Moral: Never remodel

So I bet you all thought the Bathroom Remodel was done, right? Perhaps you thought The Husband, Jack and I have been basking in our glorious new bathroom and rearranged pantry, taking bubble baths and sipping champagne. Perhaps you are all idiots. Because of course the Bathroom Remodel is not done. Sure, it’s “done” according to my the-baby-is-coming-please-I-just-want-a-working- shower-and-washing-machine criteria. And sure, both the bathroom and the pantry are fully functional with running water, cabinets, and appliances. But the painting. Oh the painting. If hell is tailored to fit each person, my own personal hell will consist of me, a paintbrush, and acres and acres of walls and porch railings.

Today I put the first coat of paint on one of the pantry walls. Unfortunately, when I opened the container, I found not the warm sunny yellow that I thought I picked out, but a yellow reminiscent of a fluorescent highlighter. I painted the first wall anyway in the vain hope that it would dry darker. No such luck.

I tell you, if my mother and nieces did not read this blog, this post would pretty much be a string of profanities. (I can’t swear in front of my nieces because I have to set a good example, and I can’t swear in front of my mother because I have to pretend I don’t know those words.) (Words like “gosh” and “goldurn it,” Mom! Because those are the only swear words I know!) So now I have to reprime the wall that I painted highlighter yellow and then get a new gallon of paint.

Goldurn it all to heck.

Ding-Dong! The Bathroom Remodel is dead!

Like I said, it was a big weekend. Yes, it is true. According to the redefined interpretation of “completed,” The Bathroom Remodel is officially completed. Sure, there are a few cosmetic things to be finished: The baseboards need painting; the sticky, frosted privacy screens need to be attached to the windows; shelving, towel rods and pictures need to be hung, but WHO CARES. We can use the toilet, brush our teeth and shower all in the same room. We can do laundry. We can put stuff away.

The pantry is slightly behind the bathroom in terms of technical completeness, as it needs trim installed, primed, and painted, the walls aren’t finished, and the floor isn’t installed, but again, no one cares about these things. We can PUT DISHES AWAY. What else is there in life, really?

So what was not-a-thing-but-bigger-than-a-breadbox surprise? Well, I’ll tell you. On Saturday, while I was at the lab and then at Target shopping for bathroom accessories and enormously large maternity shirts, The Husband and Father-in-law changed this:



















into this:



















Yes. That is our pantry. With cabinets. Cabinets on the wall. Cabinets into which we have placed dishes.

But that wasn’t my entire surprise! No! Because on Sunday, while I was opening baby presents at my mom’s house, The Husband and Father-in-law transformed the dining room from this:
into this:














And the kitchen went from this:

to this:



















I used to hate the kitchen, what with its being so ugly and all, but now I am in love with it. Who cares about ugly when you can walk through it without fear of losing a toe to a drill bit? On Monday, I even ate breakfast at the kitchen table! I hadn’t even seen the kitchen table since June.

So, all in all, the surprise was a good one. With an impact much, much bigger than a breadbox.

Now, I’m not showing you the office, living room, or nursery, because they are still being reorganized as we still have to arrange the furniture and finally put away all those homeless books. But that’s fine. Because you know what else happened? Yesterday, The Plumber came back and hooked up the bathroom vanity. And that means that it is time for pictures of The Remodeled Bathroom! (Back in the day, I told you I was going to talk about framing out the walls, but I realized that no one cares. So I’m skipping to the good part.)

First, let’s recall what it looked like before we started:


Now I present to you… The Remodeled Bathroom.

Dun…



















Dunnnnn…



















Dunnnnnnnn…



















DUN DUNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!



















There she is! Complete with a new toilet:




















and a sink faucet













from which water runs.



















(Sorry, that part is still pretty new and exciting for me.)

And around the corner, to the right of the laundry area, we have the bathtub section.



















Complete with a tile shelf



















and a shower



















from which water runs!



















Last night The Husband also installed the toilet paper holder and the hand towel ring, but I’m going to spare you those pictures. You’re welcome.

I should mention that a huge side effect of The Remodeled Bathroom will be that I will no longer be distracted by The Bathroom Remodel when trying to hold social conversations with others. Instead, I will be free to obsess about The Pregnancy. The Pregnancy which gave my sisters an excuse to buy these for me:













You can’t see them, but they also have zippers!

I am now excited by running water and zippers. You might want to avoid me for the next few months/weeks, as I am the most boring person on earth.

Irony, why do you hate us so?

In a hilarious ironic twist, The Husband and I woke up this morning to discover that we had no water. Apparently, a water main broke somewhere, so it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Bathroom Remodel. Except that I secretly think the evil spirit of the Bathroom Remodel is responsible for it somehow.

Washer and Dryer: Ready for action

Last weekend, as I told you, I was reduced to tears because the woodwork in the bathroom was not going to be painted before The Plumber arrived. The horror! But now I am in a much more rational state of mind, and I realize that I may have been overreacting just a smidge. In fact, now that I am in the calm, cool light of a shower and non-disgusting new toilet, I’m fairly certain that painted baseboards are not actually required in a working bathroom. A sink, a toilet, a shower? All necessary features. Painted baseboards? A nicety. So if we don’t paint them until later, that is probably OK.

But the really excellent news is that The Husband is home sick today, and he called me while I was at work to ask where the fabric softener is. He needed to know because he was doing laundry! At our house! (That’s the good news part. Not that he’s sick.) Last Saturday, I had to buy a completely new set of detergent, bleach, and fabric softener, because our bottles have disappeared. I think that over the course of the past four months, I left a little trail of detergent, bleach and fabric softener at my sister’s house, my parents’ house and my in-laws’ house. Fortunately, I knew exactly where the fabric softener was, which was right in the grocery bag where I left it. For some reason, I put away all the groceries except the sponges and the fabric softener. But to keep things tidy, I carefully placed that grocery bag on the dining room chair. Days after grocery shopping. I actually lifted it up off the floor, looked inside, and put it on the chair. Naturally.

The even better news is that, according to The Husband, now that the washing machine is on a stable floor made of non-rotting wood and is resting perpendicularly to the floor beams, the spin cycle no longer causes the entire house to shake. We may even be able to use the “high spin” setting. Previously, even the “gentle spin” setting sometimes required that we brace ourselves against the washing machine to prevent the entire house from crashing down around us, or at least to prevent the washing machine from crashing down into the apartment below. It was a convenient means of getting a back massage, but not really the ideal situation.

So as soon as we get the towel rods and shelving installed, I’m going to take some “after” pictures and post them. But I should warn you: The baseboards will not yet be painted. (Also, the vanity and radiator won’t be installed, because I have a feeling that’s going to take three weeks.)

The Bathroom Remodel: Update

Guess what I did before going to our birthing class! I took a shower! Yes! A shower! It was awesome.

The Husband also moved the washing machine into its rightful place in the new bathroom, and it turns out that our kitchen is huge. The landing is also quite a bit larger without the vanity taking up 90% of the space.

So progress is being made. The Bathroom Remodel is going DOWN. Prepare ye the way of the remodeled bathroom!

The Bathroom Remodel: Life in the Chaos

Today is a big, big day, folks. I am currently at home. I took the day off so that I could be home for... The Plumber! Yes, right this second, as I sit here typing, The Plumber is installing the toilet, the vanity, the shower head, the tub faucet, the radiator, and the hookup for the washing machine! Tonight, we shower.

So this means that the “After” pictures for the bathroom half of the remodel are on their way. But in the meantime, I thought I’d share with you the nightmare of living in a house undergoing a major renovation. Following are pictures which should explain why I have spent much of the last thirteen weeks crying into my paintbrush. You see, I am not a person who tolerates clutter very well. So when you mix that with a healthy dose of pregnancy hormones and force me to live in chaos for four months without the possibility of a shower, you get a very frustrated and weepy pregnant lady who can’t quite get all of the shampoo out of her hair.

I present to you: The Chaos.

Kitchen, during:
Please do not judge us by the ugliness of our kitchen. Remember: Our apartment’s last tenant was the guy who that a soap dispenser in the bathroom was a good idea. He also apparently cooked via the “throw grease directly at the walls” technique. There was even grease on the bathroom walls. We were totally going to replace the kitchen walls this summer when the bathroom was done, but that is obviously not happening now. Next summer. And please do not suggest that in the meantime, we just strip the wallpaper and repaint, or wallpaper over the current wallpaper, or anything like that, because there is no way we are doing that. We can live with it another year. We’ll just close our eyes or look into the bathroom.

Dining room, during:
That picture does not even include the filing cabinets which are currently occupying the space where the plant is.

Living room, during:
The living room has been acting as a sort of catch-all for any extraneous nursery stuff that couldn’t fit in the dining room. This turned out to mostly be books that we are not planning to leave in the nursery.

We plan to move the books, the file cabinets, and the extra bookshelves and dresser to the landing/office area, but we have so far been thwarted in our organization by the devious Bathroom Remodel. Witness the landing/office area:

Landing, during:
Yeah, not much room for more furniture. And it has been like this for FOUR MONTHS.

Amusingly, behind the dishwasher box are located the towel rods and various other bathroom hardware that we rushed out to buy in June so that we would have them ready when the time came to install them. That time has not yet come.

This weekend, The Husband and The Carpenter finished installing the woodwork in the bathroom, and we were planning to get the woodwork all painted before The Plumber came today, but we were foiled once again by drying times. I didn’t realize that the woodwork all needed to be caulked, and then caulk needed two hours to dry. But we powered through and caulked and painted the woodwork that would be behind the radiator and vanity so we wouldn’t have to try to get behind them after they were installed. And then I cried some more, because we are so close to the end, but are constantly being held up by tiny annoying little jobs like caulking the woodwork.

The Husband, to his credit, refrained from saying anything to me during this latest crying jag. But I know The Husband pretty well, so I could read his thoughts, and his thoughts were screaming, “Oh, for the love of… she’s crying again? I’ve been doing hard labor for the past seven hours for the millionth Saturday in a row, and all she did was go food shopping and take a nap, and now she’s crying because the flipping woodwork isn’t painted? OK. OK. Remember: she’s pregnant. Cut her some slack, slide her the box of tissues, and just keep your mouth shut.” And he did. So after we finished priming the woodwork, I went to cry by myself in the bedroom and let him take a nap, and later that night we had well-deserved ice cream sundaes.

The ice cream and a good night’s sleep helped me to reevaluate the situation and I feel more optimistic now, even though The Plumber has just informed me that he is, in fact, unable to install the vanity after all. It seems we need to cut out wedges in the baseboards for the legs of the vanity so that the vanity will be flush against the wall. Neither will he install the radiator today because he doesn’t have the right valve with him. But it’s OK! It’s fine! He’s still installing the shower, and the new toilet, and the washer hookups. So what if we have to keep washing our hands and brushing our teeth in the kitchen sink. We will be able to shower. It’s fine. And we don’t need to turn the heat on yet, so we don’t even need a radiator. It’s fine! It’s a minor delay! I will remain optimistic!

And, looking on the bright side, we can still leave the vanity in the bathroom which clears up the landing and will allow us to put away all kinds of things. Things that are currently making the nursery look like this:

Before I sign off, I feel I should explain that the boxes of books now in the nursery are the same boxes that used to be in the living room. We have a lot of books, but not that many. But once we got the nursery painted, we reverted back to using it as a storage room for the tons o’ stuff that has no home during the remodel.

So the after pictures will be delayed several more days as we try to figure out a way to notch out the baseboards. Actually, they’ll probably be delayed several weeks because we will have to get back on the plumber’s schedule, and he’s two weeks out.

But in the meantime, we can shower and do laundry, so I probably won’t cry tonight. No promises.

The Bathroom Remodel: During, Phase 1

The Bathroom Remodel: During, Phase 1

What do you do when faced with a leak behind a cheapo, ugly tub surround? You know you’re going to have to remove the tub surround in order to fix the leak, and you also know that it would be complete insanity to put that cruddy old tub surround back. So what you do is to reverse the order of major home renovations, delay the kitchen remodel (God help us, we’re going to have to remodel our kitchen), and move the bathroom remodel up the list.

Next, you get some estimates from contractors and discover that bathroom remodels are really very expensive, and you realize that you wouldn’t have been able to afford to remodel the kitchen anyway. And then you decide not to hire a contractor, but instead to “do it yourselves,” if by “yourselves” you mean The Husband because, although you, The Wife, would be perfectly willing to help, honest, you are pregnant and are therefore not allowed to do major construction work. More’s the pity.

So finally, you hire the brother of The Husband’s coworker to act as the carpenter, hire the husband of that same coworker to act as the electrician, and hire plumbers with whom you have no previous connection and will therefore get no price break because you’d be crazy to try to do all the plumbing yourself and, as it turns out, you have to have a license to pull the plumbing permits. You also call the tile guy and ask him if he’s available three weeks after the scheduled demolition, because that’s when you think you’ll need him. The tile guy, to your surprise, says, “Why don’t you call me a week before the walls are finished,” because the tile guy is far more experienced that you and knows that you are delusional and will not need him for weeks and weeks and weeks. The tile guy is a wise, wise man.

Then, with a cheerful, devil-may-care attitude, you start knocking down walls thinking that this whole process will only take a few weeks. Boy are you ever stupid.

Pantry 1:


Pantry 2:


Bathroom 1:


Bathroom 2:


At this point, things are still pretty easy to live with. You still have a shower, a toilet, a bathroom sink, and a kitchen sink. But that is not going to last. Because the next step is to remove all sources of running water from the apartment:



And then you discover that it’s a darn good thing the leak forced you to remodel, because a whole bunch of the floorboards were rotten.



Grateful that toilet never fell through the floorboards into the apartment downstairs, you check into the oh-so-lovely Motel 6 for what you think will be three days but turns out to be a week.

Up next: Framing out the walls.

The Bathroom Remodel: Before Pictures

Bathroom Before:
This may well answer the question “Why on earth did you start a major home renovation project while pregnant?” Answer? “Because the bathroom was nasty, disgusting, gross, and could not possibly be expected to get a baby clean. Also there was a leak.”



Bathroom sink before:
The guy who lived in our apartment before us installed a soap dispenser. Because, when you have about 4 square inches of surface space in a bathroom, what you really want to do is use up half of it with an ugly soap dispenser. And then you want to make sure you never clean it so as to maximize the soap scum effect.



Pantry Before:



The before pictures were taken before we actually moved in, so they do not include the washer and dryer which didn’t technically fit in the pantry and were therefore awkwardly placed. So the pantry we were actually living with was, amazing as it is to believe, worse than indicated by the picture. I have attempted to demonstrate this in the following, digitally altered photo. It’s extremely high tech.



The washer and dryer were placed such that we could not access the last two cabinets in the pantry, because our washer and dryer are huge. But the washer generates its own electricity as it spins, so we will not hear a word against them. And no, we couldn’t place them side-by-side because the washer hookups were too far from the dryer plug, and it costs $400 to have an electrician move the dryer plug. There was no point at that time.

So. That was “Before.”

“During” is on the way.

Thank heavens it dried darker than it looked in the can

I have copied all the pictures we have so far of the Bathroom Remodel to my computer and I will start posting them soon as a way to keep you tantalized. We got the bathroom walls painted over the weekend and the light fixtures installed last night. The rest of the bathroom (and hopefully pantry) woodwork will be installed tonight and we’ll probably paint it over the weekend. We’ll spend the next three nights sealing the grout, and the plumbers are coming next Tuesday to do the finish work. Woo! (Aside: How pathetic am I that I just wrote the sentence, “We’ll spend the next three nights sealing the grout”? Homeownership: The glamour never ends.) So the bathroom half of the remodel should be done by next Tuesday evening. The pantry will take a bit longer, but at this point, I don’t care. So what if our cabinets are freestanding on the floor? We’ll be able to take showers!

But before I posted the pictures I felt I should warn you. The new bathroom walls are very… pink. A bit pinker than I really anticipated, to be perfectly honest. We love our shower curtain, which is blue with pink, yellow, and purple flowers, so we wanted the walls to complement it. Yellow, an obvious choice, was out because the kitchen is going to be yellow and that would have been too much yellow. Ditto on the purple, which is what we plan to paint our bedroom. That left blue or pink. We (OK, I) thought that because the base color of the curtain is blue, painting the walls blue would have been too much. So we were stuck with pink.

We tried to pick a subtle, salmon-y pink, and I think we were fairly successful, but, well, it’s just really pink in there. It’s a nice pink, but there is no escaping the pinkness.

It’s far too late to change it now, so we’re stuck with a pink bathroom at least until the rest of the apartment gets painted. I’m hoping that the shower curtain, when hung, will take the edge off the pink. The washer, dryer, vanity, and some stuff on the walls will help diffuse the color too. In the meantime, I just keep telling myself that it’s a nice pink.

It’s a nice pink. Really.

Confidential to The Doktah: Any cracks about the Easter Bunny living in our house will result in a beating being administered.

Week 14

Dear Bathroom Remodel,

I hate you. I really, really hate you.

Sincerely,
Mo

Wait, paint has to dry?

Man! Were we ever excited! The plumbers were scheduled to come on Monday which meant we could shower by Monday night. It meant the bathroom would be pretty much done save the inspections! Except, wait, the walls aren’t painted. And the woodwork is not yet all installed. And the grout has not yet been sealed. But no problem! We still have the weekend! We have time! Right?

Well, let’s see. We have to mud the walls one last time, and that takes 24 hours to dry. And although we can prime everything at once, primer takes 2 hours to dry. And we can’t paint the walls and ceiling at the same time because they are different colors and we will have to tape off the edges, so we’ll have to wait till the paint dries. And each coat of paint takes 2 hours to dry. And we don’t want the plumbers to be walking around in their dirty, filthy shoes before we can seal the grout against staining, and that needs three coats, which each take 3 hours to dry. And of course, we still need to install woodwork around the window and the molding on top of the baseboards. And then paint all the trim. Two coats, 2 hours to dry each.

So, let’s see. Today is Friday and the plumbers are supposed to come on Monday. The total number of hours we will have to wait around while stuff dries is… carry the 2…

Dammit.

Now, sure, we could paint the walls and install the rest of the molding after the plumbers come, but that would mean we’d have to move the vanity in and out of place in order to reach behind it. And sure, we could pull a Trading Spaces and stay up all night painting, but that’s not going to happen. It sounds like it would be more efficient, but it actually wouldn’t be because it’s not more efficient to have two overtired people, one of whom is 7 months pregnant, kill each other in a hysterical fight over the correct amount of texturizing sand to add to the ceiling paint.

If our birthing class hadn’t started last night, we could have mudded the walls already, but the Bathroom Remodel is not the only major life event going on right now. And if The Husband weren’t so incredibly lazy that he actually dared to take a night off from working on the Bathroom Remodel on Tuesday, we’d be a day ahead. I mean, who does he think he is? What, he’s too good to work 90 hours a week? While I nap?

Our only choice was to reschedule the plumbers. Sadly, they were booked until a week from Tuesday.

Well played, Bathroom Remodel. You win this time.

But we will triumph in the end.

Broken?

Speaking of washing machines, yesterday The Husband and I were at his parents’ house for a family birthday party. On Saturday, I suggested to The Husband that we plan to bring our laundry and do it while at the party. I like being able to do my own laundry and not take too much advantage of people’s generosity by just dropping the laundry off like a spoiled college student. The Husband agreed that this was a fine idea, and so yesterday morning we loaded the car with two laundry baskets and detergent and headed down to the In-Laws’.

Upon arrival, Father-In-Law was sitting on the porch. Now, we hadn’t warned them that we were bringing laundry, but I knew they wouldn’t mind. Still, we were there for a party, and although the party was very informal it felt a bit rude to come in with dirty laundry and I sheepishly said to Father-In-Law, “We brought laundry.”

“No problem,” he said. “We’ll just split it up.”

“Huh?” I thought to myself. “What does he mean, ‘split it up’?” Since I had no idea what that meant, I foolishly decided to ignore it. So after lunch, while people were generally milling around, I decided to toss in the first load of sheets and underwear. I couldn’t find the light switch for the laundry area, but Father-In-Law helpfully turned it on for me as I was loading the washing machine. I turned it on and went into the living room, secure in the knowledge that we would have clean sheets to sleep on that night.

About fifteen minutes later, Mother-In-Law came up to me and said, “Were you planning to do laundry?”

“I’m already doing it,” I told her.

“But the dryer is broken,” she said.

It seems that their dryer broke last week. The Husband knew, because Mother-In-Law called to ask him for the model number of our dryer. But The Husband never mentioned it to me, and then forgot. Mother-In-Law saw that we had brought laundry, but didn’t mention anything to me instead saying to Father-In-Law, “I hope they’re not planning to do that here since the dryer is broken.” Apparently, she didn’t think we really brought laundry since The Husband was well aware that the dryer was broken.

But what kills me is that Father-In-Law knew that the dryer was broken but didn’t say anything as I walked by him with my dirty laundry and then started the washing machine right in front of him! I still don’t really know what was going on in his head, there. I guess he assumed we really needed to get laundry done, and by “split it up” he meant that we would bring it somewhere else to dry. Which, ultimately, is what happened. Because instead of obnoxiously dropping off our laundry at my in-laws’ house, I had to send my brother-in-law back home to his house with my clean, wet laundry, some of which was underwear, to put in his dryer.

I swear, I’m trying not to take advantage of their generosity.

I am in love with the Tile Man

The floor! The tiles! They are installed!

This was the best Labor Day weekend ever. I got to go hang out at my parents’ house where my only chore was to wash and fold laundry while The Husband spent Saturday in the pantry and finished drywalling it. Then he made daily trips home to make sure the Tile Man could get in and work his magic, and The Husband used the time to finish up the electrical work and sand the new pantry walls. Meanwhile, I napped.

Listen, it’s very hard work to grow an entirely new person. It must be, because I have been exhausted. And I couldn’t be expected to stay at home with The Husband because the toilet had to be removed for three days until the grout set. You can’t ask a seven-month pregnant woman to spend a day in a house with no toilet.

And now I am home and the bathroom floor is installed and the shower tiles are set and THEY ARE SO BEAUTIFUL. OK, sure, yes, there’s still no bathroom sink, no shower head, and we can’t take a bath till tomorrow night to make sure the grout is completely set. But these are mere trifles. We are so close to being finished. We just have to prime and paint the walls, get the plumbing finished up and seal the grout. Then we can move back the washing machine and brush our teeth in the bathroom like normal people!

The Tile Man and I will be very happy here.

Tile Man

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.

We have an appointment with the tile guy for Friday. After he finishes, we’ll get to install the – gasp – bathroom sink! And the shower head! And the washing machine!

I will keep you posted.

Party time

When the bathroom remodel is finished, The Husband and I are going to host a series of dinner parties for our friends and family.

And we plan to server dinner in the bathroom.

And then you’ll need to schedule the rough wallpapering inspection…

So why is the bathroom remodel taking so long you ask? Well, first of all, we’re doing the work after work. So we only have a few hours a night. Second of all, our electrician works painfully slowly. Painfully. And lastly, we keep running into problems like our current one, where all work must halt until we can locate the special fire-resistant insulation the inspector told us to get.

See, when we scheduled the rough building inspection, the inspector mentioned that in order to pass the upcoming insulation inspection (which he refused to do at the same time as the rough building inspection), we would have to use a specific fire-resistant insulation around our new tub and inside the chase that runs through the pantry. He said it was called “Rock Wall” or something.

“OK, fine,” we thought, and The Husband went looking for it at Home Depot. But they didn’t have any. And no one there had heard of it. So he called around a bunch of hardware stores, and no one had ever heard of it. So he asked our carpenter, who had never heard of it. Our carpenter asked the other carpenters, contractors, and builders at his day job. No one had heard of it. The Husband resorted to the internet. And voila, he found it! There was just one tiny snag. The only supplier was located in Denmark.

So yesterday, The Husband called the inspector and asked him if he knew where to buy this special insulation. “I’m not going to have it shipped internationally,” he said. Now, you might expect city hall to have a list of suppliers of the special insulation that they require people to buy. Don’t be an idiot. The inspector had no idea where to find it. He ended up having to consult with the other city inspectors, and finally, with a team of 3 people searching for 6 hours, they were able to come up with one location in Massachusetts and one in New Hampshire which sell something acceptable.

So this morning, The Husband had to get up at the crack of dawn in order to have time to drive to New Hampshire and purchase the special insulation. He is going to try to get the inspector to come today and sign off on the insulation inspection before we actually install the fire-resistant stuff so that either tonight or tomorrow, we can insulate and finish putting up the ceiling and walls.

I’m sure it will be all downhill from there.

Oh, glorious day

Ladies and gentlemen of the internet, last night, The Husband hooked up The Dishwasher. And we ran a "load." (We only had about 5 dishes, but we were going to run the cycle no matter what.) This morning, there was a lot of, "I'm just going to put this dirty breakfast dish in the dishwasher," going on.

Maybe this whole remodeling thing wasn't such a bad idea after all.

Ten tips on remodeling a bathroom

1. Have you thought about just keeping the bathroom you already have? Is it really that bad?
2. If you insist on remodeling the bathroom, have an infinite supply of money so that you can hire people to do it for you while you vacation in Hawaii. If you do not have an infinite supply of money, see Tip #1.
3. As you have already heard from everyone else in the world, plan a budget and then double it.
4. Do the same thing to estimate how long it will take.
5. Unfortunately, you are still underestimating how long it will take. Yes, you’ve already calculated how long and then doubled it, but you’re still wrong. It will take longer than that. It will take longer than you can possibly imagine.
6. Copper wiring costs way more than you think. Probably 1000 time more. Copper wiring is probably the third most expensive item you have to buy, after the new tub and new vanity. And that’s assuming you don't skimp on the tub and vanity.
7. Try to only remodel bathrooms in houses built since 1980, as there will be no dreaded “knob and tube” wiring to update.
8. Avoid remodeling the bathroom while you or your wife is pregnant.
9. Avoid crashing your car while undergoing the bathroom remodel.
10. Consider just moving instead. Think about it.

Week 9

Dear Bathroom Remodel,

Ah, Bathroom Remodel. As The Husband and I enter our tenth week living with the chaos you have inflicted upon our lives, I find myself looking back with a knowing, condescending smile on the naïve optimism we displayed in June when this all started. Back then, we thought you would be finished by mid July, leaving us plenty of time and money to also replace the kitchen walls by August. I know. We were so cute.

Yes, we gave up on the pipe dream of new kitchen walls about a month ago. And I have to admit that it was a not insubstantial relief, as the thought of dragging out our construction-zone living for any stretch of time was making us feel almost physically ill. Because we are no longer naïve, Bathroom Remodel. For even though replacing the kitchen walls with help from our generous friends and family should, in theory, take only one or two weekends, we now know that theory is for suckers. We fully expect to find wiring that dates back to before electricity was discovered, and bringing it all up to code will take two months.

Yes, the electrical work has been our rate-limiting step, Bathroom Remodel. It was also the most frustrating of all to witness, because, even after hours of hard work by The Husband and the electrician, nothing ever seemed to change. Work was being done, but I couldn’t see it. Equally frustrating was the electrician’s hesitance to give any kind of estimate of how many more days the work would take. So we were just waiting in a sort of limbo until we heard the magical words, “We’re ready for the rough electrical inspection.”

And, oh! Bathroom Remodel! When the electrician spoke those words last week we nearly danced for joy. We scheduled the inspection for the following Wednesday, and as an added bonus, the inspector allowed us a variance on the bizarre requirement that any electrical fixture has to be at least eight feet away from the top of the tub. Eight feet is a very long distance, Bathroom Remodel. So long a distance that my father thinks it is a typo in the code. I know of a great many bathrooms, not even particularly small bathrooms, where such a requirement would prohibit any light fixture in the bathroom at all.

But we got the variance, the inspector cleared us for further work, and we were able to schedule the rough building inspection. We passed that as well, leaving only the rough insulation inspection keeping us from finishing the room. Yes, I said “insulation inspection.” Bureaucracy is a crazy thing, Bathroom Remodel.

Still, The Husband installed the controversial light fixture last Friday, and he and the carpenter put up the ceiling and the walls on Saturday. Walls, Bathroom Remodel! You have walls! That are solid! It was a red letter day for us all, Bathroom Remodel. And tonight, The Husband plans to hook up… The Dishwasher. Oh glorious, glorious day. (He would have hooked it up on Saturday, but it turns out dishwashers do not come with electrical cords. No one told us that. You just expect electrical appliance to come with cords.)

Soon, oh so tantalizingly soon, the pantry cabinets can be rehung and we will be able to clear the dining room table of the piles and piles of plates, bowls, and pans. Then the tile guy will work his magic, and the sink, the bathroom sink, can be installed. And the shower head! We’ll be able to shower!

As painful as this process was, the finished product, the completed Bathroom Remodel, will be worth it. And we’ll never have to do it again. You will be so beautiful, Bathroom Remodel. I may never leave the room.

An interesting result of a major home renovation project, Bathroom Remodel, is that the “To-Do” list of home renovations gets much shorter for two reasons. First, the completed renovation project gets crossed off the list. Second, two or three other planned renovations get crossed off the list because the homeowners have reevaluated their priorities. When we bought the house, we planned to finish the attic, Bathroom Remodel. Not so much anymore.

Because, if we did it right, we would have to install a second bathroom.

Solid cherry

So it turns out the “kitchenette” was not an island, but a set of counters appropriate for our pantry/sink area. The carpenter, upon seeing that we had already bought the Formica countertop and are using our old cabinets, cleverly resized to fit by The Husband (but it was totally my idea to cut the double cabinet unit in half so we could fit the dishwasher and maximize cabinet space), decided not to even bother showing us the picture of the kitchenette. Which is apparently made of solid cherry, so there is no way we’d be able to afford it. Do you have any idea how much solid cherry cabinets would cost? I’ll tell you how much. TOO MUCH. We once saw a tiny nightstand made of solid cherry for $600! On sale!

Still, I’m not knocking our carpenter, who is hardworking and fast and doing us a favor by working on our remodel. And also, he actually offered to give, not sell, us that piece of granite for our countertop, so he really is trying to help us out. But still. Solid cherry.