Isthmus House reveals a good surprise!

When I started writing this post, I had a few moments of writer's block. I realllllly want to write about the awesome new bathroom and how it's done and perfect and was all worth it. But that wouldn't be true solely because the bathroom isn't quite done yet. Hopefully I'll be able to write about it next week!

In recent posts, I've been talking about getting things ready for our new Roommate coming in this week. In preparation for her arrival, I pulled the carpet out of her room. Very attractive, no?

 

 

I started off by buying a new Bagster. If you've ever done a restoration (or renovation, for that matter) project, you know how much debris can pile up even when you try to save and reuse everything. Bagsters are about $30 at Home Depot (I haven't found anywhere you can buy them) and under $100 to get them picked up in my area - sometimes you can even save a few bucks by searching for and adding a promo code when you schedule pickup.

 

Once I had my Bagster set up in my front yard (I'm sure my neighbors love that), I got started pulling the quarter round from around the room. Most of it pulled up by hand - I only needed my pry bar for one small piece by the closet. I was hoping to be able to save and reuse pieces but it split when I pulled it up so it had to go into the Bagster.

 

I had checked the edges of the floor to make sure they were in decent shape before I pulled everything out and they looked fine from that vantage point. If you've been reading the other posts, this is usually followed by a groan, thinking that I'm about to say "but..."

 

No "but" here!

 

I used a carpet cutter, which is stronger and sharper than your average utility knife, to cut the carpet into strips. From there, you can roll it up and duct tape it so it's much more manageable. I wish you luck trying to pull 100 square feet of carpet out in one fell swoop!

 

It took me a grand total of about 20 minutes to cut the carpet, roll it up and tape it. Add another 5 minutes for getting it all into the Bagster and you're looking at a pretty great quick and easy update for Isthmus House.

 

If you've ever pulled carpet up, you know that it's often tacked or even glued to the floor - which would have been heartbreaking with this old hardwood. Miraculously, there wasn't even a single tack or bead of glue on any of this carpet - it had been held down entirely by the quarter round trim and had only a squishy, decent quality carpet pad under it.

 

There can be good surprises at Isthmus House and this is one of them! Check out these floors!

 

 



 

 The next great thing I'm thinking? The downstairs bathroom! Get excited; I certainly am!

 

From the junglllle! To a yard!

I've heard that gardening is peaceful and relaxing for some people. I don't think I'm one of those people.
 
In last week's post, I mentioned that we're getting a new Roommate and said new Roommate comes with a dog, a mini-schnauzer mix named Rosie. In light of this development, The Current Roomate and I assessed various parts of the house and decided that the state of the yard as it sat was potentially hazardous to Rosie.
 
Why, you might ask? It was so far overgrown, we couldn't see about half of it to know if there were any holes in the fence or small animal families that might pose a threat to a little (well, small/medium) dog.
 
When I say overgrown, I'm not exaggerating. Far from it. Here are the before pictures:


 

 

 

The back door to the basement

 

Back wall fence - that you can't see (it's about 6 ft tall!)

 

Corner of the back yard

 

Shared fence with the neighbors (that's their garage in the background)


 As you can see, not exaggerating.

Naturally, the Roommate and I decided to stay in on Friday so that we could go to bed early and get up around 9 and get to work. That is, until some friends were over until 2ish and we got a little distracted.

I was still up at about 9:30 (huzzah!... minus the wake up) with my coffee keeping me company in the back yard. I got to work pulling the easy-ish weeds by the house and the gate so that the door could close. 2 hours later, here's the progress I left for a couple of hours so that I could head to the gym.

The back of the house by the basement door

 

A gate no longer held open by weeds!

 

As my trainer said, it was kind of like a 2-a-day gym session... except more like 3 or 4-a-day.

When I got back home around 1:30, the Roommate (who surprised me with a clean kitchen!) and I got back to work clearing the yard. We used shears to cut the incredibly invasive grapevine that was threaded alllllll the way through all of the fencing, cherry tree and other plants and pulled it down. In the process, we lost some of the plants we'd planned to keep. Our guesstimate is that it took us about 3 hours total to remove the grapevine since there was more every time we turned around.

The things that were just too stubborn to pull, like the clover and super overgrown grasses, got weed-eatered with a powerful weed eater borrowed from my friend "Witt" and her boyfriend Brian.

At about 6 or 6:30, we took a water break. It might seem like an odd time for a break but this is what we left in the yard - it's about 3 feet tall and 7 or so across:

 
 

After our water break, we decided that it was time to bag it up so it wouldn't get soggy or seem like a good place for small creatures to live overnight. The bagging took us about an hour - we were admittedly a bit slower on bags 3-7 than at the beginning and end of the process.

At the end, we got everything into 10 packed bags around 7:30. I think my glee is rather evident here.

 

That turned out to be the perfect time for our friend, Todd, to arrive and fix the fence so it could actually swing freely. The Roommate and I got cleaned up for dinner while he added a support beam to the gate:

And here's the final product:

 

The back door to the basement - that you can actually walk to!

  

The pretty and grapevine-free cherry tree

 

The same back wall of fencing!

 

We found about 4 small but established trees, lots of random pavers and a few animal burrows we didn't know were there and managed to save a couple of hostas, lilies, daisy-like flowers, a raspberry plant or two (there was one raspberry, The Roommate and I split it and it was delicious) and the cherry tree.

All in all, not a bad day's work and for a grand total of about $40 for a new claw cultivator and yard bags! There's still a little cleanup to be done but I can't wait to replant a little bit and use the yard at our eventual housewarming party - stay tuned!


*Awesome tip if you're clearing your yard soon: We found that these gloves allowed us to use the touchscreens on our phones even with them on. Not bad for $1/pair!

Let there be light... oh, and a ceiling!

Okay all, now it’s getting real. There’s a ceiling in the bathroom! And, as you may have guessed from the title of this post, it comes with LIGHT!

This is wonderful because it means that there’s an end in sight. The only things to finish in the bathroom are: the sink, trim and painting, electrical (sconces and switches) and the last little things like a mirror, towel bar, etc. Well, and the door to the bathroom needs to be trimmed and hung. That might seem like a lot in that little paragraph but when you consider the original to-do list for the room was over 20 items long, its unbelievably close!

It's not a moment too soon either because we’re about to have another Roommate and she comes with a dog (a mini schnauzer mix for those who are curious). Collectively, I’ve decided to call them The Roommates (very creative, I know!). This is very exciting, of course, but also comes with lots of preparations.

Back to the issue at hand, check it out.

Here’s how my bathroom looked at the beginning of this past weekend:

 

The lack of ceiling along with the crumbling walls is lovely, don’t you think? I do think it’s a small improvement now that the ceiling is up and the fan/light is installed, however.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, I had to pull down the drop ceiling (surprise!) to find out that the wiring was old (surprise!) and that I couldn’t finish my bathroom last weekend (not that big a surprise).

We got the contractor back in and after an hour and a half of the three of us moving, cutting, propping and screwing in greenboard (again, that’s mold/moisture resistant drywall), I had a not-yet mudded and taped 9-foot ceiling! And drywall dust in my hair, but that’s a story for another day.

 We had suuuper technical propping tools:

 

Getting the ceiling installed was great and all – I couldn't do anything else until it was complete – but the crowning glory of the contractor’s visit was that which was already pretty much installed: the fan/light.

 

You don’t really think a whole lot about things like light fixtures until you have to take a bath by candlelight when you’d rather just have normal light. Naturally, I didn’t have the right bulbs (they have a special base) so I couldn’t see it immediately but it was worth the wait.

Check out the newly lit bathroom ceiling! Another week and we’ll be done! What parts of the final product are you most excited to see in the reveal? What’s your favorite so far?

"But it's all new electrical!"

The downstairs bathroom (fka the wood-paneled shower bathroom) just keeps going. And going. And going.
 
It was supposed to be done before The Roommate got home from Spain. That was a month ago, and while we're close enough to taste it, new suprises have come up. You may be guessing from the title of this post where I'm going with this. If you guessed electrical, well, you'd be part right.
 
Let me back up. In Part II of the Saga, I hired a contractor to hang cement board in the shower surround and greenboard in the surrounding areas. I thought we had agreed that they would also hang the greenboard for the ceiling at that point but that didn't happen. Instead, I ended up installing almost everything (shiny bathtub!) in the bathroom before they could get back for the installation of the ceiling as well as the vent/light combo. This is important because - mark my words - there will never be mold in that bathroom again.
 
The day finally came last Friday and I was looking super forward (read: I took vacation) to getting the ceiling up so I could finish painting and wainscoating and other trim installation. A real, working bathroom?! Woooot! The Roommate and I could barely contain our excitement.
 
The plan went something like this: We intended to keep the existing ceiling and just go over it since there were studs to screw into for the drywall. We were just supposed to cut a hole for the new bathroom fan/light fixture and use the electrical from the existing light fixture. No sweat, right?

It doesn't look too bad to start:

 
The guys started by taking out part of the ceiling tiles (you can see where the first one came out in the pic above on the right edge). A rather quick deviation from the plan but it was getting covered anyway, so I went with it. A new problem arose when it had to be set deeper into the ceiling than the ceiling tiles plus the drywall would allow. So, down came another chunk of ceiling but the fan got inserted pretty quickly and vented outside.
 
Crisis averted. I don't mind pulling staples holding up the ceiling tiles. Considering my experience as a kid with pulling them when my parents got rid of the carpet in favor of the hardwood underneath, I'm pretty quick. The whole thing took me about 20 minutes to pull - staples included.
 
The real problem came when they looked at the electrical in the ceiling that we wanted to use for the new fan. The whole reason I hadn't done a fan in the back corner with a standard bathroom light fixture was because I didn't want to run new electrical for the fan to the back of the room. One dual-function fixture and I thought things would be good.
 
I was told when I bought Isthmus House that it had been fully re-wired to replace knob and tube wiring a few years back. During the inspection, we found some dead knob and tube (that's fine, it just can't be live) but the outlets we checked were grounded (knob and tube doesn't have the copper grounds that make the electrical safer) and I saw the approved permit inspection myself.
 
None of that matters. Because there was old wiring in the ceiling in the bathroom. The ceiling I didn't want to pull down or rewire.
 
Since we couldn't install the fan until there was new wiring, the contractor headed out having only been there for about 90 minutes and I found an electrician who could come out same day.
He arrived just a few hours later (let me tell you, that's normally a coup) and fixed the wiring in less than an hour. I think he'll be doing my electrical from here on out.
 
I called the contractor back and he informed me that they wouldn't be back that day and we'd reschedule. It's been a week and nothing but here's what we've got now. The important thing is that silver box - that's the fan!

 
It's light and ceiling-less, but I'm soooo close to paint, trim and completion I can taste it! Since I can't contain my excitement, stay tuned for a special edition of The House on the Isthmus early next week!

The Saga's Almost Over! Part V

I am occasionally challenging. Strong willed, stubborn, trying; I’ve heard a few words synonymous with “strong personality.” I choose to think of this as having standards and expectations. Toe-may-toe, Toe-mah-toe.

The point of this mini-diatribe is that in working on finishing the bathroom (nope, not done yet!), I’ve had to bring in a few sub-contractors to do things that are past my skill level. For example, I don’t generally do plumbing or electrical. I also chose not to lay the marble floor in the bathroom because I didn’t think I could get the cuts precise enough for the 1”x2” basket weave to up to the aforementioned standards. So I brought in a flooring contractor with awesome ratings instead.

Now, I hired this contractor in June while The Roommate was out of the country for a while. I did it so that I could get a move on with getting the plumbing in and the rest of the room complete. I got the bid early in the week and they were in on Thursday to lay the floor – I’d been pretty clear we were tight on time since The Roommate was set to return in a few days.

The installer got to work and was about 65% through the floor when he realized that the tile supplier had sent about ½ white tile sheets and ½ grey tile sheets and came to tell me. Had we known this before, we could have either come up with a different pattern or just worked with the supplier to send the correct stuff out. But, since the floor was not in a position to be ripped up (read Part III of the Saga to hear all about the original boards and sub-floor!), we had to keep going.

Most of the white went under the tub, vanity, perimeter and any other place that wouldn’t be seen or at least not obvious. But we ran out of grey for good with about 6 sq. ft. to go – right in front of the door. So there are 6 whiter tiles than the rest of the room. I’m choosing to ignore that for the time being and I’ll consider staining them later.

A few days later, they came in to grout and ran out so they had to come back to complete it. Let me tell you, I hated the grout color. It was a light dove grey (I thought it would be darker!) and didn’t give the floor any definition. I went to the Tile Shop and talked through all of the possible options to make it darker and Darrin (who’s the best for any tile-y questions you may have) told me to go home and put some water on it to see if I liked the color it was when wet.

Dry Grout

 

Fortunately, the answer was yes and I got some sealant for the floor. I got a call from the contractor too asking if I was ready for a final walk through. Since the floor wasn’t yet sealed and the transition piece not yet installed, I reminded them of that and suggested we schedule the walk through for after the floor was completed. We went back and forth for a while on whether sealing was included in the proposal for work (which it was) and they agreed to come in and seal the floor.

Wet Grout

Three weeks to the day later, I had a sealed floor. With dirt and dust and anything else that had been on the floor that morning sealed in. It felt dirty just walking on it. Yuck. You can especially see it in the bright spots.

 

 

As The Roommate can attest, I almost lost it. I spent almost FOUR HOURS that night razor blading off the sealant of each little tile (The Roommate stayed up with me to keep me company) so that it wouldn’t set looking and feeling dirty.

I called up the contractor the next day and suuuper nicely explained the situation. With no argument, he cut my balance in half and we moved on. We did a final walk-through of the un-sealed floor and called it good.

Here’s our final product. I love that this bathroom is coming together! Do you love the floor as much as I do?!


 

 

The Continuing Saga of the Wood Paneled Shower

I don’t know too many people who have bothered to refinish a bathtub. I’m one of the few, slightly crazy people who have tried, apparently in my attempt to rid the bathroom of the wood-paneled shower. Mission accomplished!

I got the idea to try to reglaze a five-foot long cast iron claw foot tub we found on Craigslist from, yet again, Nicole Curtis on Rehab Addict. In addition to seeing her repaint many a clawfoot exterior, she also refinished a pedestal sink during her restoration of the incredible Minnehaha House and it seemed like a good way to stay on budget in mine.

The tub was in decent shape but super dull on the inside and a flat tan color on the outside when I got it. Considering it was made in 1921 though, I’m impressed!

I started off by wire brushing off any chipping paint and spray painting the outside a flat black. It took me about 2 cans to get the full coverage needed.  The paint is still wet in this picture and it looks so much better!

A few days later, The Roommate and I noticed that there was a weird, white film splashed all over both the pathway in the backyard as well as one side of the tub. We’re pretty sure some dirty water from one of the other projects in the house got splashed over there. So I wiped the tub down and repainted the affected areas.

Following the dirty-water incident, I decided that I wasn’t going to refinish the tub just to have a bug land in it or a leaf fall on it while it was wet, ruining the finish. The Roommate and my friend Todd helped me get it into the porch.

While The Roommate was out, I read the reglazing instructions cover to cover no fewer than 4 times. I scrubbed the tub with the solution provided, rinsed it and fully dried it 3 times. Then I went to check the instructions again for the next steps. They clearly stated that I was actually supposed to scrub, rinse, dry, steel wool in a small, circular pattern, rinse and dry again then repeat that 3 times. Rather a large mistake in 95 degree heat and Isthmus House isn’t air conditioned. I’ll let you extrapolate the outcomes.

Here's how it looked just washed 3 times:

And how it looked when steel wooled:

Since I’d already done 3 rounds of scrubbing, I only did 2 rounds of the full, steel-wool-included scrub-a-dub that night. I waited until The Roommate was out again a few nights later to resume the project, starting with another round of scrubbing and rinsing. After that was all done, I had to make sure that the surface is clean of any steel wool residue. That is easier said than done with 15-20 square feet of surface and it took me somewhere around 7-10 rounds of rinsing and drying before I was convinced it was ready for the epoxy. This is definitely one of those jobs to be positive you’ve done all you can to get the prep right or the epoxy doesn’t adhere properly - it probably took me about 4 hours start to finish.

Let me tell you, it's really, really clean in this picture!

After I taped off every bit of the fixtures, I started the spray-painting around 10pm and the first coat took less than 15 minutes. It’s supposed to look a little patchy and it doesn’t look a thing like porcelain when you start. Despite following every instruction to the letter, my spray can spit paint like crazy and I had drips that I was running over with my paint brush constantly.

While I was painting, it was spitting so much lacquer my fingers got stuck to the nozzle and it came off when I tried to let go of the can. This is how they looked post lacquer thinner scrubbing: 

I got a decent first coat down and waited the recommended 15 minutes before applying the second coat (if you wait more than 90 minutes, you have to wait 72 hours).

The second can also spit epoxy drops everywhere and, again, I brushed them through with my paintbrush. Eventually, I was able to get long enough drip-less periods that the finish looked clean, smooth and dripless all the way through. I had opened almost every window on the first floor, but those fumes are intense and my mother got a good laugh at my accidentally-high-as-a-kite narrative via text that night and my little sister was very sad she missed it.

I couldn’t have been happier with how the tub looked and went to bed happy. The next morning, I went to check on the tub and the porch doors I’d been wondering how I’d get off fell off the hinges and onto the tub edge, gouging the not-yet-fully-set epoxy. The Roommate came to check on me having heard me yelling across the house.

Not to worry, there were already a few chips yet to fix and those got added to the agenda and repaired following the 72-hour mandatory dry time (I gave it more like 5 days due to travel). The total cost for all of the supplies and the tub itself came to about $450 - not bad! Here’s the final product, a beautiful, gleaming, period-correct claw foot tub that I love and can’t wait to get installed! What do you think?!

The Saga of the Wood Paneled Shower - Part III

Several people have asked me how the downstairs bathroom rebuild has been going and I'm here with an update! Before I continue though, let me say that this blog is now weekly. I'm posting every Thursday with the occasional special edition. It lends a nice feel of consistency and therapy and a good shot that I've done enough every week to give an update on the state of Isthmus House.

We left off in that last installment of the saga of the downstairs bathroom with new cement board, greenboard and some RedGard over that for waterproofing.

As I mentioned in that post, my sister and I also pulled the floorboards in hopes of having it to patch and feather in a few places around the house. All in all, we probably salvaged about 15-20 square feet. I'll take it!

Once the floor was up, we also found that the subfloor sloped about 1.5 inches in some places and we didn't stand a chance of laying tile over it without it cracking, even with underlayment. That meant a new subfloor needed to be poured. Here's how the process went.

First, we laid out thick plastic (Or, as my mother would say, Visqueen. I have no idea if I spelled that right.) and stapled it down. When the stapler stopped working around midnight, we got creative and folded and taped down the spots we were nervous about (this part isn't shown in the photo!). We also built mini walls using left over cement board around the hole I needed to leave for the tub drain and plumber. Pretty, no?

Once the plastic was firmly down, we mixed 5 40-lb. bags of self-leveling subfloor. It was a little pricier than the rapid-setting stuff but I was worried that we wouln't be able to move it quickly enough before it set.

It turns out we needed 9 bags to get the subfloor fully spread out and truly level. We didn't find this out until about 1:30am so it was a 2-day process. That said, we were really happy with how it turned out after cutting away the excess plastic around the edges with a utility knife.

I chose subway tile for the shower surround for several reasons the best of which are that it is period correct and cost effective at about $2/ sq. ft. Subway tile acquired its name having been used in the Heins and LaFarge architectural design of the New York City subway stations when they opened in the early 20th century and have been a mainstay in period restorations as well as coming back into popularity relatively often ever since. 

  

Laura and I started subway tiling the window wall about 8 hours after pouring the rest of the subfloor. I'll admit that my side drooped a little bit. We were about 4 rows in on the window wall when she noticed and fixed it since I just couldn't take it at that point.

We ended up applying thinset to both the wall and back-buttering (putting thinset on) the tiles themselves. As you might imagine, that takes a while and we finally called it a night around 2 am. 

I think it looks brilliant. There's a little detail surprise you can't see in the photo and it's not grouted yet, but that's coming soon. Stay tuned for another update as the Saga continues!