McBerkoBlog

Progress continues slowly but more surely now that we've starting putting in some hours after Ruth goes to sleep. Steve and Patty babysat one day (thanks, guys!!) while we started the shower tile, and that eventually got finished after several evening sessions. Grout is finally done now too. Final cleaning, fixture hookup, and caulking, and we can call the shower glass people. Bill finished all the beadboard and other trim, and it's all painted. This weekend, hopefully we'll get some small tasks finished (like caulk and paint touch-ups), and install the toilet and possibly a sink. Excellent timing, Home Depot, on your bath sale featuring cheap dual-flush toilets!

The floor is laid and grouted, and looks exactly like I'd hoped!! Classic white and black hex tile with light gray grout, laid in a flower pattern with a border, just as it might have been when the house was built. For such a small room, this took FOREVER. We spent several hours laying out the pattern and cutting the 12"x12" mesh sheets to fit that pattern. The bottom pic shows the full layout in the office (nice that our entire bathroom could fit there so easily!). If Bill hadn't thought of this plan, we might be tiling for the rest of our lives. Actually installing the tiles was a two person job, so we started Thursday night after Ruth went to sleep. We stopped around 10:30 when we realized we had several more hours to go. On Friday, we realized that we should have sucked it up and finished Thursday, because synching up with the previous day's work was difficult. In the end, it all worked out. Grouting went pretty quickly today during Ruth's nap. Next up, tw...

Last post, I mentioned that we'd painted the walls, so here are finally some pics. The color was pre-selected for us: we found this teal on one of the three layers of walls that we demoed. Bill installed a fan in the wall above the window, which got new trim to match the rest of the house. He also put in two recessed lights in the ceiling, a medicine cabinet, and a light over the cabinet. In the pics below, you'll see only the top half of the wall painted, since the bottom half will have white beadboard. The last picture shows the shower area, painted in a crazy "liquid rubber" waterproofing goo (ShowerSeal). Here's hoping that works.