DIY Woodworking, Home Improvement, and Art Projects

SO the shower is in place! It wasn’t looking good there for a while. The plumber had the bathroom filled with his tools, he didn’t show up one day, and when he left the day before that we weren’t sure it was going to get done this week. Well the guy finished up on Monday night and everything works. It is so nice to see some big progress in that room. It can be pretty crazy having your main bathroom be a construction zone, totally unusable, and not very kid-friendly. It’s been almost a month now since we started the demo and we are ready to finish off the drywall around the shower, tile the floor, move in the new vanity, install the new light fixture, install the new baseboard molding, install the new door, finish the decorative treatment on the walls, and re-install the toilet.

Hah! Small list right…well, when you tear things down to the frame you will find yourself with a huge list like that. It’s going to be great when it is complete though. What’s nice is knowing that we did most of it ourselves. If you’re a do it yourselfer you know that satisfaction and it definitely drives you and motivates you.

So you want to learn how to remove a toilet? Replace a shower? Demo an old vanity? Put slate tile on a bathroom floor? Stick around, because I plan to create individual sections with pictures, instructions, and my notes on all of these projects. Until then, take care!

Well, although we’ve been working on projects that took a long time, and required a lot of hard work, this bathroom remodel takes the cake. So far we’ve completely removed the old shower, the two doors into the room, the vanity, the toilet, much of the drywall, and all of the terrible plastic molding around the doors and the floor. We framed out a small wall to close off one of the doors into the bathroom, and we are currently in the process of adding the new shower and tub, refinishing the walls, getting the floor prepped for the slate tile, and replacing the old vanity light fixture.

We bought a nice Moen shower fixture kit to replace the existing pieces. Over the past couple of months we had also been ordering a few pieces here and there like the new vanity, the new shower, the new granite countertop, etc. Basically we wanted to spread out the cost of the job and also have everything at the house when we were ready for it. There’s nothing worse than getting done with one part of the job, only to have to wait two weeks for the next piece to come in on order. It wouldn’t be that bad, really, but we just decided to get most of the new stuff before tearing everything else out.

We decided to hire a plumber to handle all of the major work in getting the new shower roughed in and the pipes altered. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in trying it myself, but when you look at all of the specialized tools necessary to do that type of work, even the best-stocked garage full of tools wouldn’t have half of a plumber’s essentials. We got a great deal because we know someone just a block away who gave us a good deal. After we spent five hours in that room on Saturday I am more than glad I didn’t even attempt to do any of the actual plumbing work besides removing the sink and toilet. Those two things weren’t that bad, and I will write more about the best way I found to move a toilet and take out a thirty year old sink and vanity.

I have so many pictures stored in my camera that I need to start downloading them and posting them along with the relevant blog entry. Since October I have been back in college finishing up my business management degree. All of that work keeps me so busy that although I have been doing some home improvement projects lately, I just can’t seem to find the time to write about them here. I eventually want to make a section of a static site for each of the major projects we did and then post pictures, relevant instructions, my personal experience with the products I used, the things to avoid doing, etc. I really want to make this a place where you can come to find information about many different topics related to home improvement in one site. So please bare with me while I finish my degree and complete all of these projects. I promise that I will develop a great resource with pictures, tutorials, the whole works. Thanks!