Manley House

The tile went up Tuesday night and the grout went in last night. That part of the project is still on schedule for grout sealing and sink cabinet installation on Sunday afternoon. Saturday will be working on the wall cabinet cases. Hopefully there will be much progress, and pictures of said progress. The sooner the cabinet frame is done, the sooner I can start in on the door assemblies and things will actually look finished.

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)