Grout sealing / more tiling

Didn’t have much time to do anything this weekend. We are house/dog-sitting this week, plus I got a phone call on Saturday that my grandfather was in the hospital, so we went to visit him at South Shore hospital.

Here’s what I did do:

-spent $30 at Home Depot on trash bags and grout sealer

-spent another $66 at Lowe’s (used store credit, though) on: a drop cloth, a drywall trowel, a drywall hawk, a spiral mud mixer, and primer

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$7356.42 is the new total.

On Saturday I had time to start laying down hardiebacker in the kitchen for the tile that will go in there, and I also sealed the grout in the bathroom with spray-on grout sealer.

Now the grout is (hopefully) sealed against moisture and stains.

Today, I screwed down Hardie Backer in the kitchen so that I can start tiling this week. Despite how many times Adam has showed me how to use the drill, I managed to break 3 Phillips head high-compression driver bits, which is, apparently, quite a feat. 

Then I did some raking (our lawn has a pine needle infestation), and then went to Ikea because they were having a sale today. I bought a bed frame with built-in drawers for bonus storage, and I also got two large curtains for the front window for $8 in the “As-Is” section. It’s my first time owning a bed with a frame, so, that’s cool I guess. Ikea was packed with screaming children and slow-moving aisle-blocking-people though. Remind me not to go there on a weekend ever again.

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.