Why?

While browsing online for shower curtains today, I came across this:

It wasn't my first sighting of this design or something very similar during my hunt for the perfect shower curtain over the past few weeks, but today was the first time I realized one important detail that made me go: "Why?"
I get the whole "Psycho"-ness behind the shower curtain/knife/blood scene and to some, it's probably really funny and appropriate if you are into that sorta thing.  The one thing I don't get though...the added "with sound" bonus.  I didn't capture the full description in the shown screen shot, but it goes on to tell you that the shower curtain basically has some shrieks and shrills from the movie Psycho in a special sealed, water proof pouch and goes off with either the touch of a button or you can have it be motion activated.  Is it really necessary to add the sound??  Why don't they throw a camera on it and a speaker so it can double as an video camera too?  And really, how many times is that shriek actually going to scare you when you know it's there??  The people who buy this curtain must only take showers once a month or something or they save it and hang it up only when company comes over.  Between the putrid, over-powering, can-smell-it-through-the-entire-house, vinyl smell that the reviewers wrote about and the stupid sound machine built into the curtain, your guests will probably never come back!
Needless to say, this curtain will not be on my new bathroom wish list.

If These Walls Could Talk....

They'd yell and scream at me for not blogging about them yet!
Sorry for the absence.  I'm back and will try to stay more on top of things.

Anyway....the walls in the bathroom are up!  There was a wall raising party two weekends ago and it was a dusty, glorious sight.  Two of my friends came over and cut the drywall and cement board to perfection while I screwed in screws.  About 4 hours later, the walls were up and they looked smokin' good!  We (we meaning my friend Nick (red hat)) and I didn't get to taping and mudding until later in the week, but as of this very moment, layer 3 of mud has been sanded (courtesy of Jeff) and just some minor tweaks have to be done behind the toilet where a lot of little cuts had to happen in order to go around the water valve thing.  Other than that, they should be ready for one more once-over with a sanding block, a good ol' fashioned wipe down and all set for some primer!
After the walls are premiered, my friend Nick will come back and spray the ceiling.  I believe the plan is to do what he calls "orange peel" to the ceiling.  It will have a slight texture to hide all of the flaws that are currently hanging out up there.

Here are Nick & Bill loving me taking their picture.  Bill is doing some serious re-wiring of one of my light fixtures...

Not to worry...there will be a cut made for the window...

Nick hanging the cement board in the shower...

Me gettin' my mud face on a couple days later...

Gettin' in serious mud mode...

The pretty (almost) final product after layer 3 of mud was sanded.

Ignore the hole in the wall where the radio is sitting.  My new/old medicine cabinet will eventually go back into that spot.

She's starting to kind of look like a bathroom again, isn't she?

The Built-in Non-Blues

The built-in is in!!!!  I don't know if I have been this excited since the plumbing was finished!!

I don't think I mentioned this before, but when I decided I was going to re-do my bathroom and soon found out I would be starting fresh from the studs, I knew I wanted a built-in in the shower/tub.  I always drool over these when I see them in magazines, other bathrooms I visit, show rooms at The Tile Shop, etc., so I knew it was a must.  Instead of having my friend who will put up the cement board & drywall make a bunch of extra cuts and try to fabricate one of these baby's, I decided to just purchase a pre-made one at The Tile Shop.  It was a lot easier and will save a lot of extra work when it comes to putting in the cement board in the shower.

The instillation was pretty simple.  Not that I did it all myself, but I probably could have if I had 4 hands and knew how how confidently use the saw without worrying that I will chop off a hand or something.  Anyway, we basically did some measuring, took a chunk out of the center 2"x4", cut some smaller 2"x4" pieces to make a little "frame" and shoved that puppy in there.  After making sure it was level and centered, we screwed it in place.  It's all secured and ready to be tiled directly onto it.

Speaking of tile....it's all ordered (floor, walls and possibly some accents???) and will be ready for pick up tomorrow.  I don't think I will show you until it's on the walls/floor though.  That way if you don't like it, it's too late; it's already done!!  :)   I also have other necessities either on order or in my possession... Matching sink & toilet, anyone??  How about some groovy hardware to go on that fancy new sink??  That's right, it's all here.  You'll have to wait on those though, too!

Can you tell I am excited?  No, you can't??  Well I am!  

Anyway, here is the built-in, sittin' in her permanent spot all nice & pretty.  Doesn't she look cute?  It's like she was meant to be sitting there all along.  And remember, although her blue color does give off a nice "look at me" glow, she will not be staying that color.  She will be covered with tile and grout in hopefully no time!  I also guess this means I will have to switch from my $2 Suave shampoo/conditioner to something a little more fancy to go on display in my awesome built-in.  I wouldn't want to show it off and then have to explain why I am so cheap when it comes to my hair care products!

*keep reading after you look at the beautiful built-in.  I pulled a two-post(er) tonight and you can read all about that insulated wall you see in the built-in pictures below.

**the built-in doesn't look centered in this picture, but I assure you, it's dead straight
 in the center of the wall.

Baby It's Warm In Here

This post is about two weeks late, but better late then never, right?  There is not really anything interesting that happened while putting the insulation on the outside wall so this post is going to be a little on the boring side.  I wasn't home when it was put up, so maybe that's why there wasn't any complications!  My brother actually put it in while I was at work one day.  I asked him if he wanted to be a "guest blogger" and write this post, but he is a tad on the shy side.  According to him: "it wasn't a big deal".  So, there you have it...the insulation that helps keep your butt from freezing that much more when you sit on the toilet in the middle of the night...wasn't that big of a deal.  Well, I think it looks great and is definitely a big step in the bathroom process.  The day for the drywall is getting closer and closer!

Happy Early Birthday, Blog!

Dear Something To Blog About,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!  I got you a facelift; do you like it?  I don't think it's quite perfect yet, I am going to have to do some research at work tomorrow and make sure my work computer is jiving with my home computer.  I was having technical glitches as usual while making your gift...I hope you forgive me.
I know it's a tad early for your gift and I am jumping the gun on your birthday....for some reason I had it in my head that your first post was on January 6th, but just as I put your new face out for the world to see, I looked back at your records and see that you were in fact, first posted to on January 8th.  Oh well, who doesn't like an early birthday present, right?  If I happen to not like your new face in a day or two, maybe I will do some tweaks, but for now, this is your gift and you'll like it.
You will notice that instead of your vintage Mac computer on your face like you used to have, you have a newer model.  It's not brand new by any means, but it is a lot newer than that old one that only had a green and black screen.  You also have a new type face and are a bit more edgy/trendy with the "seventies" color scheme I applied to your background.
The computer picture you have as your face is the computer I sit and stare at when I write posts on you;  therefore, I thought that it was an appropriate photo to use.
And, if you didn't think your facelift was enough, I got you something else.  You've gone mobile!  That's right old friend, I checked a little box and you are now sittin' pretty in case anyone wants to open you up on their smarty pants phone.  Your text will be to size, your pictures won't run off the screen and you have the exact same address; you will just automatically know when you are being opened on a mobile device and you will put your "smart" hat on and know to convert!  Oh Blog, you are so smart!

Have a great birthday--I look forward to many more great posts together!

~Leiann

Sub-floor + Pluming = Smile!

Wow, it's been awhile since the latest bathroom update.  A lot has happened at Bathroom de Wright in the  last few weeks so I will do my best to give you the highlights.  Does it sound weird to anyone else that the words "bathroom" and "highlights" were just put in the the same sentence?  Oh well, they're sure highlights to me!
Here goes:
Highlight Numero Uno:  The sub-floor is in!  As mentioned in a previous post, the floors under the tile were pretty bad.  Both ply-wood pieces needed to come out and the main floorboards needed some massive support from down below to stop them from bouncing up and down when you walked on them.  So one Saturday a few weeks ago with the help of my grandpa and dad, a plan was in place and a fresh new, flat piece of plywood was put in.  We started by measuring the bathroom in basically every single possible way we could measure.  North to South, East to West, Corners to Corners, Short Walls to Tub and so on and so on.  We drew a model to scale on a little piece of paper and that was then transferred onto a large, actual scale piece of paper that we had laid out on the kitchen floor.  This large, actual size, piece of paper was going to be our template for tracing and cutting the plywood.

Once we got the little drawing transferred onto the big paper, we cut it out and took it for a test run in the bathroom.  There was no way we were going to cut the plywood without making sure this baby fit like a glove.

It fit pretty well, but needed some fine tuning along the tub and a couple corners.  Other than that, it was pretty darn close.  Once it was fine tuned and we were confident it would work, it was out to the garage with the paper floor. We taped it to the piece of plywood and started tracing away.  By tracing, I really mean sawing.  We didn't trace an outline on the board, we went straight for the cut.

And yes, I even got to use the saw...a big event for me!  :)

After it was cut, we brought it in for a test and it fit great! No extra sawing needed.  So about 400 screws later (that's an exaggeration, but there were quite a few screws), she was safe, secure and in her permanent home.  It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?  Much prettier than those broken icky floor boards and sticky, glue infested sub floors.

Highlight Numero Dos:  Plumbing is in and doesn't leak!

One would think that installing plumping pipes together and making water run though them would be a walk in the park.  Well, unless you are plumber by trade, it's not that simple.  Four people working on it and about 16 hours of work later, it's complete.  We did a rough math number after day 1 of working and figured it would have cost me about $800+ dollars to have a professional plumber come in and do this job.  Granted, it wouldn't have taken him/her as long because they do it daily, but still....it makes you appreciate being able to do things yourself, even if it takes a little longer.  Plus, you get the added bonus of learning some things along the way.  :)

As also stated in a previous post, I have never had a shower head in that bathtub.  I have had a sprayer, but it's always been hooked to the tub faucet and there was never a spot to hook it from the top, so I have one-handed showered for over two years.  So since there was never a shower to begin with, that pipe had to be added.  I also wanted to convert the two separate hot & cold handles to a single handle-style controller.  So, with those two things being said, we kind of had to start from scratch.

We started by removing all the old do-dads and were just left with these two pipes sticking up from the basement:

Instead of adding the new piping straight onto those pipes, we first installed two valves (one on hot and one on cold) so we could have the main water supply to the house turned on while we worked, and have just the tub/shower water turned off.  That was probably the smartest thing we've done to date seeing all of the taking apart and adjusting that was needed down the road.  So the valves were installed and we were good to go.  Every other water supply in the house was a-ok.

After the first full day of working on this, which included 3 trips to Menards, sawing pipe and tightening pipes so tight we swore they were going to to through the other end, it was almost time for testing.  Oh but you know nothing can go that smoothly, right?  The entire plumbing/piping apparatus (for lack of a better word) was in and all snug but it was sitting a little crooked, so a little adjusting was needed.  Well, adjusting turned to breaking.  The main piece of equipment that houses all of the pipes running in and out (the main piece that came in the box of shower head & dial.  i.e. expensive and probably not easily replaceable in this situation) snapped in one spot while the adjusting was happening.  I  think we all went into shock for a couple minutes while we digesting what had just happened.  In my eyes it was 8 hours of work completely wasted...(quite possibly an exaggeration, but I was totally bummed).  After the shock wore off, my Grandpa had a solution.  He took the apparatus home and within a couple hours was back and it was good as new.

Over the next couple days, some tweaks needed to be done and finally on Friday the 30th, it was water testing day.  It was just my Grandpa and I here and to make a long blog post somewhat shorter, we worked for 3 hours testing these pipes.  We would test, find leaks, take apart pieces, tighten pieces, test again, etc.  We did this I think we counted six times.  Those on/off valves sure came in handy!  We finally found all of the problem areas and so far, we're home free.  I am sure more testing will be done later this week before the drywall goes up, but so far, so good!

Here's what she looks like as of now (minus the tub spout--that's off for the time being) and the shower head and dial aren't up either.  Those will go on once the drywall and tile is completed.  Another beautiful site in the Great Bathroom Renovation.

In case you're interested, this is the shower head and dial combo I picked out.  They do sell the shower head/dial and tub faucet in packs as well, but I couldn't find a combo I liked, so I bought the faucet for the tub separate.  

Next on the list:  Finalizing the fan, insulating the outside wall and moving the light switch over a few inches.  Followed by drywall.

Stay tuned....