Well, it's official.

The contractor has finished the last tiny remaining thing with the Bathroom remodel, and has finished all the repairs for the leaky roof and the water-and-mold-damaged closet. And I've giving him the final check for all the work.

I'm *done*, barring any new disasters or emergencies. No more strangers (though I can hardly call him a stranger after all this time) in my house. My house is my own again.

I can go back to working in a bathrobe!

Sigh. Closure.

For now.

Okay, it turns out I didn't mention this on here before... but right after the water damage was repaired in the office, I noticed similar water damage on the drywall in the ceiling of the guest-room closet. I noticed as I was preparing for my Parents' visit.

Crap.

So anyway, the visit with my parents went well. We went antiquing, found a great new restaurant, visited the LBJ ranch and paid our respects to Lady Bird's grave, we basically just enjoyed each others company. It was a short visit but very pleasant. I'll get to see them down here at Xmas.

Now that they're back home, I called the contractor back in to give me an estimate of fixing the damage in the guest bedroom. The initial guess was just a simple patch and repaint job, no big deal, maybe $400.

He started today, and within minutes he found that it was still damp, which means there was still water coming from somewhere. A few more minutes of investigation showed a leak in the roof (the dampness was due to the soaking we got this past weekend from Emily). Turns out there's a significant area of rotted wood in the roof that also needs to be replaced. The work on the closet has to stop until the roof is repaired, and my contractor guy isn't a "roof" guy.

Sigh. So something small just blew up into something big. Replace at least a 2x2 (if not larger) section of the wood that makes up the roof, plus shingles all around that area, and now the closet has to have the drywall pulled because the moisture has been there a lot longer than first thought... and mold is a definite problem.

On the flip side, the CORRECT toilet handle finally came in, so I can finally call my bathroom DONE! YAY!

You couldn't really see the vanity lights very well with them on in the last set of pictures, so here's a close up with them off, so you can see them.

I think they're nice, simple, and elegant.

It's that time. They finally got the over-vanity lights in, and now, even though there are a few things left (shower-head, toilet-handle, and door pulls), I feel I should go ahead and do the "Before vs After" photos that I've been waiting so long to do.

So here we go. The original "Before" photo is on the left. The "After" photo is on the right. I did my best to recreate the angle, but due to some of the changes, it wasn't always possible, or the original angle didn't show everything. I also apologize for the color balance and lighting issues... I'm not the best photographer, and this is a point-and-shoot camera. Still, it provide a useful contrast.

So tell me what you think. Was it worth all the time, aggravation, and $money$??

( Click here to see all the Before/After fun )

Well, the shower door is in... looks pretty good!

Only one more week left of this stupid Remodel, which has gone on way too long, and cost way too much. This next week should be the final week with one exception. Basically the only big things remaining are the shower door and the mirror, both of which should come on Tuesday. A couple of things are going to take longer, as the light fixtures are back ordered. They installed temporary ones over the sinks to hold over until the correct ones come in, and they'll be back to swap them when they can. Beyond that, there are just minor things (they forgot to order door handles for the over-shower and over-toilet cabinets, so those will arrive July 2nd) and I'll be able to start moving back in to my master bedroom.

( So here we are with some pictures! )

I'll post more pictures later, including the new toilet (installed and fully functional), the cabinet over the toilet, the ceiling lights, and new switches and such.

When the cabinets came in, they came with some wood stain to be used to stain the baseboards and doors to be a matching color. I thought it would be great to have all the wood looking roughly the same. The only problem with that idea is that the wood the cabinets were made of (Maple), is different from the wood the doors are made from (Fir), which is different from the wood the door frames, baseboards, and trim are made from (Birch).

Needless to say, after staining, things didn't match. Different woods take stain very differently. The doors actually looked gorgeous, but were way darker and redder than the cabinets, which had a more 'blond' color highlight. However, the door frame, the baseboards, and the trim looked just awful. They looked like a muddy burnt sienna or umber. WAY too dark, and just ugly, almost as if they had been burnt or scorched. Even the contractor was taken aback at how bad they looked.

Sanding off the stain and re-staining with a re-mixed stain would have taken forever, so the baseboards, which had already been cut and fully stained and dried, were all basically thrown away, and new ones ordered, and re-stained. However, the door-frames had to be worked with in-place, so he sanded them all down, and re-stained them. What a pain. And, of course, more delays. And more cha-ching. Sigh.

The colors still don't match, and we didn't bother re-doing the doors themselves (that just would have been too much, and taken too long), but they do look a thousand percent better than they did before. And while they clearly don't match, it still looks "good enough" I think. At least I hope so, once it all gets put together.

In addition to working on the door trim, the counter top came this week and was installed, the medicine cabinets were installed, and they finished off the windows (or at least the wall surrounding them... I think they still need to apply a sealant to the sand-grout that holds the glass block in place). So lots of visible stuff at the end of the week.

( So without further ado, here's lots of pictures of this week's activity )

No real stories this time... just a quick update of some pictures now that the grout is done... oh yeah, and a question for you guys.

( Pictures of the way things are )

Ah, the shower pan.... the floor of the shower! Such trials and tribulations it has experienced over the last few weeks...

Work stalled for quite a while, while a very slow water leak was found and fixed. Work stalled while the drain was repositioned. Work stalled waiting for tile. Concrete poured, hardened, chipped away again, ... so much work for just a simple shower floor.

But let me tell you the worst thing. The smell. The concrete floor and first four inches of the walls are sealed with a custom fiber-glass resin that is absolutely leak proof. But dear gawd, the smell! There are no words. Just... no words.

It's bad enough that the day was already filled with the smells of wood stain and varnish. Even through closed doors and on the other side of the house, the smell was strong and headache-inducing. Even with windows open and fans blowing outwards. But then, around noon, they started the fiberglass process. You have NEVER experienced anything like this.

It was really bad. But at one point, I had to go into work for a meeting, so I opened the door to the master Bedroom, and literally had the air SUCKED out of my lungs. It was like getting punched in the gut. I made it over to the bathroom door to get the attention of the fiberglass guy that I was going to be leaving... and barely made it. He was wearing an industrial strength gas-mask. I couldn't speak, really, and my body simply wouldn't breathe. It was like being gassed. I staggered out and closed the door behind me, my eyes watering. Somehow I got the message across to him, and then went into work.

After the meeting (the workers were long gone), the smell was still strong, but it dissipated as the evening went on, and thankfully wasn't so strong that I couldn't sleep that night. But man. That was rough.

After that, things progressed rather quickly... as you can see below, in a pictorial history of the shower floor:

( A shower floor's journey )

Okay, lots of visible stuff happening now...

They've all but finished the windows (still need to finish the walls around them). What an ordeal that was. I wanted some special "sound-proof" glass block for the outside window, to help block outside noise. The first time it came it, it was the wrong kind. The second time it came it, it was the wrong style (the ugly industrial style with the horizontal ridges). The third and fourth time it came in, it hadn't really, and the contractor made the trip to pick it up for nothing. The fifth time was a charm though. So much trouble for a simple window! (Oh yeah, and you pay through the nose for sound-proof glass block... $17.50 per block!)

The doors came in too. They're roughed in, but not yet stained. And the tilers finished the floor, even though they're not yet done with the wall tile.

Oh yeah, and they still haven't started on the shower pan yet. But the good news is, they found and fixed the small leak that was preventing them from starting. It turns out, it was an old, old leak. Or really, it was old damage that sprung a slow leak (they estimate) about a year ago, given the state of the wood in the area. They showed me the pipe after they removed and replace it, and sure enough, there was a small nail hole that was only barely (not even) covered by the pipe fitting at a joint. It's the sort of thing that could have gone at any time. In the reworking, they jostled it and it started leaking a little bit faster, which is how they noticed it. They had to cut in through the back wall of the shower (in the closet) to get at and fix it.

Anyway, it's all starting to look pretty good!

( Come and see for yourself... )