A Bullet Dodged!

 This morning this shower was bare cement board.

 Today, it is a complete (well, pretty complete) shower. I think that it is even better lookin' than the first one.

 Really this was a very good thing to do because when the tile guy was prepping this section of the wall he discovered that the person who did Dad's shower cut a few corners. No cement board, no waterproofing. It was an accident waiting to happen. Now it's been redone correctly!

Now it's been backed correctly, waterproofed and reinforced and covered in this lovely tile.

Doors will go back up late next week, I can hardly wait!

 

I Love Progress!

This is the beginning of the biggest changes I think we'll see for a bit. The huge mound of cardboard that has been living in our kitchen since my sister's birthday suddenly burst open and did this...

There is still a bit of work to do, and then the pulls to install. 

The hall bath is looking wonderful, I got the cabinetry in the bath almost 6 inches narrower than the one that was removed, makes the room feel a larger which is funny for a bathroom. I can't wait to see the cabinets in the master bathroom, but there is still construction in there.

And it is going along just ducky!

One More Step

 Another step closer..

It's beginning to sound like a song isn't it? But now we need cabinets which should be this week. Then of course counter tops...

..And sinks and shower doors and mirrors and towel bars and baseboards and oh doors might be nice. Arrrrgh!

Floors!

 Once things were in place it took no time at all to get the floor down and man oh man does it look good!

 

Every piece of flooring is finally in place and it looks so good and we are so pleased. One day soon it will be a real house!

 I am so very pleased with how it all looks and the air conditioner works again too! Nothing like working in a 100 degree house, but hey a pile of money later and it works again! <Sigh>

No, Not Again.

Why is it that the gods have such crappy senses of humour? They see you having a good run of it and they just have to take a poke at you. The project has been cruising right along and then "Poof!" something interesting happens like the air conditioner stops working!

When the AC guy came out and inspected the unit and found, well he found this...

Yes you guessed it, that is a 20in. x 30in sheet of ice 6 inches thick! Oh the colour? That is the reason for the ice, it is terra cota tile dust. Seems that when they removed the tile from the kitchen they used a grinder to get the detritus off the floor. That wouldn't be bad but they never bothered to turn off the air conditioner and all of that dust was sucked up into the air conditioner where it clogged up the fins of the condenser where it got wet and promptly turned into a brick! This caused the unit to overheat and fail. Yeah fail.

So, of course that means...

Out with the old in with the new, again. Good grief am I getting tired of spending money.

The Floor Begins

 Now that we have a flat sub-floor it's time for grass!

Then on Sunday we took down the scaffolding completely and it really made the room look big again.

This is going to look SOOOOOOO cool when it's finished!

Floors must be FLAT!

 Now that the tile has been laid the next  bit is the wooden flooring. Well not really wood, grass really. Yes the flooring of choice is indeed bamboo! But it really does require a flat, flat, FLAT sub-floor and the original foundation floor is no where near being flat! There are actual pot holes in the surface if you can believe that, pretty good size cracks too.

So there is a need to make corrections prior to laying the bamboo.

 

 

Now that it's flat in here it will be time for bamboo!!

Colour! We Love Colour!

 

The application of colour marks a major milestone for us and really makes things begin to feel "real".  A lot less like a construction site if you follow.

But there is still a long way to go from here. For instance the nice fresh colour makes the old door and shutters look even more yucky than we had thought before.

It makes us even more anxious to see the finished product!

From the Floor Up

 

So as things progress it is finally time to start putting in floors! It's a milestone that we have been waiting for! But since UDC did such a "wonderful" job (Can you hear the sarcasm?) at everything they did the floor needs to be "floated" or leveled out.

 

Once the floor is finally level, all the lovely holes filled in and the "trench" covered over it was time to begin the actual tile.

It amazed me how fast these guys went from floating the floor and setting the layout...

..To near perfection!

Soon. Very, very soon!

Countertops! Yeah!

We have made this decision more times than I can count, you know how that goes right? You've seen the perfect colour or pattern and you feel like you've got that out of the way. Then you see something else and you immediately change your mind. Then you turn around and see something else and you change your mind again. We went through several iterations of this ridiculousness and we had thought we had settled on a lovely quartz countertop. For sure. 

So we went to the fabrication company here in Tempe, a place called Cosentino that manufactures both the material and the countertops. We went in knowing what we wanted and then well, we fell in love with something we hadn't seen at any of the numerous, numerous places we had been previously. We were walking through the warehouse and there it was, the photograph here just does not seem to do it justice. But wow! We can hardly wait to see this in place! Soon, soon.

 

 

The Fireplace

 

 Now there is a problem that we weren't really planning on addressing at all, what to do with this ugly fireplace of ours. We couldn't possibly leave it painted the colour that it was, yucky brownish yellowish yuck. So we were going to paint it the same colour as the walls and then leave the tile alone. But after a conversation with the contractor he had a cool idea. 

So we decided to change the tile as well...

 

 And so far it is turning out just ducky! Now we'll need to paint the stucco again but so far I like it.

 

 

 

 

Update Pictures

 

So a few of the stages we've been talking about haven't been accompanied by photographs so now that I had a few minutes I figured I'd add them now. These first few are from the episode of the first painters. The ones that came and just pretended to know what they were doing. I think you can see why we were upset.

The things you can see that are masked off happened AFTER the pseudo-painters had been there but you can see the lack of workmanship.

Once the "painters" were sent away we discovered that they had begun painting without properly preparing the walls. Our contractor had a drywall team come in to texture the walls. However when they were done we found more than a few issues with the work they had preformed. Time honoured tradition says that you mark such issues with blue masking tape so they might be addressed. Large areas of problems are completely surrounded by tape.

The number of pieces of blue tape began to multiply drastically.

 

It was beginning to be down right depressing. Every where we looked were mistakes or poor workmanship. Progress ground to a halt. Nothing what so ever was happening and every time we spoke with Zac he would make us promises that would then not be fulfilled. We were beginning to get a bit miffed.

 

 And then this happened!

Suddenly the texturing was complete, the work was done exceptionally well and just like that the little blue marks had vanished.

And things began to look a whole lot better.

It is amazing to see this room all one colour! No wallpaper stains, no tobacco stains, no cracks, no pits and NO yellow!!!

So far we are very pleased with the colour.