Sinking and sealing

Having given up on getting the sinks in ourselves without leaks, we called in the reinforcements: Good old Doug the plumber. Who diagnosed our previous issue -- the P-trap we'd bought was simply defective. Good night. Anyhow, while he was here, he also got the bathtub spout fixed too. Thanks to Doug for coming out on a weeknight.



While installing the sinks, we chipped one of the pedestals. In another place from where Jeff and I chipped it the other night. So Jeff runs to Lowe's for a replacement. Not too expensive, and it gives me peace of mind. Doug taught me how to install these right in the future, so I won't have another mistake like this one...if I ever attempt it again myself.



And now Jeff is sealing the grout upstairs as I blog. Unfun work. And stinky too! But it gets us ever closer to the end of this chapter in the redo.

Now we head outdoors

This week was incremental, with boring caulking and other cleanup being the main focus. Jeff's wonderful mom was in town, so we got to see her a few times, including a late-night trip with Jenn to have a slice of key lime meringue pie. (The crust got soggy on this one. Oh well.)



And Jeff's mom also came over to our place Thursday morning to clean out the old dead sedum in the bed behind the house. What a nice surprise that was to come home to.

This weekend, we installed the first pedestal sink. Everything looked great. Until the drain started leaking. Tried again. Same thing. Calling the plumber to do it for us. This isn't worth taking the chance over again. It's also the last thing we'll need until the kitchen, so why not?

So instead we turned our attention to other things. Jeff started the cleaning process on the big bedroom upstairs so that we can get the ceiling smoothed and everything painted. He removed the baseboards, too -- no small feat.

While he did that, I mowed the lawn for the first time since we've lived here. This is a big, big double lot, and I was frankly afraid that I'd be in for a four-hour ordeal.

Shockingly, it went by quickly -- around 90 minutes' worth of work. That's doable, and makes me feel like I have no need for a riding lawn mower right now. Maybe in a few years, but we'd rather spend our money on essentials.



The result. Note the pit/pond in the foreground. This will be important later.

Jeff's mom gave us a great housewarming gift: She's paying to have the horrible mess in our yard cleaned up professionally. This means tons of leaves and acorns to be swept away and -- most importantly -- the giant mess of brush and fallen tree limbs hauled off.

I got a couple of bids, and also had them give us a price to regrade around the house with topsoil (an absolute essential, as we get a tiny bit of water in the basement in two spots, where the grading slopes way into the house). The contractor I chose will even seed and straw everything when he's done, for far less than the other guys. And he isn't asking for any money up front. Sounds good to me.



But before that could happen, I had to remove the decking for the first five or six feet so that they can get the dirt in. Much easier said than done, as the screws were the kind with the square-hole heads, requiring a finicky screw bit to get them out. And many were countersunk and stripped. A huge, huge pain, but I finally got it done with only minor damage to three boards. That's reasonable.



A little friend was disturbed that I jostled his hiding place. Hello, Mr. Five-Lined Skink. This photo doesn't do justice to his iridescent tail.

While I removed the boards, Jeff started filling in the pond. I've always been sure that the majority of the fill could come from where the earth had been built up around the hole. It's pretty obvious that most of that lip is heavy clay -- the stuff that should be deep in the ground.



When I finished with the last board, I joined in with the garden fork and started filling. By 7:00, we had no more pit, but only a gently-sloping low spot instead. Too tired to go on any further, we called it a night. I'd feared this would be a several-week job, but we did much better than I expected.

We also decided to dig out two weird pieces of concrete. The big rectangular thing was implanted in the sedum bed for some bizarre reason. It's about four feet long and about a foot wide. Weird. The cylinder was in the middle of the back yard with a cut-off metal post embedded inside. I'm guessing that was a long-abandoned tetherball pole, as it didn't have a mate anywhere else.



The evidence. Don't know how we're going to get rid of this junk.

The landscaping guys should be here in the next two or three days. Then we'll replace the deck boards and get back to finishing up the bathroom. And we've also got our eyes on a nice set of patio furniture to enjoy eating outdoors before it gets too hot.

We're exhausted. Time to rest.

Allllllmost there

I did a lot of trim cutting this weekend. The evidence.

Which means the bathroom is getting closer and closer to done. Another good few weeknights and we're finished.

The tile is all in and grouted, needing only a few minutes' worth of touching up and a lot of tedious sealing.



I'm really enjoying how the shampoo shelf turned out.



After I installed all the last pieces of trim everywhere, they needed their caulking and paint. Here Jeff is being Jeff while painting the ceiling edges over the crown.



Some of the corners were awfully tight. Not too ugly after sealing and painting. But plenty ugly before.



And then the crowning achievement: The toilet is in place and perfectly level. Unfortunately, the stem was damaged out of the box, but they'll replace it tomorrow night and we'll be ready to move on.

It's hard to believe we're actually close to finished.

Grouting

...is hard.

And it's now done.

My fingers hurt.

Another very productive weekend

We did lots and lots this weekend. Since our last post, I got the crown molding installed. That wasn't too quick, because I'm using that lightweight plastic/sawdust stuff, which resists water much better than wood. It crawls around on you quite a bit, especially when you're cutting angles.

Yesterday, we had an early dinner planned, so we decided to get all the paint retouched. Much simpler sounding than it really was.

I caulked all the seams of the trim and started giving it another coat of paint while Jeff touched up the walls. I found that making edges with even the good blue masking tape just doesn't work well for me. Even when the edges come off clean (which is only about 50% of the time), your line is still ragged from tearing. I prefer a smooth but not entirely straight manual cut-in from here on out.



Got most of that done Saturday, but discovered that the semi-gloss wall paint looked absolutely horrible in the daylight where we'd touched it up with foam brushes. So I hauled out a roller and gave everything another going-over. Much better.

Then Jeff got into the de-popcorning business in the master bedroom closet and the stairwell.



He's getting awfully good at not damaging the tape underneath.



This image doesn't begin to do justice to what an enormous difference it makes to have that popcorn off the ceiling over your head while walking the steps. It's not a huge stairwell, but it looks much bigger now, even while brown and ugly.

While he scraped away muddily, I laid the bathroom floor tile.



I like the pattern a lot. It wasn't the easiest thing I've ever done, but I had the nice bonus of tiles that are extremely high quality and pretty good to work with.

Next, grout. Then baseboards, toilet, sinks and the crown over the bathtub (which has to be glued on, natch).

Getting there!



Oh, and I made another pie. Coconut cream with meringue, modified from a Bon Appetit recipe. The meringue wept a bit, but it still tastes really, really good.

Ow

We had great weather this weekend. Knowing that things can turn hot and nasty in a heartbeat, I decided to get started yesterday on pulling out the "water feature" in the backyard before it has time to turn into a festering mosquito pit.

Well, that didn't turn out to be such an easy thing. We thought it was maybe a foot or two deep.

Yeah, try well over four feet at its deepest. And absolutely clogged with an entrenched lily pad root system completely covering the bottom of the whole liner by a depth of several inches.



I'm not sure I can possibly overstate how much physical work this was. The liner was huge and embedded in solid mud all around the outside of the pit. Luckily, the pump left by the previous owner still worked, so I was able to pump about 90 percent of the water out with that.

I hurt my arm somehow while doing it. It's swollen above the left wrist, but I think it's gotten better throughout the day. I also really did a number on my fingertips, but they're markedly better tonight as well.

While I was struggling with this, Jeff worked on priming all the woodwork in the bathroom, including the walnut-stained window and the raw wood of the new linen closet.



That's tedium, but the window looks almost amazingly different now that it's white. We'll still need a few touch-ups here and there after two coats of paint (my work for the day today), but it's getting much closer.



At least the cross pieces in these Pella windows come out. Much easier than painting between actual panes.

This morning, I took some time for something a little different. Time to make a lime meringue pie with the key limes I bought at City Market Friday.



This is almost turning into a pieblog.