Friday, October 3, 2008
So, we bought a house. The reason why I'm posting about it here is that I am about to don my cowl and mask and become Spackle Woman, Maid of Mortar, DIY Warrior Princess (catchphrase: "Criminals, prepare to be renovated!") and overhaul the master bathroom, which is...well...
Okay, you have a 15' x 12' room with am L-shaped 2-sink vanity, Roman tub, glass shower enclosure, a 6' hallway leading to the bedroom, and a sloping ceiling which means the wall closest to the interior of the house is 10' tall. In reality the room is more like 12' x 12' because one interior corner is cut off and leads to the toilet stall, and the other corner leads to the walk-in closet -- the space between them is taken up by the hallway.
1) The walls have painted-over wallpaper (the paint is bright mustard yellow and the wallpaper is an extraordinarily hideous blue and red paisley. Euuuuuuu...) which is badly damaged and has to come off; after this, the drywall must be repaired, primed, covered with textured paint and painted with an Aegean blue topcoat. The ceiling will be painted semi-gloss white. Part of this requires me to climb up a 6' ladder to get at the top of the 10' ceiling -- intellectually I know that a fall of five feet won't kill me, but it could certainly break a couple of bones.
2) The main floor is carpeted and the toilet stall has a linoleum floor; all of this is coming up, along with the baseboards, and is being replaced with white textured porcelain tile and suede white coving tile.
3) The fixtures (two 4" centerpoint sink faucets and drains, one Roman tub faucet and drain, one shower faucet and showerhead, one towel rod, two round towel holders, one toilet paper holder) are ancient gold-colored things that are corroded in places; they will be replaced with brushed nickel fittings.
4) The shower door and glass wall are sheathed in tarnished gold trim and need to be replaced. Because of the odd shape of the half-glass wall (it sits on a tile wall next to the far end of the tub) I may have to have the pros come in and do this.
5) The vanity lights are tarnished gold and need to be replaced with brushed nickel vanity lights, and the glass acorn light fixtures in the toilet stall and closet replaced with nice dome lights.
The exercise angle is, I'm doing all of this renovation work myself, with the possible exception of the shower stall door. Lyndon is helping me as brute force and painter's apprentice, but the mudding, paint cutting in, tiling, plumbing and wiring is being done by yours truly. So far I have badly banged up knuckles and a blister on the underside of my right index finger, my arms feel like limp noodles from all the wallpaper scraping, my feet hurt like hell, my Achilles bursa needs to be iced every night, and I'm having the time of my life.
Haven't lost any weight so far, but I think I'm also retaining water as a result of muscle and joint inflammation. I do know that my leg muscles are starting to firm up something wicked. And yes, pictures will be posted once the job is done.
2 comments:
Mel, I don't envy any of the work you have to do before you move in. But at the same time, I completely envy you. While I love my house, I know this isn't the house I'll die in. This is our starter house. I can't wait to get into our "real" house.
Take lots of before and after pics.
By the way, the last three letters of my verification code are Robbie's initials... e o q
Well, this is our starter home, too -- we don't plan on staying here for the rest of our lives, but at the moment Dallas is where the work is for Lyndon, so we might as well start building equity.
If it was our dream home, I'd be tiling the bathroom floor in these absolutely gorgeous opalescent blue 3" tiles I found -- as we'll need to sell it at some point, I'm going instead with textured white porcelain tiles, and I'm using the blue tiles as an accent dado instead.
And yes, pictures will be forthcoming!
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