More work

It's the end of 2007. Deb and I have been in the condo for 9 months now. And although it's been livable for that time, it's never been perfectly organized or tidy. It still isn't, really. But it's better. We spent today doing our normal chores of cleaning and during that time, something happened. We finally started going through some of the things that have been sitting there staring at us saying "WTF man, do something with me" I think I threw out (donated to Salvation Army) half my clothes. Our closet has been optimized (the best it can) so we finally have a linen closet. The bedroom now has room all the way around the bed to walk. All our crap we had in the corner of the living room is now stored (though I still need a big tool chest for all my tools... Xmas 2008?). Later, Deb is going to organize our desk. She has the day off tomorrow, so I'm making her do it. Yay!

Motivation

I haven't done much since the bathroom... and that's an understatement. We have a lot that needs to be done, but finding the motivation to do it is pretty difficult. I'm lazy by nature, so that's a big factor. I'd rather get comfortable on the couch and watch TV or some DVDs then do physical work. But it needs to get done. I still have a lot of patching up to do on the walls, and sanding, priming and then eventually... painting. Our main hallway closet needs to be rebuilt since it's a complete waste of space right now and the "shelves" that are in there are all falling apart. We still don't know how we're going to go about doing this, since the back wall is just drywall glued to concrete. Nothing to screw into.

We still have to order a vanity for the bathroom, as well as the countertop and sink etc etc. Until I do this, I can't remove the old vanity, which means I also can't install the new floor tiles. We're probably looking at February for the vanity, since it's not a cheap thing to do.

Anyone want to do the work for me? :P

Updates

Since my last post we haven't done a WHOLE lot. But we've done a couple things here and there.

-I got quotes for cabinets and a countertop for the bathroom
-I patched all the holes in the drywall in the bathroom
-I patched some of the drywall damage in the main hall that I didn't do last time

I think that's really about it. I'll probably finish off the drywall patching this weekend and get a coat of primer up.

Like, finished and stuff

The tile's been finished... for the most part anyways. I still have to put in some tiny slivers at the top and the part next to the tub behind the toilet.

Pictures:

Almost there!

So It's taken a lot longer than I had hoped, but we're finally nearing the end of the shower reno. All the tiles are in (with the exception of some tiny slivers of tile I need at the top, and a portion on the side at the bottom) and we're ready to start grouting. My fingers are killing me and my ass cheeks are sore from sitting on the edge of the tub. But it's all worth it. the shower looks awesome. Here's some photos:

Before:


After:

Slow Progress

We finally have all the walls down. As expected, I found mold. Not as much as I thought there'd be, but it's there. It was on the side of the shower with the concrete, and we have steel studs in the other walls, so there's no studs that are rotted. All we have to do is clean it up and we're back in business. Things have gone slowly because we had no work happening on sunday and I had to work only half a day yesterday, but we're still ok to finish before I go back to work next monday. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment:

It begins

So today I was supposed to rip down all the walls and have the plumber install the new valve. Well... not quite what happened. It turns out walls that have been tiled can be a bit tough to take down when there's a stud every 10 inches. I took down only the wall with the plumbing today. So I'm a little behind schedule. Oh well.

Tomorrow is Sunday. I can't do demo work on sunday. Why? Cus my strata is retarded and forbids renovations on sundays and holidays. I'd rather not get a fine, so instead the Deb and I are going to take a quick day trip down to Seattle. Hopefully it's a nice day. We're going to continue with the demo on monday and the big wall being concrete, I'm in for some fun. Not to mention I have a job interview at 3pm on Monday. I think we'll take a little longer to do this than I had hoped.

Here's a "during" picture:

1 more sleep

tomorrow's the big day. bye bye 1970s bathroom

Tiling the bathroom

So we're gearing up to tear out the old tub and tiles and redo it all. Problem: someone broke my glasses and now we're really tight on cash to do it in our original timeframe. Hopefully we can still afford to get it down the week of September 15, but if not we have to wait till October 15 (stupid extra mortgage payment!)

Anyway, we have to pull the tub because it's chipped, worn, and has tiles set on it's base(don't ask.)I looked into reglazing the tub, but it's not worth the money... it lasts for like 5 years and it's very high maintenance. So, new tub it is. The plan is this:

Remove toilet (it's in the way)
Remove old tile and drywall around tub
Have plumber remove old tub and install new one
Install Hardibacker around tub
Install Kerdi waterproof membrane
Lay 4 courses of 4x16 white glazed ceramic tiles (starting from the bottom) in running bond (brick) pattern
Lay 2 courses of 1x1 glass mosaics
Lay 1 course of 4x16 tile
Lay 1 more course of 1x1 glass tile
Continue laying 4x16 tile up to the ceiling
Grout

The floor will be done like so:

Rip up old tile
Rip up parquet floor that is under this tile (and rotten)
Scrape up glue and prep floor for thinset adhesion
Install Ditra mat on floor
Install 12x24 porcelain tile in that same sexy brick pattern.
Grout-a-tout-tout

Unfortunately, vanities are hella pricey. With that in mind, we've decided to do the room in 2 stages. stage 1 is noted above. Stage 2 will be:

Remove old vanity
Install ditra and tiles on remaining floor that the old vanity covered
Install new vanity (it will be a floating vanity, sitting 9 inches above the floor (hence tiling under it)
Install new countertop.
Tile the wall behind the vanity with 1x1 multi coloured glass mosaic (used as accent in shower)
install sink and faucet.

We can't wait to get this project started (and promptly finished)

New Title!

I have given the blog a new title. It is now "That 70s Condo." I got the name from my brother, who likes to make fun of the fact that my condo is so 70s.

More progress

Well, we got the doors delivered and one of them is now painted and installed. The other one is a bit of an annoying story. As with almost every renovation I've ever heard of, we had a glitch. I order the doors primed and machined to my specs. This way I didn't have to mess with buying new tools and finding a workspace to do everything. So the doors arrive and the bathroom door is next to perfect. I had to trim a little bit to fit the hinges, but otherwise a perfect fit. I painted it and installed it and it was damn sexy. The bedroom door, however, was NOT perfect. I took a look and realized the door would open the wrong way. It was machined wrong. BASTARDS! So I called the store where I got the doors and told them what happened. They replaced the door pretty quick, but since they only deliver during the day on weekdays I had to figure out how to receive them, since I'm usually at work during the day. Luckily I had a day where I had to go to our Surrey office, so I stopped at home on my way there and received the door. The new door is right, so all I have to do is paint it and install it and we're good to go!

I also painted the front door with i think like 4 coats of paint. For some reason the door looks yellowish and the door casing is white... it's annoying. I friggin' primed the thing so this wouldn't happen, and it happens anyway! oh well, still looks better than the fake wood grain crap.

Last weekend we purchased the tile for the bathroom floor and tub walls. For the floor we got a nice 12x24 grey porcelain tile. It sort of looks like slate, but it's more uniform in colour and the surface is flatter. For the tub walls we got a 4x16 white glazed ceramic tile. We'll be laying this in a brick pattern and it should look very nice. We still need to pick up the tile for behind the vanity. We're going to be tiling the wall that the mirror hangs on with multi-shade glass mosaic tiles. it's going to look swanky.

I'll post pictures of the doors and tiles to the gallery later.

Progress!

So Deb and I took this week off from work to do some work on the condo. Originally we were going to do the bathroom, but I blew the budget for that by buying the doors first etc etc. So instead we decided to tackle the hideous situation with the walls.

Ever since we bought the condo, we've had a few walls that looked like someone had been gnawing at them. They were in rough shape because they had 3 layers of wallpaper on them and that stuff was a bitch to remove. There was still remnants of this paper up until yesterday. Deb took care of washing the walls with TSP and scraping the paper bits while I patched up the walls with drywall compound. After that I went at it with the sandscreen (I bought a vacuum-pole sander... what a great decision that was!) and then primed the walls that had been patched. To say it's an improvement is an understatement! We still have 2 more walls left, but we're getting there.

The other thing we did this week was tear out the old closet "system" we had in the bedroom. It was made with old particle board that has since warped and is not really good for holding anything heavy. So we tore that garbage out, patched, primed and painted the walls and tomorrow morning we're installing the Rubbermaid Configurations closet system. It's not the fanciest system, but it's a HUGE improvement and it'll organize the closet better.

^^^^^ OLD!^^^^^



NEW--------->


We also primed the front door so we can paint it up when we figure out what our colours are going to be. The wood grain look is ugly.



We get our new bedroom and bathroom doors delivered tomorrow, so I'll post pics of those when we get them.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the progress we've been making this week.

There are more pics at our Picasa photo gallery

June 12, 2007

This is the blog that will chronicle our condo renovation.

More on that later.