Manley House

Monday I put a coat of white on the ceiling in the bathroom downstairs. Then last night I put the rest of the can up on the walls, it didn't quite cover so I'll be stopping on the way home to pick up some more paint and give the walls another coat.

On the upstairs front, the sink and faucet arrived Monday and Tuesday. Damn is that sink cool. A slight change might be made for the counter. The river-rock and epoxy one that was planned might have to wait a little and instead we might do a butcher block mahogany that I have in the garage. The counter should be easy enough to swap out later when we have time to make the epoxy poured top, there is just one hole for the sink as the faucet will be mounted in the wall.

Talked over the plan some more with my dad and started the list of things he should bring with if he can. I still need to decide if I want to try and take few days off around thanksgiving to give me even more time for the bathroom that week that he will be down. As it is I'm trying to get everything in the house and staged that I can so we don't waste a lot of time running to get things. Although we will have to do that at the start for the plumbing as I'm not going to be exposing that much of it before we start, I'd like to keep the bathroom functional at least until alyska heads out for Thanksgiving.

The list for this weekend is as follows:

• finish painting basement bathroom walls (Friday)
  
• make shelves and paint cabinet for basement bathroom (Saturday)
  
• begin tearing out the upstairs wall cabinets and measure for new one and adjust design (Sunday)
  

There has been some more progress on several fronts. I have the main casing built for the above toilet cabinet in the basement and the gas line soffit is constructed and installed. Now I can go through and caulk and patch over the screws and get some paint/texture on the walls. Then soon the floor can go in, thus allowing the toilet to go back in, yay!

Yesterday a project got done that has only been waiting about a year, the threshold from the kitchen toward the bathroom and bedroom. The one leading toward the front door by the fridge still needs to be done, but that will take more effort as I have to build that one from scratch. The sub-floor is uneven in that spot and I can't use the color-matched ones that came with the floor. Now I can also put in the moulding along the wall to cover the gap that you can see in the picture. The moulding is already constructed and stained so now I just need to trim it to fit.

That installation is next on the list for today, then I need to go out and get more drywall patching compound and have at the basement bathroom, with any luck I might even be able to get some paint on it tonight or tomorrow.

Designs are also moving along on the upstairs bathroom cabinetry. The sink and faucet have been ordered and should be here early next week. I should order the material for the door inlays soon, but that requires a phone call or fax as they don't have a web ordering system. I did some pricing on maple plywood and boards and now need to see what I need to buy for stock in order to make all of the parts on the cutsheet. I also borrowed a pair of biscuit jointers from revchris to try out before possibly using them to construct the cabinets.

Well, back to work.

Shortly after the last post I put up the upper section of that wall, and ran out of mortar. So then was waiting for some more (Menards is changing brands so I had my dad pick some up as he was closer to a store that had some). Then there was a long period of no work on the house. Things were being done, just not house project things.

Sometime in there I came up with a way to fix my mistake of starting the first row of tile that I did too high. There was more than a tile worth of space left. whoops. When I stopped at Home Despot to buy a new drill with a birthday giftcard, I took another look at the tile. I found the accent trim and I liked it so I bought some for alyska to see. She liked it too so I got enough to do a stripe. (I should have thought of this before I did the top row too)

Last Sunday tour_spot dropped off a load of stuff on her way though town, including the bag of mortar. Woo.

So fast forward to today, I put up the band of accent tile, then measured and cut the bottom row of tile with the wet-saw. Then I put that up along with the tiles around the control handle and some up against the cabinet. That leaves 3 tiles (showerhead, 2 corners on wet wall, cut and ready to go) plus the 7 pieces of bullnose on the bedroom wall to put up tomorrow and it will look like a mostly complete tile job. There will still be some unfinished edges because they are to be determined by what happens elsewhere in the room.

Then it will be time to go through all of the grout lines to make sure there is room for the grout. This mainly has to happen on the tile I just put up as I had already done most of the other during the time when I didn't have any mortar.


When the tile is done I can send the borrowed tile saw and the rest of the bag of mortar home with my dad when he comes down to drop off the drill-presses and things. I don't think the overall change in garage space will be in my favor though, although the utility of that space will go up. ^_^


(updated by jeffreyp)

The tile has been going slowly the last week or so, so slow infact that nothing was done. That changed today. Tile was cut and installed to almost fill in the back and bedroom walls. the bullnose still needs to go on the bedroom wall and there is one tile that needs to go in the upper corner of the back wall. It is cut and will go up with the next batch of mortar that is mixed up. There is still the bottom row of tiles that needs to be installed all the way around as well, but I need to come up with a plan of attack on that. Seems I started the rows a touch too tall. oops. We picked up the grout and sealer the other day so now I just need to keep at it and finish it. The next step is to cut out around the faucet controls, then it should go quickly up the wall until I need to cut out for the shower head. After all of that and the fitting to the cabinet I will need to go around and do the bottom row, which will involve cutting around the faucet.

The window boxes also found a more prominent home today. We had picked up some L brackets to mount them with when we got the grout. Today I painted them white and we attached them to the front porch rail after alyska got home.

We also picked up a seal for the bottom of the new door on the garage. I trimmed that down and attached it this afternoon as well. I also did a little bit of general cleanup of the garage and along the fence. A few days ago I also finally got around to cleaning out the watering can that was in the garage when we moved in. I then proceeded to mix up some Ground-Clear and applied it to the side and back of the garage where the weeds have been running rampant. It seems to be doing the trick.

(updated by jeffreyp)

A few weeks ago while alyska was gone, much happened in a short time. Since then the unfinished ends have been worked on in some cases and ignored in others.

It started out with working in the basement to get the shower in and operational. This involved re-wiring the lighting and installing greenboard on the ceiling. Then I assembled the platform with adhesive and screws, and attached it to the floor. After that was in I then went about assembling the rest of the enclosure and there was a working shower. It still needs trim work and things, but it is functional. While I was doing that my dad started the dismantling of the upstairs bath by removing all of the old tile and backer board. Then we got the hammer out and broke the end off the tub to get it out.

After that was out we could remove the old plumbing and install some new shutoff valves, as there wasn't any on the fixtures before. It took a little bit to get the new plumbing in and correct but it wasn't difficult, just annoying. Luckily the floor was already level so we just put down a 3/4" plywood to help distribute the weight on the floorboards. Then it was time to move in the new tub. Acrylic and Fiberglass tubs are a lot lighter than porcelain/cast iron ones, even when the new one holds almost twice the water. After we got the tub in and squared up we attached the tile flange and started putting up the durock on the walls.

While I was installing the durock, and the next day while I was at work, my dad took the person door off of the garage and replaced it with a steel one from the Habitat Re-Store. It was a bit smaller so the frame had to be filled in, and straightened in the process.

Then we installed a raised planting bed in the back yard. When alyska came back, a trunk full of strawberry plants went in, hopefully some of them survive. The next day I planted the lilies she also brought back and moved a hosta.

Over the next week I caulked and painted the new door frame, filled the joints in the durock, and cleaned the garage.

This past week we picked up some tile for the bathroom and didn't get much else done on the house. Although, there is now a truck in the driveway that will help with the hauling of materials to work on the house.

Sunday I started the installation of the tile around the tub and got most of the back wall done including some of the custom cut pieces. It went a lot better when I mixed the thinset a bit thicker and made all of the X spacers into T spacers (doing a stepped brick-like pattern instead of plain grid). Monday night I did another bucket worth of thinset on the bedroom side wall and figured placement for the bullnose. Tonight I will try and remember to make another post with pictures or update this one with links in the proper places.


(updated by jeffreyp)

Earlier in the week I got a few of the kick-plates trimmed down and installed in the kitchen, there are a few more to do but now I know that my new-to-me bandsaw works well.

Then there was a lot of changes made in the basement over the weekend. (several pics in the cuts)

( Saturday )

( Sunday )

(updated by jeffreyp)

Haven't gotten the floor transitions done yet, or the cabinet toe-kicks. I have trimmed and removed all of the edge staples from the carpet and now I just need to staple them back down, once I find a carpet stapler. Then I can put in the transitions. The toe-kicks need to be trimmed down so I am looking around for the best method of doing that so those can go up. Then the majority of the kitchen will be completed. It will still need a cabinet face on the small cabinet and the cutting board on the end of the counter but most of the building will be done after the baseboards are in. Woo! Now we just need to get the table in by the end of the year.

After the kitchen is taken care of then some of the energies can go into doing something with the basement. I've already whipped up the current layout in the 3d home design software that our real-estate agent gave us after the closing so I can play with what will and will not work.

First will be moving one of the beam support poles over about 2-3 feet and shoring up the other side if needed. That will open up the 'finished' area of the basement and allow for un-obstructed viewing of the projection screen, only 16mm for now, with the goal of a DLP short throw projector hooked up at some point.

Then the laundry phase looks like it involves.

• Removing an un-needed waste drain (we think it was for emptying an RV) and replacing it with a washing machine drain stack
  
• Tapping the water lines near that drain stack for a washing machine
  
• Re-positioning the dryer outlet
  
• Getting the new washer and dryer
  

That will free up a lot of space in that area of the basement and make a lot more usable space. It will also make a hopefully sane laundry area as opposed to what we have now.

Then after that, efforts will go toward installing a shower stall next to the toilet that is currently down there. That will take a bit more doing. But once that is done we can think more about the upstairs bath as there will be a place to shower during work on that one.

Sometime in there we should also do something about the lack of window coverings in the back room. I'm thinking about making the roman shades myself, need to price out the hardware and materials and see if it is worth it.

Although before the things that require much money happen the kitchen needs to be paid off.

(updated by jeffreyp)

Quick recap of what has been done since the last Monday post.

( Kitchen )

( Garden )

( Unpacking )

( Attic )


(updated by jeffreyp)

Maybe now it will vent better, more on that in a bit. A lot of things have been done since the last update.

Everything is out of creeksideway and I need to stop back and finish installing a screen now that I have a spline roller, and check for a folding chair in the furnace room, but I need to get the key from Dave first.

( Thursday )

( Friday )

( Saturday )

( Sunday )

Tonight is a run to finish up the screen install at creeksideway and some more unpacking and organizing at the house.

(updated by jeffreyp)