Powder Room Day 4: Grouting

Although the wall tile is not complete and can’t be until that damn sink is installed, I went ahead and grouted both the wall and the floor. I figure that I might as well get as much work done as I can, even if I have to repeat steps later on. At least then those steps will be on a much smaller scale. Does that make sense? More repetition but less work each time?

Both the wall and floor are the same medium gray colour grout. Grouting is a fun task, although there are lots of steps, what with putting on the grout, waiting, wiping the grout, waiting, and then finally buffing.

Lastly, I put a coat of paint on the ceiling, same white as the walls will be and that’s on the upper cabinets in the kitchen.

And now we know: As a cost saving measure I went against general instructions and used un-sanded grout on the floor aswell as the wall. The joints are thin and it would have been an extra $25 just to use a tiny bit of the bag of grout. There was some slight cracking in the joint near the door, so once it dried I went over it again with grout to fill it in a bit more and it hasn’t cracked again. Fingers crossed!

Powder Room Day 3: More Tiling

One of the things that bothered me most about the powder room was the crappy drywalling job that was done. At the corners you could see the tape used and there were lines in the mud from sanding or something. I started skim coating them today.

Following the mudding, I went back to tiling. The tile saw got a serious workout; I cut what felt like a million of the wall tiles into small pieces to fill in the gaps along the wall. When the tiles are already only about 2x1”, its pretty nerve racking to try and get then only ½” wide, you have to put your hand alarmingly close to the saw blade. At the top, along the ceiling, I had to cut a row of tiles on an angle to fill in the space. Surprise, surprise, the ceiling is on a rather noticeable angle in this room. 

The floor tile got finished, with the last 2 tiles at the entrance adhesived in place. 

Along the doorway, I used a metal transition strip to create a clean line. It’s a neat item; the strip is laid under the tile, so the adhesive secure it in place, and creates a metal angle along the edge of the tile. I think it looks really polished. 

And now we know: you can buy some higher end and some lower end transition strips and they make a big difference in the finished look of your project. I ended up buying 5 different types to see what would work best and returned the rest.

Powder Room Day 2: Tiling

While the guys worked on installing new windows on the front of our house, I started re-building the powder room. First thing I test fit the vanity, in order to do so I had to remove the door trim on that side, it fits very tightly in the space and doesn't even need screws to stay in place. After discovering there are no studs in that part of the room, I drilled pilot holes for the screws that would hold it up and removed it until I could get proper anchors.

Next I laid out the floor tiles and cut any that needed to be. One trip to Canadian Tire for anchors later, the vanity was back in place and screwed securely to the wall.

After hanging the vanity, I tried to install the sink. When I bought it, I knew that I would have to remove some of the drywall to get it to fit as it was ¼” wider than the room. I test fit the sink, cut off some drywall on both sides of the room and test fit again. It was tight and not sitting quite flat, so I tried to remove it. I guess it was a little stuck and I twisted it a little while I pulled…and it cracked in 2!  Sh#t. Apparently I am super strong. 

This was quite the setback. The sink goes in, then the tile goes in as it starts just above it, so without the sink, the whole project would be setback. After venting my frustration a bit, I re-grouped and decided to keep moving on the tiling. I installed a piece of wood the equivalent of 4 lines of tile up from the sink, secured it to the wall and started tiling up from there. Using only full tiles I did the wall and will go back later to add the smaller pieces needed around the sides and top.

Once the wall tile was up, I put in the floor tile that I had already laid out. Installing it went fast but I ran out of adhesive for the last 2 tiles. By this time it was about 7 pm, so I called it a day.

And now we know: those damn porcelain sinks can’t take my super strength. It will take 4 days to get a new sink in and there is now no way I can finish this project by the time I go back to work. So irritating. 

New Front Windows

Today our 2 front windows got replaced! The old ones were probably original to 1952; you had to use a stick to prop them open and some of the glass was even cracked. 

We had professionals do this work and it only took a day. They did great work and were very clean.

The house looks so much better from the front, I was worried white on white wouldn’t look good, but it is so much better than the black of the old windows.

Inside it feels much brighter without all the horizontal mullions breaking up the glass.

And now we know: the stucco originally on the house was green and white, so glad it is covered by siding. 

Powder Room Day 1: Demolition

Now that we are back from vacation, I started working on a facelift of the powder room on our main floor. To start Tom and I removed the toilet, sink and vanity. From there I ripped out the vinyl floor and all the stuff hanging on the walls. 

As you can see the cat was very helpful with this endeavour. 

In the adjacent den, I ripped out the carpet and baseboards. Underneath was hardwood, which is awesome and it’s in good condition so even better news! I’d like to sand it down, for continuity of flooring and cost savings, Tom wants to still put the cork down, for dust savings. We’ll see which way this goes…

Since I still wanted to tile the bathroom floor, I installed a sub floor using ¼” plywood I already had on hand. This is not the ideal material for a sub floor, but is the best solution for this situation as the hardwood is already solid and a thicker material would create an extremely large height discrepancy between the 2 rooms. With the plywood and the tile the difference will be about ½”.

And now we know: so many things; there is hardwood in these rooms and they built the bathroom walls overtop. There are random metal plates in the den floor…what could it be covering, the vents are in the wall. There are special screws just for sub-floors.

Ella's New House

This is a very unnecessary but fun project…I’m building the cat a little house. For the past 3 years, this cardboard box that I turned into a ‘bunker’ has been sitting in our front room. The cat loves it and hides in there all the time, so we have been unwilling to throw it out.

Then I saw this cool cardboard cat house online, made of hexagons and square pieces. The angles are a little complicated, a hexagon is all 120 degree angles, but I wasn’t sure what the angle where the hexagons and squares met was. So I built a 3D model out of cardboard and I’m very glad I did. All the angles turned out to be 120 degrees…but with 9” sides on the hexagons, the structure was way too big…about 24” high.

Ultimately I decided to scale it down to 7” sides on the hexagons. Using ¼” plywood I started tracing my pieces and cutting them out with angled edges so they but together nicely. To strengthen the joints (and have something to nail into) I cut 1x1x5.5” strips of pine with a 120 degree on one side. 

I managed to assemble 75% of it before running out of nails and time. I am trying to decide what shape to cut the opening as; it will be in the middle of one of the hexagons. The model online had it shaped like a cat head but alternately I was thinking of a circle for flexibility (if the cat didn’t like jumping the 6” to get it, I could just rotate the structure so the entry hexagon was closer to the ground)

And now we know: the cat is already using the cardboard one so Tom thought I should just keep that instead of re-building with wood…but never minding how huge it is, it will get grotty again.

Building the Powder Room Vanity

This weekend I knocked out the entire vanity construction! It’s a pretty simple design, a floating box with slab doors that will get screwed to the wall. To start I constructed the box part out of ¾” pine boards. Then I cut the doors and drilled out the holes for the hinges. 

From there I filled holes, sanding it all down and gave it a coat of oil based primer. This will hopefully stop bleed through from the knots in the pine. I plan to paint it a navy blue, but will do that once it is installed.

And now we know: this was a simple construction; it is really fast to build something so minimalist. Also don’t prime outside when trees are dropping a ton of leafy stuff. It will get stuck in your paint.