How to tile when you’re a helpless female

Major accomplishment this week: I tiled!

With Adam’s patient hand-holding (he’s still out of commission with a work-related injury), I tiled and grouted the bathroom. It is completely amazing if I do say so, but honestly all the credit goes to Adam’s experience! He learned how to do all kinds of impressive stuff as a young lad in Minnesota, including how to survive in the woods for a week with only a knife and a metal match, how to raise ducks, how to drive a four-horse-drawn wagon, how to legpress slabs of silestone, and, of course, tiling (which is obviously the least impressive of his skills).

So, this is how you tile (and if I can do it, anyone can do it!):

1. First, I ripped out the ugly linoleum floor.

2. Then I screwed down Hardie Backer to the subfloor. Hardie Backer is a cement board that helps stabilize the tiles so they don’t crack. We were lucky that the floors were nice and level. If the floor wasn’t level, we would have had to use self-leveling concrete as a base instead of Hardie Backer. Hardie Backer is also good because it resists moisture (important in a bathroom!).

3. Then I laid out all the tiles, and Adam cut the ones that needed to be resized with a wet saw. Also, I made sure the floor was swept clean so the mortar would stick.

4. Then I applied mortar with a notched trowel (we used a 1/4” one because the tiles were 12 x 12) and laid the tiles down as I went. I used little plastic jack-shaped things to make the spaces even (1/4”).

5. After all the tiles were down, the mortar had to cure for a couple days.

6. After that, I ground down any uneven spots in between the tiles with a blade. I mixed up some grout, and spread it all over the tiles.

7. After waiting ten minutes or so, I scrubbed the grout off the surface of the tiles with a sponge and water. I had to do this three or four times, and the last couple of times, I mixed in some stuff that’s supposed to help remove grout haze.

8. Then I let the grout dry overnight, washed it down twice more, and voila, a tiled floor!

Inspector Mully checks things out

Come on, how cool is that? And what a huge improvement to the aesthetics of the house.

The rest of today was occupied with the following:

-lugging the dirt out of the basement that was a result of deepening the sump pump hole

-finishing painting the bathroom doors

-raking the yard

-replacing the sheetrock we had to cut out of the bathroom walls:

-my dad did lots of plumbing (more on that in a second)

-and, lots of playing with Mulligan:

As far as the plumbing: my dad is kind enough to redo all of our plumbing since a lot of the pipes were very corroded. Unfortunately, after an entire day of plumbing work, he discovered that several of the copper Shark Bite clinchers were defective, and whenever the water is turned on, it rains in the basement. Not good at all.

Big bummer. It all has to be redone.

Expenses:

-a tank bolt kit for fixing our toilet, another 4 sheets of Hardie Backer, a doormat (!!!) = $49.73

-returned tank bolt kit= –$4.45

-wax gasket for bottom of toilet $2.09

-(not adding these items since I paid with store credit for the dehumidifier I returned, but I’ll list them) 26 oz grout admix, grout haze remover, a ShopVac, and 25# of Smoke Grey grout= $71.98 (got $10 off with a coupon I had, score!)

Total $$$ spent so far on renovating: $7326.42

Could have gotten a nice truck and horse trailer with living quarters instead!

Bedroom completion, and bathroom beginnings

Well, hello, my faithful blogfriends! Here are some photos of my beautiful freshly-painted, recently-carpeted, and newly-window-shaded bedrooms to reward you for clicking over to my page:

This past weekend was spent working on the bathroom (click here to see “before” photos).

First we ripped up the linoleum floor.

Then we ripped out the ugly vanity.

I had to scrub all the mold off the wall that had grown behind the old vanity.

Then, when we took off the trim along the floor, we realized the sheetrock was moldy and disintegrating, so we had to cut out 16” of sheetrock from the floor up.

Oh yeah, and we pulled out the toilet:

Ummmm, yeah.

I also painted the bathroom doors. They were heinous. This is the before:

I painted them all white, but don’t have any after pictures. I’m a bad blogger.

This is what happens to bad vanities, by the way, so all you vanities best be behavin’:

My dad and stepmom did some yard work:

And here is the bathroom, swept and eagerly awaiting tiles to call its own:

I also put a second coat of paint on the kitchen walls, and that was pretty much it for the weekend. Le sigh.

Stuff I’ve bought this week:

-a level, kneepads, 5 gallon Lowe’s bucket, cement board, chalk reel marker, speedlite, steel square, chisel set: $83.93

-cement board tape, dovetail saw: $24.94

-dehumidifier $152.98 (had a Bed Bath and Beyond coupon…returned the first dehumidifier we got, but, they gave me store credit so I can’t deduct it from my expenses since it’s not real money back)

-we returned $70 of ThinSet mortar, so durovent, versabond, stainblock, 2- 25 lb bags of grout, mixer, sponge, tile spacers, board knife, and grout saw cost me $36.56

-a sheet of green board, a leaf rake, and a box of drywall screws ($30 of stuff, but won’t add it since we used Lowe’s store credit from returning the dehumidifier)

Soooo, add that to the $50 for carpet tacks and I have myself a merry little $7279.05 to cry myself to sleep over. Oh, homeownership.

Bathroom vanities are a source of stress

Saturday was painfully unproductive.

We purchased a beautiful bathroom set on craigslist. It included the cabinet, a corian countertop, a sink, faucet, 2 towel racks and a toilet paper holder, and a mirror medicine cabinet with four sconces. The people told us the measurements, and we didn’t think to doublecheck them, since it looked right. Then we got it all the way home, after helping the people detach it from their plumbing and electricity, and it didn’t fit in our bathroom! Waaahhhhh! Luckily, the people were super cool about it and came back and got it today and gave us our money back—wow! There are nice people in the world.

This is what the vanity looked like…I was sad to see it go because it was sooo nice:

After the whole bathroom vanity debacle, I had to go pick up some couches down the Cape. By the time I was done with that, it was early evening. I put the first coat of paint on the kitchen and called it a night.

The color is Sherwin Williams’ Sprout. It’s hard to see in the picture, but it’s a pale green color. I love it.

So that was all I accomplished 0n Saturday, aside from wasting a half tank of gas running around all day…ugggggh.

Today we spent a long time shopping at Home Depot.

I got:

-a ceiling fan to replace the one I broke

-underlay for pergo flooring

-pergo flooring for living room and hallway

-handrails for the stairway

-DWV pipe

-tile for the kitchen

-Thinset (for tiling, but we’re returning it and doing it a different way)

-mortar

-fittings

-PVC bushings

-Rock on 800 (don’t remember what that is)

-Trowel for tiling

All of this cost me $605.36.

After I was done spending a boatload of money, we went back to the house and did some things.

My dad did some yardwork, aka playing with his chainsaw:

The yard is seriously overgrown, and needs major landscaping before it’ll stop looking like Pinkeye Village.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon digging a trench to put a drainpipe in for the sump pump:

After that, Adam took a ride with me to Plymouth to pick up another vanity I’d found on craigslist. We ended up getting it for $50, which was $200 cheaper than the first one that was too big. Plus the people threw in a medicine cabinet with mirrors and lights, two faucets, and two barstools! Not a bad deal for $50, and the people were really cool—they knew some of my coworkers—it’s a small Plymouth after all! Here is the cell phone picture of the new cabinet and sink:

Also, the carpet was delivered on Friday, and that is going to be $400 including the installation. It is getting installed tomorrow. Thank you, Carpets Plus!

So, all of this, plus roughly the $30 I spent on gas with all the running around I did, plus the $1200 I had to pay the contractor that my dad hired, I have now sunk $6930.64 into fixing up this house on top of what I paid for it. Fun times.

Yet more painting, and starting on the bathroom

So much has gotten done this week!

Let’s hit the ground running with some photos:

The interior window/breakfast bar is done being sheetrocked:

Looks sweet, amirite?

The master bedroom is done being painted. The color is a peach-y color; it’s Sherwin Williams Captivating Cream. It’s very warm and inviting without being loud.

The “office” room is also complete. We were a bit worried about the color at first. Either it was mixed incorrectly, or I underestimated the color on the chip. When it went on the wall, it looked like day-glo green—VERY neon. But now that the paint has dried, I kind of like it. It’s called Sherwin Williams Springtime, and it definitely evokes feelings of springtime (aided by the fact that frozen New England has been thawing out as of late!).

I spent today painting the closets of the bedrooms:

And, the “coat closet”:

(Coat closet is in quotes because we’re not quite sure what to do with this little nook in the hallway)

I spent the rest of the afternoon priming the ceiling and walls of the bathroom.

Here are the “before” photos:

And here it is primed:

The wine/burgundy/mauve/maroon/whatever color simply had to go. It was much too dark and gloomy for a such a small room without much natural light. I’m looking forward to seeing the bathroom completed. If all goes as planned, I will get some actual paint on the walls in there tomorrow.

In other news, we have another bar in the basement! So, you know, if we get tired of one bar, we can go to the other? Yeeeeah. Here it is:

Expenses:

-$10.89 for EZ Sand = $4645.28 spent thus far

Without consulting me or getting a quote, my dad also hired a contractor to mud and tape our ceilings. Everything looks good, but the bill was $1200. aka more than I make in a month. So I’m not going to include that in the expenses yet because I don’t know how I’m going to pay the guy!!! Ahhh!

No work accomplished today (Sunday) because I have been feeling under the weather all day, which is EXTREMELY frustrating. I can’t stand wasting an entire weekend day. I would have liked to ride my horse on this beautiful day too, but what can you do…