Humpty Dumpty Put the Wall Back Together Again

Now that the tub was finally in, we could move forward with putting the wall back in. Mr. Fix-It Mark came after work one night (really Mark, you are a life saver) to help Max install the drywall that I have a hard time lifting.

With the new plumbing now in place, the first needed to measure out where the pipes needed to go and holes for the electrical boxes. They started by measuring from the floor up and far wall in to get the specific spot where they needed to cut the drywall. That way the measurements would be correct with the drywall sitting on the floor.

They then carefully marked the piece of drywall with a pencil on where they needed to cut to get the right spot. (Again sorry for the cell phone photos, sometimes I misplace the camera with our house being so disheveled all the time.)

They carefully installed the piece (that fit perfectly, great job guys). 

And look above...notice anything new?

The day they installed the drywall was Max's 28th birthday! To him it wasn't really much of a birthday, but he really wants his bathroom back. He did although get some pretty sweet presents from his 'rents to help him in future home repairs. The drill with the fancy light on it above was one of them. 

The cordless drill is a new Master Mechanic that has two rechargeable batteries. Perfect for all those quick fixes.

The other goodies they gave him were all used but in prefect working order. They gave him a Black and Decker drill press and a Craftsman circular saw.

And a Tool Shop jigsaw.

The Swiderski family (Molly, Ryan and Claire) also gave him a $40 gift card to Lowe's to help with our repairs (sad news folks, the Lowe's next to us was closed by corporate for not making high enough sales...boo, more Menards trips now).

I did very little work on this day for the house other than clean and mow the lawn, but I did make for Max's birthday a Surf and Turf feast; grilled steak, honey grilled shrimp, garlic mashed potatoes and farm fresh steamed green beans with lemon juice and olive oil.

Happy birthday Max!

Let There Be LIGHTs!

Now that some of the rooms are starting to take shape we wanted to be whisked out of the 70s and back to modern day with our lighting. Now that most of the half bathroom (aka fish bathroom, aka poop bathroom) was finished, it was time to give this old light a little "upgrayedd" (sorry a little movie humor from Idiocracy with Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph).

Fun back story on these projects.


Before we could start working on any of the lights, we had to scream figure out our fuse box and what was actually on each fuse. Along with the history we've had with our previous owners, it was a doosey. After screaming back and forth for about an hour and checking outlets if they were still live, we seemed to have it down. Even though some fuses have multiple rooms on them and others seems to have just one outlet. Who knows who wired this place...

I chose the Portfolio 2-Light Vanity Bar light, only in stores and not online, from Lowes. I was very careful in choosing a size since the light socket is quite close to the window and I did not want it to hit the trim.

Max has some made major amateur electrical skills (he rewired my laptop when Turk ate the cord as a puppy) so he did all the heavy duty work. I just chose the pretties. I loved the way the brushed nickel would look with the gray and white of the room. Very neutral but not cold.


In case you need to know how to install a new light, here is a quick video courtesy of Home Depot. 

Here you can see how close it really is to the window. I'm super glad I went with this one!

To personalize our bedroom a little more, I wanted to give Max a little bit of a sense that this is his home as well since I've been doing most of the decorating and color decisions. He loves paper lanterns so when I saw the VÄTE Pendant Light at my IKEA trip here, I knew it was perfect to make him feel more at home in his home. I grabbed a Hemma Cord Set and we were good to go!

Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of our before light, but it was basically a 70s wavy glass light cover with a few etchings on it. Not very cute.

He removed the face plate and we had a little trouble figuring out how to make this into a pendant light. There was a cross bar to hold the face plate to the ceiling but that was it.

When he cut the wires he noticed that they were double coated with casing. We split the outer white casing (that you see here). This is Max's "I'm concentrating very hard on this face". I see it a lot on the home repairs.

While he was working on the wires, I took the face plate for a little "upgrayedd" of it own (I can't help the humor from this cult hit, if you haven't rented it, do it!) I first peeled as much as I could off a super old 70s sticker that was on the face plate still. Having just a little residue on it, I sanded as much as I could down until the surface was smooth and no longer sticky. I gave it a quick wipe down with a damp cloth and dried it off. Then using Rust-Oleam's Ultra Cover Primer, I sprayed an even coat across. After that had dried I followed it up with two coats of Rust-Oleam's white glossy spray paint.

After the paint had dried, we used Gorilla glue to the outer casing we split to attach the pendant light to the face plate without putting stress on the actual electrical cords. Luckily, this is a paper lantern and does not weight much at all. 

Max reattached the face plate to the ceiling...

Then put the lantern over the pendant light... Notice his concentration face again.

Then voilà!

Max approves of his paper lantern light!

Total cost of the lights (will be later included in the whole room break downs):

Half bath - $40

Bedroom light from Ikea - $9 shade + $4 light kit = $13

What small things did you give the upgrayedd to your place? Have fun lighting changes? What is your favorite ebonics word?

Good Enough for Mario

We know when we are outmatched and need to call in a professional to do some work for us. After all the demo in the bathroom, we thought that replacing the tub would be a piece of cake for Joe the Plummer. Until he told us we had cask iron pipes which were wayyyyyyyyy outdated and needed to be replaced for the modernization of our home. And then he said he would need to return with another plummer to get the job done. That's when I realized Joe wasn't a Joe at all, but they were actually a Mario and Luigi team.

Two men to fix all our pipe work and install our tub! Horray! No more complaining of tub grossness like here. They both showed up and (from what Max told me since I was at work) worked from 8am-5pm straight to get everything done.

Here were our before photos of the tub and the giant cask iron pipe in the basement.

Here are the glorious after shots.

This is our new Peerless tub and surround. They also mixed (putting the hot and cold lines on one handle) our water and put our new faucet hardware on for us. Everything is now also on copper piping behind the wall.

Here are the new pipes for the sink and toilets for both our main bathroom and half bathroom since they share that wall.

This is the new hole for the toilet. We are waiting to install both the sink and toilet until we have the flooring and walls finished to make things easier for installation.

Here in the basement are the new PVC pipes they installed. The two lines going up go to the two toilets. The skinny one coming off the left and going farther down is the tub to allow proper drainage of the water.

Our two man plummer team did good!

Although we haven't gotten the bill yet, we are certain with these unplanned updates we went over our $3000 budget for the bathroom. On the plus side, our home is now modernized which ups the resale value, our tub will properly drain now (it was having severe issues before), both bathrooms will be included in the bill and we shouldn't have any problems in the future.

What sort of unexpected expenses did you have in your renovations?! Old pipes like us? Nasty stud walls? Support beams you didn't know about? Just had no idea where to start? Let us know!

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Note: Mario and Luigi photo from here.