I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to have a working upstairs bathroom!

Well the shower still isn't working but that's okay for now. It's being worked on. Here are a few pictures of the upstairs bathroom. The sink and toilet are working. A mess still, yes, but I can work around it.

Dave insisted on the toilets that we installed - super water savers or something. I feel they were way overpriced and I don't particularly like the style for these baths but during a remodel you need to compromise so that's what we did.

The shower shows the plywood screwed up. That has since been overlayed with the Swanstone. We were petrified we might break it installing it but we didn't. It was a bear to install - very heavy.

This week we have been putting up cement board at the tops of the showers so that we can tile. We are planning the tiling for next weekend. Can't wait! Once the tiling is done we can get the plumber back to hook up the showers. What a grand day that will be!

More on the downstairs bath...

Here are a couple more pics of the bathroom vanity - installed. We still have to modify the drawers but have figured out a way to waste as little as possible. We are really happy with the way this turned out. It was a lot of work but we like that we could selvage an old piece of furniture AND get a unique vanity.

We also have an antique oak mirror that we will install over the sink.

The toilet seat is still not on yet - I'm not sure why, otherwise we would be using this bathroom as the water is connected.

New Website Launch!

It's official! My new website has been launched. Please take a look - you can link back here from the Blog link -

http://www.BetsyLewisWrites.com

You can also LIKE me on Facebook (Twitter will come a little later). (FB=Betsy Alderman Lewis)

Summer!

It's been a really hot summer and a lot has been going on.

I've said this before and I'll say it again - during a remodeling project like this, life often takes priority and this summer has been no exception.

I am sorry to say that my beautiful mother passed away on July 17, 2012 after a valiant battle with breast cancer. She was the strongest, bravest person I have ever met. May you rest in peace, mom. I will love you forever.

About the same time my mom went into hospice we moved my dad into a dementia care unit at the Canandaigua VA Medical Center. He is being well cared for and I see him regularly. That being said, a couple of nights ago he fell and broke his hip. He also has pneumonia. We expect he will have surgery in the next few days. I also have great love for my father.

I have several pics and comments to post about our remodel and, well, I will get to them as soon as I can.

Steady She Goes 2!


There is such a difference in the height of the floor that we have to shim some of the feet of the dresser. Yup. Three of the four feet needed shims and they are different heights, too. We are staining them to match the dresser pretty well. 


In this picture you can get an idea of the difference in height by the shims that have been glued to the bottom of the feet. These have not yet been stained.

Steady She Goes!

The original oak dresser, at one time, had casters on the legs. The remains of those were still there. There were little round metal holders for the casters on the feet of the dresser. 


As stated in another post, the bathroom floor has about a two inch differentiation in heights from one end to the other, which makes for an uneven vanity. 


The first thing Dave did was plugged the holes in the feet of the dresser with doweling. That's done and the doweling has been trimmed even with the feet. He is also going to put feet into these dowels. I'm not sure why we can't just have the feet on the floor as they are, but I'm not the boss in this department so I'll let him run that show.


Here's what this looks like right now.

Why Can't It Just Work the First Time???

So here we go again...

I loved how the finish on the modified oak dresser looked after I put it on and how good it was going to look as our downstairs bath vanity. Not only that, I was thrilled that it was one more job that was getting completed.

Everything was going along according to plan but then...

Dave attempted to install the backsplash and when he removed some blue, low-stick masking tape from it, the entire finish came off! 

Before I began the finish on the top of the vanity, we cleaned it well and believed there was NO wax on the surface. I guess we were wrong. 

So, Dave sanded down the entire surface and now we have a clean top to work with - again.

Here's what it looks like now. We decided to get it installed and then I'll work on the finish again.