In Which We Plumb (a little)

We celebrated our return from vacation by finally installing our new vanity top in the master bath. You'll recollect that we had torn out the old counter (at great personal risk) a couple of entries ago.


There was a little lull between destruction and construction, but this evening we got after it. Since our vanity (big shocker) is a non-standard size, we had to order a custom top. The cheapest custom top was cultured marble, so that's what we got. It's not corian or granite, but I think it looks rather nice.

We also took the opportunity to replace the faucet, which was charmless and worn, with something new, gleaming, and stylish. We got a Price Pfister--ooo-la-la! In the grand scheme of all things faucetty, it's pretty chintzy (apparently, patrician types think nothing of shelling out upwards of $350 for a simple faucet), but by my standards it's all sleek and stylish, with its demode brushed nickle finish.

In any event, here the shiny new prettiness is. In the picture below, Matt's smearing the silicone caulk into any crannies. (Interesting side note: silicone caulking is the gooiest, stickiest, messiest caulk I've ever encountered--it's so oozy, yet adhesive. Yech.) Much remains to be done in the bathroom, but it's mostly a bunch of cosmetic stuff.


Progress continues to be made, comrades!

Blood & Gore

We work and work...what does this house want from us? Blood?

Actually...

That's real blood! Not paint! Ow!

It turns out (Mom & Dad, you probably shouldn't read this bit--skip ahead to the next picture), flying tile shrapnel is sharp!

Our new countertop came in ahead of schedule, so replacing the tile hideousness in the bathroom got bumped up on our priority list.

We had researched the subject online and in our various home repair books and were ready to go to town. However, none of them mentioned anything about safety goggles or closed-toe shoes. I suddenly have a whole new appreciation for Common Sense Warnings (à la "Drano is not intended to be applied internally--do not drink!")

Anyhoo. For all you DIYers out there, when demolishing a tile counter, proper safety precautions are recommended.

The counter that was

Step 1 in Hideous Tile Counter Removal is to pry up the metal thingy holding in the sink. (Actually, Step 1 is to disconnect the sink & faucet. Then pry up the metal rim. It's important to do this in the right order.) You need a hammer and a chiselly sort of a tool. Matt had what I think was probably a proper chisel. I had a very hefty flathead screwdriver.

FYI, the red stuff in the sink is not blood. The house was contented with a token (hah! get it? toe-kin!) sacrifice on my part. One reason not to paint your bathroom red is that the stuff gets everywhere.

Very satisfying. Sink all gone.

Step 3 is to chisel up all the tile that is holding the counter on--the edges, the perimeter, and the first row of the backsplash. This is the perilous part. The tile resists, resists, resists, EXPLODES. And tile shards go flying.

Here I am, chiseling away

Matt, making swift progress.

Funny illustration of our different working styles. So, we had removed all the tiles from the perimeter, so nothing was holding the counter to the walls. But then we were kind of stumped as to what to do next. We had a crowbar (love that crowbar, by the way--what a great tool! Hats off to the caveman/woman who invented it), but we couldn't seem to wedge it anywhere. So we decided to kind of loosen things up by banging on the underside of the counter with a hammer. When it became clear that loosening had been accomplished, I started jimmying around with the crowbar and saying, "Okay, you bang with the hammer to my right, and while you do that, I'll lever the crowbar--"

And Matt reached over and yanked up the whole counter top. He don' need no stinkin' crowbar.

Matt manhandles the counter

Et voilà! No more hideous counter. (We still have a hideous backsplash, but we're planning to paint that.) The whole project was surprisingly easy, if messy. Except for unscrewing the sink--that was a pain. Otherwise, not too bad.

Mission accomplished

We have to move the outlet, get some liquid nails, and buy the new faucet before attaching the counter--an adventure for another day.

Still, good work was done here today.

Memorial Day Weekend

Matt & I had a busy Memorial Day weekend. We finally tackled some of those tiresome, awkward sorts of tasks we've been putting off for a while. We rolled the master bath walls for the third (and final) time, primed the trim, and painted it. We painted the interior of that cabinet I had forgotten to paint. And we also opted to paint the miserable wall linoleum to match the trim. Not sure if it's a viable long-term solution, but it'll do for now.

Freshly painted master bath

In the living room, we (mostly Matt) finished off the edges of the bamboo floors and installed quarter round. On a purely cosmetic level, we brought in a palm and hung the Mexican star Matt gave me years ago when we were living in that weency little apartment in South Austin. Those small changes really make a difference in pulling the scale of the room together, I think.

The living room, embellished

Needless to say, much remains to be done. We ordered a countertop for the bathroom, which should arrive in 3 weeks' time--we'll have to uninstall the old and put in the new, along with its new sink and a faucet. Matt needs to reinstall the toilet, left off by the tile guys. We need to paint the tub and surround with that epoxy finish. We need to buy a new mirror and a new light fixture. And, of course, I need to make the valance, with Ladonna's help. In the long run, a new shower curtain may be in order, as well. However, the paint and the tile were a huge step, and we're able to go back to using the tub qua tub. ("Qua"?!? I must be feeling nostalgic for academia. "Qua" is one of those pointlessly jargony words I once promised myself never to use. Eh well. Perhaps if I apply a metric I could leverage my vocabulary using measurable benchmarks to maximize productivity. Yech. I'm in a whole new world of jargon in the private sector.)

In the living room, we need to do substantial touch-ups to the baseboards and quarter-round and finish hanging the chain for the Mexican star (we ran into difficulties with an insufficiently manly ceiling hook). And, of course, procure some window treatments not held on with tape. The remaining projects in there are long term: make some drapes, re-cover the ottoman with the drapes from the old house, frame some prints, and either buy a sofa cover or a new sofa altogether, budget allowing.

New baseboards for the kitchen and dining room are probably our next big weekend project. Since our walls aren't actually attached to the floor, the absence of baseboards means that any and all creepy crawlies can stroll into our house at will. Mr. Gorbachev, build up that wall! Doing so will almost certainly compel us to get the furniture into a stable configuration, a project with a whole list of sub-tasks unto itself (move Matt's computer, drill a hole through the wall to route the phone connection from the dining room into the study, clean out the wetbar cabinet, move the unhinged study door that's been sheltering inexplicably in the dining room for weeks, &c., &c...). Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting that room somewhat tamed.

Continued Gussying

Master bedroom

We haven't done anything really big lately, just shuffled our possessions around from one room to the next. Oh, and we've hung most of our pictures, which marks a definite commitment toward a permanent arrangement. Matt's been attacking the chinaberry corpse with a chainsaw. It's a shame it's nearly summer--we now have tons of firewood for our little metal fire pit.

It's interesting how our furniture fits in some rooms and not in others. Although the master bed and study are nowhere near finished, you can tell that in the long run, they'll make sense. I mean, none of the furniture matches any other pieces of furniture, but in a slapdash kind of way those rooms looks like they will hang together. Or that's what I think anyway.

Study--the bigger part. The study is shaped like an "L"--this bit is the long downstroke.

I'm not so sure about the living room. We have so much more wall now than we've ever had. Even after we've put up pictures, there are still these vast deserts of emptiness. I do have some boxes of small framed photographs--I'm hoping clusters of those will help somewhat. And then at a later date I'll be putting in long curtains, which may help to tie the top and bottom of the rooms together a little better. A potted tree here and there might make a differnce. But at the moment the room remains a bit of a question mark. The furniture looks sort of lost and forlorn. So much so, that I never sit in there any more. Now I do all my living in the master bed--it feels so much cozier.

Giant empty expanses

Sad little huddle of furniture in the living room

I don't know--what do you think? Do I need a rug? An armoire? A whole bunch more framed pictures? Whatever it is, it can wait a bit--we have everything we need for our day-to-day living, and when we entertain--which is rarely--we can probably just use the dining room.

The dining room is in an intermediate state--it had previously been colonized as a sort of makeshift study, but now that is being dismantled and the whole thing is getting a new personality--half sitting area, half dedicated dining area (something we've never had before). I'm not sure how it's all going to work out, but as there is a squishy chair in the mix, I think it will all be okay.

We've also been working on procuring the necessaries to re-work the obstreperous master bath. We were planning to tear out the beat-up old tub and replace it with a bigger, newer tub (extra deep for our bubble-bathing pleasure!). But when we started tapping on the tubs in our price range at Lowe's, they were all dinky and plasticky sounding. And when we told the tub guy that we were planning to replace it ourselves, he started talking about soldering pipes and setting the tub in sand, and other intimidating things. So now we've rather lost confidence. We're not sure whether to replace the tub with... something or just coat it in epoxy.

So we're shelving that problem for a while, and are focusing instead on replacing the countertop and sink. Naturally, our vanity is an abnormal length, so we're going to have to special order the rotten thing. Finding a person at either L's or HD who has the authority to help us with this problem has been surprisingly difficult--either they're busy, absent, or too snitty to give intelligent help. Aggravating.

So the poor bathroom is in hiatus. Which it's probably grown accustomed to, by now.

Update on the hideous Buick (or whatever it is) in our yard: Matt waited till the car was gone and piled little rock cairns in a row where the Buick used to park (leaving, I might add, huge permanent ruts). For a day or two, it looked like the message had been received. But then he just moved further up our yard (nearer to the intersection with Ave F), where he is no doubt wearing a brand new set of ruts. I ask you--who does this sort of thing? Would you take up permanent residence in someone else's yard without so much as a by your leave? If he stays there much longer, he's going to have squatter's rights to the outer 6 feet of our property, the brazen hussy. The Battle of the Buick continues...