Shall we say... two weeks?

Well, I fell into that same old trap again, where I put off writing a post because I thought it would be nice to wait until the bathroom was finished and I could include pictures of all the awesome. And really, on Thursday of the week before last, it looked like my plan was going to pay off.

First, the lighting store called to let us know that the new light fixture was in and ready to be picked up. Then I got a package at work with the two new shower riser connectors I had ordered (to replace the split one - more on THAT in a minute). And then RONA called to let us now that the blinds we had ordered had been finished and were ready to be picked up. Then we got home to find that the towel bar, toilet roll holder and other accessories had been delivered.

So it looked like it was all coming together nicely. And really, when I left for my woodworking course (more on that in a minute, too) on Thursday night, I honestly thought that I'd be winding up my Thanksgiving weekend with a post full of pictures showing a completed master bath.

You would think, after how ever many years this nonsense has been going on, that I would know better by now.

Sigh. And of course, I STILL haven't written anything about the windowsill or how we got the damn vanity to fit. So much to cover, so little time.

Anyway, let's start with the windowsill, seeing as how it's rather germane to the rest of the stories, particularly the ones about the blinds (and let me tell you - there are some stories about the blinds...). As can be seen in some of the previous pictures, the new window in the former Baath Bath is of the bay persuasion. That is to say, there are actually three windows, sharing a single sill. Before I run out of words and high-falutin' phrases to describe said window, how about few pictures of the working area:

Yeah. THAT'S gonna be fun to trim out, eh?

So my first idea was to basically create three separate pieces (technically six, as I'd have to repeat the process for the top part of the window), one to go in front of each window, and then carefully patch and seal the seams.  Given that the edges were not exactly straight (or parallel, or anything close to something that resembled EVEN), I figured the best thing to do would be to start with some cardboard templates.

As you can see, even the cardboard templates were a little challenging (though I admit to being pretty damn proud of myself for using MATH to get the angles so close). I managed to trim them up to a semblance of fitting, and then transferred them over to three pieces of 1x6 finger-jointed pine. The next step would have been a LOT easier if I owned a bandsaw, but I made do with some hideously dangerous table saw work, and some futzing with the jig saw. Fortunately, depending on who's side you're on, I didn't hurt myself and managed to make three fairly close wooden representations of my template.

And yeah - that's totally not going to work. Basically, the wood is so misaligned and out of level that I'd practically have to build a form and cover it with concrete to get a flat enough surface for the wood to sit flat. Anything less, and the seams would just split and it would always look like crap.

After some thinking (and swearing, of course), I settled on a different approach: one piece of continuous wood, cut to fit the exact shape of the sill (and a second one for the top). Given the size and layout of the sill, however, I'd have to make this out of plywood.

Man, I can't even tell you the amount of effort it took just to get the damn piece to this stage:

Just. So much.

Gah.

And then, of course, what should have been a fairly straight-forward trace and cut along the line turned into a hellish chore of trying-to-make-do-with-the-wrong-tools again. Mostly because the jigsaw we have is a piece of absolute crap (and it's my fault because I bought it as gift for the War Department), and I DON'T HAVE A BANDSAW.

Anyway, after more swearing than I'm even comfortable admitting to, I got this:

Thanks to a bright sunny day (which I spent stuck inside working on the goddamn trim), you can really see the craptacular job I did cutting it. Nothing like shining a light on something to really pick out its flaws, eh?

Sigh.

Sorry. Got a little bitter about it there for a second.

Still, I stuck with it and got the top piece in as well, though the amount of swearing didn't decrease much at all:

Once that was in, to add insult to insult (no injuries to speak of, aside from my wounded pride and self-confidence), I was now faced with having to install the trim around my trainwreck of a window sill. Which came with its own challenges of course, given that Tony the mudder had to do a LOT of feathering to get the corners smooth enough, meaning that there was no way in hell the trim was going to sit flat on what was an exceptionally un-flat wall. Here's a close up of one of the worst offenders, just in case you want to stare at some random marks on our walls for a few minutes (go ahead, I'll wait while you try to wrap your brain around the angles involved there):

I got most of the trim to fit okay, with a little creative editing, but that corner required some serious surgery to make the trim fit. Don't believe me? Well, here's the corner piece as it looked from the front:

And here's the back of that same piece after I nibbled away all the wood that was in the way:

And the matching piece for the other side:

Oh, yeah, and did I mention that I was, of course, doing all the test fitting and marking at the complete opposite end of the house, and on an entirely different floor, from the saws and tools I needed to do the cutting. SO glad we bought a house with a huge flight of stairs. So, so, SO glad!

I guess the good news is that, well:

 a) I have a pretty good idea of where I went wrong with the sill, and pretty sure that if I ever encounter this problem again, I'll have a better approach. (Buy me a beer and I will tell you - AT LENGTH - exactly what that is. Buy me two, and I'll offer to help fix yours too, but then I'm an idiot for beer that way.)

 b) Thanks to the War Department and her amazing touch with the caulking gun (and a few hours filling, sanding, and painting), it came out looking mostly okay:

No, I don't have a close-up and you can't see it even if I did. Which I don't.


Anyway, this post is long enough, and there are already too many pictures in it (Blogger starting gakking pretty hard on that last one), so I'll sign off for now. (It has nothing to do with how thinking about this bloody window has made me all pissed off or anything.) The story of the shower risers and my woodworking course can wait until next time.

(In case anyone was wondering - no, the bathroom is still not finished. It's gonna be another two weeks. Tops.)

Ba'ath Bath update!

So I thought maybe I should post an update about the current state of the master bath renovation before we headed out for our annual baseball pilgrimage. Then I forgot about it until ...uh, a couple months later? Oh, no wait. A little more than three...

Oops.

In my defence, I DID actually start a post... which doesn't help anyone, given that I never actually published it. Not only that, but it was so damn long ago that I pretty much have to start over from the beginning. Fair warning, though: if you come across any weirdly disjointed paragraphs or sentences in this post, you'll know why. (Damn. I should use this excuse EVERY post...)

Anyway, Tony came over to work his mudding magic on the drywall, and then we spent a few days (weeks) priming and painting over his efforts. See?

Oh, yeah: we went with the Restoration Hardware color, "Silver Sage", again. I think we made the right choice.

Once the painting was done, we installed the heating mat for our heated floor, and then laid down the Schluter-DITRA over the entire area. Messy! And for something called "an uncoupling membrane", remarkably unsexy, too. (How in the world I failed to take a picture of this, I will never know. I suck. Sorry.)

On a personal note, "Schluter-Ditra!" is almost as much fun to say as "Dr. Oetker!" (If you don't know Dr. Oetker, they make frozen pizzas or something. We like to call them the Nazi Pizza Doctor. "Ve haf vays of making yoo eat anutter slice!" Even though I think it's a Dutch name? But still, not a name you'd associate with pizza, unless it was, like, EVIL pizza.... Sorry, that got weird in a hurry.)

Anyway, then Mr. Not-Those-Clarks-The-Other-Clarkes came over and spent his Sunday helping me cut and dry-fit all the tiles for the floor.

And then, like some kind of... well, dumbass, he came over again the NEXT weekend and helped me actually install them. And all he wanted was beer. Weirdo.

It took me a couple of hours after that to scrape the dried mortar out of the cracks, and then I grouted it.

Heh, funny story about that.. well, funny if you're not me, anyway. So, after some careful research about the type of grout I needed (non-sanded), I went off to Slegg to buy it. When I got there, I got to talking with the guy who worked in the tile section, and he explained that I was actually mistaken. He assured me that I needed the other type of grout (sanded). Given that he'd been a professional tiler for 20 years, he seemed convincing, so I decided to follow his recommendations. (It turns out he was totally right - THAT sort of major calamity is not the punchline to this particular story, but I know that's what you were thinking.) He asked me how much I needed, and I talked myself through the numbers. It went something like this:

"Okay, well, the bathroom is 5 feet wide and 12 feet long, so 5x12 square feet. Yeah, I need enough to do 600 square feet then. How much can a bag of this stuff cover... huh. It says only 180 square feet per bag."

At which point the guy butts in and.. points out that it's easy enough to stretch the coverage from a single bag well over 200 square feet by cleaning the tiles as you go and constantly remixing the grout back into the bucket.

For some reason, he did NOT chime in to point out that my math was really, really wrong. Like, even for me, that's some highly wrong math.

Fortunately, Slegg has a good return policy, and I got my money back for the two bags I didn't even open, even though I did have to drive them all the way back to the store like an idiot.

The Injury Report

So, I managed to slice my finger quite badly while smoothing out one of the grout lines after I'd completed it. Which, well, was a pretty fair indication that I hadn't gotten enough grout into the joints. Sure enough, I must have started wiping up the grout too quickly after putting it down, or else the sponge was too wet.

Fortunately, I hadn't sealed the grout or the tiles yet, so I just regrouted the whole thing over again. Worked out much better the second time.

One of these days, though, I swear. I WILL do a project, just one, right the first time.

Oh, that reminds me. The Toilet From Hell has won another round against me. I won't go into details, but suffice to say that I'm more convinced than ever that attempting to replace it will result in a broken flange, flooded living room, or similar catastrophe. That thing is possessed, I tell you. Possessed.




Lots more to come about the bathroom, but I figured maybe I should just bloody well post something and not worry so much about getting it all up to date in one go, hmm? Next time, the windowsill!