K&K Home Renos: 08/01/2012

A normal person after chopping down a giant tree in the front lawn and then spending a weekend re-seeding, would probably call it a summer and start enjoying what is left of the sun and warm weather; maybe spend some time in the pool. But alas...I am an idiot.

So here we go...the End-of-Summer Reno on Bathroom #4 (and thankfully we have run out of Bathrooms to renovate). Everything is being replaced except the tub. It is a new-ish tub insert and we just decided to leave it. As this is the most unused bathroom in the whole house so we didn't want to spend too much money on it...so goal # 1 was hire cheap labor. Yup, this time I am doing the whole thing myself. And I hate doing bathrooms...they are a huge pain and anything but fun.

So let's see what we started with.

Now I know what you are thinking. Are you mad wanting to change this? Look at the awesome vanity. And that blue toilet seat...cool. And those vinyl tiles, stunning! (Believe it or not, this is what Kelly called "move-in-ready-no-work-required" when we first bought the house...talk about Buyers Blinders)

I mean, like seriously, even back in the day who would have picked this????

Time to start gutting:

First remove the sink and counter. And then...wait, what the???? In order to make the vanity stand sit flush with the wall, they cut a hole in the drywall and slipped the edge of the counter-top overhang into the wall. Dorks!!!! Who would do such a thing? Now I have to do a wall repair as part of the job. Arggg!

Second, remove the toilet (don't get any of the toilet wax ring on you!)

In case you are wondering, the cup is in the hole so the sewer vapors don't come up.

Next, time to remove the tile. Although it is possible to tile over existing tile, I thought it best, since some of the tiles were coming up, to take it right down to concrete. If you have never removed vinyl tile before, count yourself lucky. It is brutal. The only way to do it is to chip away till it breaks apart. I had a scrapper, but that was not doing the job. I needed to go out and get a chisel/crow-bar. Then you start chiseling away at the tile...slow, oh so painfully slow. And it takes a tole on your knees, back and ears (yes ears, in that small bathroom the high-pitch sound of the hammer striking chisel bounced around and drove me insane!). Once the tile is up, you need to scrap the floor removing all the old glue residue. It is a lot like trying to scrape gum off a shoe, except it is a whole floor.

Eventually you end up with this:

That big brown skid mark is where it looks like some concrete crack repair had been done.

With the room finally demo'd...it was time to start laying down new tile.

Because we are doing this el cheapo we decided to go with luxury vinyl tile. It has the look and texture of real tile, but--to now state the obvious--it isn't real tile. The big giveaway is that it doesn't get as cold as ceramic or porcelain tile. Also, to give it a more authentic look, I will be grouting between the tile, which means I had to lay it down with spacers.

One thing about the spacers: They don't really make spacers for vinyl tile that are the correct height, so I had to cut all the spacers by hand. How many? 158.

Once all the tiles are down you can begin to grout. I used a premixed grout with similar colour to that of the tile.

Here is a half-n-half shot:

Some pics of the finished floor:

Well, that's it for now...next up adding in quarter round and drywall repair.

Before I go, for those of you interested in how is the front lawn coming....here are two pics of the progress after only 7 days!!

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See you in a couple weeks....until then, "if women don't find you handsome, may they at least find you handy."

K&K

Ok, so it has been a few weeks and it is time to update what has happened with the tree removal.

We needed to get the stump removed. For that you need someone to grind it away. They use a lawn mower type contraption with a huge vertical spinning blade on the end and slowly shave the stump away. They start at one side and and grind away till they reach the other side, then do the roots.
I have no pics as it was done while we were at work. It took a long time for them to arrive as apparently they were waiting for the city to inform them of where the underground pipes and cable are. 6 phone calls later and 2 very stern voice mails where I threatened to leave a scathing review of the company on HomeStars.com (which is the best place to review any contractors before you hire them by the way) and they finally came out. I guess they were cheap for a reason.

In the end they did good work, left us with a large crater and a pile of dirt/wood-chips.

Next step was a grueling 9 hour adventure. 1st, try and rake up as many of the wood chips as possible, and then shovel the dirt to fill the craters. Needless to say, every time I took a shovel full and spread it around it just kept revealing more and more wood chips. Its not bad to have wood chips in the soil, they are good for maintaining a moist soil while trying to grow grass, but the amount of chips was ridiculous. So the pattern of shovel, hoe, rake, shovel, hoe, rake, continued for hours (7 brown-bags of wood chips), until I had a semblance of flat ground.

Now it is time to try and do something with this landfill. We opted to just seed it to try and grow some grass. But because it was once a pine tree, and hundreds of thousands of needles that had fallen over the years had made the ground Ph very acidic. So first a layer of lime to try and stabilize the ground. Then a layer of top soil and then the grass seed.