Yes, we talk tile

Hello all. With the kitchen about as far as we could take it for the moment, we switched gears to tackle the upstairs bathroom. While the bathrooms were all usable none of them were particularly nice and certainly not what we wanted. 

Here's what we started with. The blue electrical box where the floor meets the wall is where the electric heater was.

After taking out the cabinet, mirror, toilet, and other sundries we were ready to begin. One thing made this job a bit easier was learning that vinyl tile is a fine surface on which to lay tile as long as it's in good shape. This saved us from tearing up the tile and dealing with the glue underneath. 

After picking out tile, the first step is always to make your peanut-butter consistency cement. Definitely creamy and not chunky.

One hazard of working with the cement and later grout is that it's quite messy. At least as we do it. It's hard not to end the day looking like Pig Pen.

The tiling itself went pretty smoothly. The only places we needed to use the wet saw to cut tile to fit was around the toilet and along the sides. That meant the bulk of the work was ensuring the pattern lined up.

Once the tile was in place and set we added the trim around the baseboard. Far easier to install before the toilet.

Until next time.

Turning a blinds eye

Hello all. This is a tale of woe, deceit, and ultimately good overcoming evil. Okay, maybe that's a bit much, but it's certainly a cautionary tale.

After we took down all the old window treatments, we naturally wanted to replace them. It's a lovely area with wonderful neighbors, and still we'd like some privacy at times. (As a bonus in this photo from the kitchen you can see the remains of where the big maple was. That's not wood but some rocks too large for us to move. So it's a makeshift rock garden.)

We decided to try a company on the Internet with mostly good reviews. The bad ones were fairly typical, concerning poor customer service if an order went wrong. Everything arrived on schedule. The trouble started when we tried to install the first one.

We followed the site's guidance to provide exact measurements of the inside of the window. The company said they would make any adjustments given that you lose some width for the hardware on each end. But the blinds were too big. Even when we contracted the hardware as much as possible, it was wider than the opening. How could this be?

Far from taking anything off our measurements, the company inexplicably added about 1/2 an inch to all of the blinds. Why? Who knows. They wouldn't even admit their mistake. They asked for pictures with measurements, which we did. Then they asked for video of us trying (and failing) to install the blinds. We said no. Then they asked for us to send several back for examination, which would have taken days or weeks. 

After this runaround we decided to solve their mistake that became our problem. We took out the hardware on one side and cut through the cardboard tube. Then we cut down the length of the shade.

Cutting down the side meant we also had to redo the hem at the bottom that holds a stiff piece of cardboard. Fortunately we could do all of this between visits to the Cottage, saving ourselves valuable time there.

The adventure didn't end when we got the now right-sized blinds to the Cottage. It may be hard to believe but a cheap, unresponsive company also provided cheap brackets and screws.

This is what happened when we tried to install the mounting bracket. We predrilled holes and used a hand screwdriver to reduce torque. It made no difference. With the holes filled with broken screws we had to improvise. Fortunately our drillbits will cut through metal too, so we made two new holes.
 

With all this figured out, we managed to get all the blinds up and like them.

It's a lesson we learn over and over doing a renovation--even a straight forward project can go sideways. Flexibility and creativity (and a little dogged stubbornness) usually carry the day.

Until next time.

Tear down these walls!

Hello all. With a nod to Reagan-Gorbachev, the challenge before us wasn't nearly as difficult. But in its way it was plenty annoying.

Because we planned to move the fridge to the far right of the kitchen, we needed to create space. Getting rid of the dish washer and upper cabinets were a start, but the real room would come from eliminating the pantry.

One thing we learned immediately after taking off the trim around the door was how questionable the construction was. Fortunately, it was a pantry and not required to do much. The walls also weren't load-bearing otherwise we would be having a different conversation. But you shouldn't see this kind of gap between the inner frame and rest of the wall. Attached at the top and bottom, it was otherwise free floating with a couple finishing nails through the trim holding it in place.

The only really tricky part was taking down the wall without ruining everything else around it. So it came down piece-by-piece with hammers, chisels, and prybars.

We'll say this for the builders, when they wanted to overdo something, they overdid it! The 2.5-foot piece of wood at the top did little more than hold drywall but was littered with 3+ inch nails. Two for each 2x4. Several more holding it to the studs in the house wall. And more just because.

But it all worked out. We created the space we needed, leaving up one side to act as a boundary before the patio doors.

Until next time.

House renovation means outside too

Hello all. We took advantage of some nice weather to tackle cleaning up the outside. Actually this was one of the few jobs we had planned to outsource. We have plenty inside to keep us busy. But there's almost as much of a labor shortage as there is a goods shortage, so this became an "insource" job.

The main things we wanted done were to cut back all the flora on the front and side of the house. It tends to trap moisture close to the foundation. We also wanted to change the walkway to the front door. It was concrete cobblestones that were uneven and awkwardly placed too close to the house. The front also needed some refreshing.

Clearing away the old left us a gap to fill around half the house. For now we added dirt to regrade a bit for water drainage and put down rock where we don't plan to plant (shady side of the house) and mulch where we do. Moving about one ton of stone made us grateful that the previous owner left behind an old, metal wheelbarrow. The border of larger rocks were all scavenged from other places on the property, such as the fire pit.

Some exterior (blue) paint and oil-based (red) paint did wonders for the front of the house. Talk about your curb (or kerb if you're British) appeal!

We found a temporary measure that helped improve the look and walkability of the front path. These are cedar planks sold in a roll about 8-feet long. We cut one apart to form a transition from the path to the steps.

Finally, we had both trees in the back and one in the front cut down. The big one was dying inside and they crowded the small yard. The company that did the work is in high demand, and we understand why. 

Five guys in five trucks needed only a bit more than one hour to take down that 100-year-old maple. We're sorry we don't have pictures, but the show was so mesmerizing we stood transfixed. One guy in a cherry picker cut, one guy with a crane lifted the tree-sized sections to the front where the others fed everything into a chipper.

They did a commendable job cleaning up after themselves, but we still had tons of cuttings from grinding the stump to remove. We used the wheelbarrow and tarps to drag everything to the front where we half-filled the second 10-yard dumpster we've rented (2x5x1 yards). This buys us time until the spring to decide what we want to do.

Until next time.