Teeny Tiny Tiles

The week and weekend has flown by and a lot has been accomplished. The bad news is that the bedroom didn't get painted as fast as I had hoped. There were a lot of areas to patch up and cracks along one of the upper corner seams. EZ Patch saved the day and it all look really good.

My gamble with the red accent wall was well worth it too...although it took a worrisome 4 coats and an additional trip to Sherwin Williams. So, everyone ended up crashing at Jens. Here's a few pics of the 'blood' being applied.



Teeny tiny tiles were the good news theme this weekend...and it's great they come on 1 ft x 2 ft sheets. Dad and I learned a few things about tiling from Uncle Steve and the bathroom made a lot of progress. It's exactly what I thought it would turn out to be...awesome! Here's a shot of Dad in action.


One of the humorous moments of the project this weekend was Dad hauling out a toilet for me from Michigan until I decide what I want to get. Just imagine the look on people walking by when we hauled a toilet out of the car and Uncle Steve was sitting on the throne, guarding all our stuff as the rest of us hauled it up to the apartment.

Humor aside, it was good that he brought it out as I found out it just fits with the tank touching the wall.

It's nice to have a toilet again though instead of running to the neighbors, down the street to Jen's or...well, you know...

Stitched Up

I called in sick yesterday to work on the bathroom drywall and tileboard to get this thing moving. It was all going great until I nearly cut my thumb off.

It was pure stupidity on my part. I didn't have a carbon blade to properly cut the tileboard so I was using a Stanley knife which did the trick, but required a lot of force. It was also just after 5 PM (yeah, I broke the construction hour rules again) and I was fairly tired and not wearing gloves.

Idiot!

With one strong stroke and a small slip the Stanley knife went right across the T-square and across my thumb on a diagonal. I immediately jumped up for t-shirt to compress it and ran it under water. I called my neighbor to help me bandage it up and after a bit of inspection figured it might be a good idea to head to the ER, which is luckily a 10 minute walk away. Sitting in a chair for nearly 4 hours in
ER is an experience I don't want to relive, especially since (a) I was in 'Fast Track' and (b) the mental patient ward was right next to my waiting area. So I saw enough weird stuff for one day.


The damage added up to 6 stitches in my thumb and a sliced finger nail. It hasn't been a good few months for my left hand after whamming my other finger with a hammer when installing the wood floor.


Yet, almost all the drywall and tileboard is up. Fair trade...???

Bathroom Progress....Finally

I've been able to get all the framing in the bathroom up this week and it's looking fairly plumb. Like the ceiling, the lathe has come in handy to level out the shower wall. I was concerned about being able to conceal the cold water plumbing. The main riser is by the toilet and runs all the way around the bathroom to the tub and sink, but I seem to have framed it all out just enough to hide all the copper.

The other small challenge was deciding what to do for a medicine cabinet. The surface mounted one looked hideous before and I didn't want to integrate it with a mirror. I've seen some neat ones online that are concealed by a picture frame, but they were too deep for my shallow NYC walls and far too expensive. For the moment I've framed out my an area beside the sink for a custom medicine cabinet when I get around too it. I just need to cut a bit of laminated wood to fit in there, so it should be fairly easy when the time is right.

So now it's time for drywall and tileboard. I'll tackle this over the next few weeks as I'm traveling quite a bit still and I want to use that time to get the floors refinished. Time to start stacking everything into the bedroom! Yikes!

Color this, color that

Work on the apartment has been dormant. The plumber is coming soon and it has been made clear to me the bathroom floor is beyond simple repair and will need to be torn up. So, the most recent activity has been making decisions on tile and bath fixtures and counting down the days until I loose the toilet.

This weekend has been filled with making decisions which I don't like to make on bathroom tiles, fixtures, etc. Yesterday I took a trip up to the Bronx to look at tile after a few unsuccessful tries in the city. Luckily, this store had everything I was look for. I picked out a small gray mosaic tile, 1" x 1" for each tile. I'm thinking this with a white or light grey grout will really help the chrome fixtures pop off the walls. The price point is right too, just under $5 per sq. ft. Way better then the stuff I was looking around $20 per sq. ft.

With the tiles picked out, I had to tackle the bathtub spout and valve. In order for my plumber to do the work that needs to be done, this also had to be picked out since a new water mixing valve is needed. So, after looking long and hard at Restoration Hardware, I picked out the following 'vintage' tub spout and handle.


Unfortunately, it was more expensive then all the tile I'll need to do the wall and floor...and the set didn't include the shower head. I'm beginning to understand why bathrooms are so expensive to renovate.

Bombing the Bathroom

It's been a long week and as you can tell I've been pretty busy. The bathroom has been the focus this week since it's really all that is left in the major construction picture.

So, after cleaning up the mess from the weekend Monday and Tuesday, I dug into the bathroom on Wednesday night. I quickly found that Travis's work over the holidays eased the process since most of what was left was plaster on lath and some tile on tileboard.

The shower wall proved to be the most difficult as the tile was on a greenboard and cementboard in some places.

Friday night I finished up the demo and Saturday was spent bagging what was left up and working on electrical and insulation. Sunday was more electrical which resulted in two trips to Home Depot which took forever compliments of slow work on the A train.

I woke up early today to tidy things up and get ready for Roy to help me hand the ceiling drywall. It took us 2 hours to cut the drywall and hang it with the main challenge being working in such a small space with one person on a ladder in the bath tub, another on a sawhorse and attempting to vault it up around corners and over the steam pipe.

After a bit of struggling, we got it all into place and it feels good to have gone from demo to insulated, re-wired with a ceiling in less then a week.

Still, there is a lot of work to do so I can get a sink back and not have to take baths (I've never taken so many baths in my life as I have this week!). It looks like the plumbing for the bath tub will need to be replaced and the subfloor has holes and oddities around the edges.



I have a few contractors coming this week to look at these elements and give their opinion.

In the meantime, I'll haul the bombed out debris to the curb each night this week and shop for tiles.

This is where I poop

Enough said for now.