinks (heck, there aren't even any sinks yet in either room) or in the powder room. The light bulbs went off and we discovered that for some strange reason, without a faucet on those water lines, we would get hot water for a few minutes and then the water would start cycling through the two shower lines downstairs, leaving us high and dry wet and cold upstairs.

Ack. Who woulda thunk? So, hubby promptly installed some shut-off valves on the water lines to those two showers and presto! hot water that stayed hot. Almost miraculous.

Ahhh. I should send that guy a thank you note or at the very least call his boss and tell him what a fantastic job he did. But, first it's my turn in the shower.

maple flooring reveal

I hope we don't regret doing this, but we stained the maple flooring three different colors. The landing at the top of the stairs and one bedroom have two coats of Minwax's Early American. Two bedrooms were left clear with only the poly on top and the last bedroom was white washed so it would stay more whitish gray (which it didn't because the poly has such a yellowish cast).

The dark stain color was a compromise. I wanted walnut and hubby wanted to keep it looking natural without stain. We settle somewhere in the middle with the Early American. I will probably go a bit darker on the main floor, but at least he can get used to the color for now upstairs.

We lucked out with the direction that the wood runs so we weren't changing the color across the grain, but ended on the edge of board. Does that make sense? See what it looks like in the bottom picture. Maybe that will help.

Notice how only the windows are trimmed out? The rest of the casing around the doors and floor boards is my responsibility. I'm guessing it will take awhile - four rooms, plus oil-based trim paint might mean the boys will be lucky to get in their rooms by next summer.

bathroom progress

Who would have thought it would take me nearly nine months to get this project finished? Nothing moves fast around here, unless it's boys chasing boys when they're fighting.

Tiling is tedious work, especially when you take a wall down because you forgot you wanted to put cubbies in the shower.

Then I decided I didn't want to put the tiles all the way to the ceiling, so I had to mud the walls above to smooth them out to match the sheetrock.

And I had planned to put the tile all the way around the edge of the wall, but ended up deciding it would look funny, so I had to put a sheetrock corner in. First time I'd ever tried that. Wasn't too bad. Just made a mental note to put more mud behind the paper/mental corner next time so there wasn't any air bubbles. Also using at least a 5" putty knife is key, proving once again that bigger actually is better.

I'm pretty happy with my solution for not being able to use the granite backsplash. I used extra pieces of slate from the flooring and the tile design in the shower. The stones were a first for me - but they went up just as easily as the lady from The Tile Shop said they would. Rough up the back sides with a file and stick them in mortar. Easy as that. I cheaped out and made the outlet covers myself. It took me a full day to do all four. Not exactly time well spent, but it didn't cost any extra money. Same goes for the edge tiles - I spent a lot of time sanding the edges to round them down.

The grout in the shower was another case altogether. Apparently I used too much water or too wet of a sponge when I wiped the tiles down after applying the grout. The color ended up looking almost like a pasty white, definitely not the beige I was going for like on the backsplash.

Here's where asking a lot of questions comes in very handy, as does being fully ready to admit that something went wrong when you go back to the home improvement store with all your questions. Turns out there is a cool product called Grout Renew that actually paints the grout with a sealer and covers up the too-light color that I created. And even better, I was able to choose a different color that was closer to the actual color of the tile for a more uniform look. I used a small paintbrush to paint it on, but it wasn't an quick process.

I could only paint small sections at a time, so that I could wipe off areas that I put too much on before it dried. It will stick to tile and it will be very difficult to get off. It looks just like the grout was that color to begin with and keeps the texture of the grout intact. Would definitely use it again, but hopefully next time I'll not remove all the coloring out in the first place.

The only other thing I'm not sure about it how well slate will hold up in a shower, but I sealed it at least six times just in case. I'm not thrilled with the sanded caulking that is supposed to "match" the grout. Mainly because it doesn't match - it's much lighter and took FOREVER to dry.

Update: Two years later and there is still a couple spots where I got the Grout Renew on the slate and it hasn't come off, in spite of multiple showers every day, so I'm fairly certain it will hold up as advertised. Also, the slate still seems to be waterproof - in other words, water still beads up on it and doesn't soak in. I don't think that would be the case if it were a slate floor in a shower, but on a vertical surface the sealer seems to be holding up fine. I read somewhere you were supposed to re-seal once a year, but I haven't yet. 

Also, a note on the caulking: it has refused to stick to the edges of the tile, in spite of being redone once along the whole long side of the tub about a year ago. At this point I've left it until I can do it quickly before we're gone for a few days because it will likely take 72 hours to cure. It's frustrating because I took the time to clean all the tiles after grouting and sealing and it still didn't stick. The tile guy at Menards told me I should have used rubbing alcohol to clean the edges, but I've never, ever had to do that before. I'm left to choose from another brand of caulking or to use the shiny white stuff, which I know won't look as nice. The brand of caulking I used came from Home Depot, so I will definitely not be purchasing that again. I'll probably visit a tile shop to see what they recommend.

siding

Here's what we've been doing most of the late summer and fall - siding and painting. I'm pretty happy with this product from Menards - it's a pre-primed engineered wood lap siding from called LP Smartside.

It wasn't difficult to install, just took some time (well, most of the summer really). I only got involved when it came time to pick paint colors, caulk the seams and paint the trim and siding.

In case you're wondering, the paint colors are Fairview Taupe on the siding and Edgecomb Gray for the trim. Both are Benjamin Moore colors.

Next summer we (meaning hubby) will be putting cedar shakes on the gable end and on the dormers in front. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to stain it gray or let it age naturally.

bedroom flooring

So, I have another detour in my plans to get to the bathroom project upstairs. Instead, we switched gears (again) and starting installing the maple hard wood flooring in the upstairs bedrooms.

It's pretty rustic looking. Not sure if I'm in love with it, but hubby absolutely is thrilled with it.

We purchased it from an Amish guy in Wisconsin and the price was very reasonable. Installation so far has been decent, but we have two more rooms to go.

The hardest part? Cutting the flooring for around the wood floor vents. Very thankful right now that we're able to cut outside on the porch and that we have both a table and a compound miter saw. Can't imagine doing this project without either of these.

So thank you Jet and Dewalt for building great tools that work well, even when you work them hard.

laundry floor reveal

Here's the laundry room floor - complete just in time for the delivery next week.

I CAN'T WAIT!! Hauling 14 loads of laundry to the laundromat is not exactly a pleasant experience, given all the smells and my phobia of overly perfumed detergent and fabric softener. Can't tell you how many times my clothes came out smelling like something other than my lavender-scented natural detergent, or how many times I had to pass on an open washer because it was COVERED inside with cat or dog hair.

Laundromats are not easy on the pocket book, especially when washing machines have a tendency to eat dollar bills. Hauling around quarters got to be a bit tricky when you're trying to juggle hampers, soap and a bag of change.

Okay, okay, I'll stop complaining now. Here's what the flooring looks like. I did a little inlaid rug pattern in the walkway. My only regret is that I didn't use a lighter colored grout. That way the design would have popped out more. But, I'm consoling myself by knowing that darker grout will hide more dirt since there seems to be a never-ending supply of it around here.

What you see in the background is supposed to be a mudroom shower and a big closet, but who knows when that will ever get done. I'm just happy to get a real laundry room, that I'm not even going to worry about it. :)

vanity for bathroom

Now we get to find some muscles to help us move this upstairs. It's heaaaavy.

Note: it would have been extremely helpful if we would have purchased this BEFORE all the plumbing and sheetrock was in. A furniture height vanity requires plumbing to be about six inches higher. It also means that the electrical outlets are too low so I can't use the granite backsplash that came along with it.

I think I have a solution though. Stay tuned.

bathroom floor finished

Here's the slate floor - all installed and sealed.

I'm very happy how it turned out.

bathroom

Finally got started on the slate for the bathroom floor. Here's the progress so far.