Here you see my bathroom; the really hard part (removing the old tile and
mortar) has already been done at this point. That was the part that took
the year; what you see here took about a week and a half, only because I
had a friend visit while I was working on it - and I was working :) Note
for the future: when the people at the hardware store say "hammer and
chisel" what they really mean is "hammer drill and chisel bit".
You can still see a little bit of dust on the door from when I got tired
of dealing with my bathroom and sanded all the mortar off the floor. The
green is water-resistant wallboard, designed for bathrooms. It's really
more mildew-resistant than water-resistant, but don't tell anyone.... the
entire wall around my old cabinet had to be replaced; I was a bit
exubrant in removing it :) Additionally I created a *lot* of water damage
while trying to get the water cutoff valves entirely off. If you look
closely (below) you'll notice that the water cutoff valves are new quarter-turn
models, installed by your truly.
Right before I decided to redo the bathroom entirely I added sound
hookups to it, so now I can sing in the shower without having to have
wires running everywhere, waiting to short out. You can see the
quarter-turn valves better here, too. And for all the electricians out
there, the outlet you see comes straight out of the GFCI-protected outlet
above the counter, so it's GFCI protected too.
As you can see, this was an interesting time at work. I came in at 8am
every day and also showed up at odd times on weekends :)
Putting the tiles in; I did all the tiles I could do without a tile saw
(which turned out to be a lot less than I thought I could do :-)) before
borrowing one from my friend Lorraine. Having a tile saw is a very, very
good thing.....
Here I've put the bathroom back together temporarily for the weekend as
my friend Dez came to visit, and I figured he'd appreciate having a
toilet to use :) It was temporary, though, as I still had to lay the
grout down and give it time to cure before finishing completely.
Ah, finally - the grout is down, and a coat of sealant is slowly seeping
in.... life is about to be much happier around the cosby household :-)
And here it is, phase 1, part 1 is finished. Phase 1, part 2 (replacing
the toilet) is scheduled for Novemeber, when the city begins offering
rebates on 1.6gpf toilets again.
Phase 2 is replacing the shower hardware so that people no longer have to
ask me for help to take a shower in my house :-) I'm not sure when
that'll be scheduled for, since it'll require learning how to lay tile on
a vertical surface :-) and also finding a shower kit that I like (I'm
looking for one where you can turn the water off and keep the temperature
setting).
