Worth setting the alarm for

A few more pictures of the master bath - the glass guys showed up right on time at 7am and had the glass installed in a little over an hour.  It was an early morning but worth it to get the job done.  We need to let it set for 36 hours and we still have some caulking in the shower to do so we're not quite ready to use the shower yet but the bathroom is really starting to look finished now! 

Weekend, Part II

And here it is, the nearly finished master bath!  Complete with giant soaking tub, two person shower with rain shower and regular shower heads, and 7 foot vanity.  Needless to say, we can't wait to start enjoying it.  I've coveted this tub, the Kohler Escale, ever since one of our favorite bloggers, DIY Diva, installed one in her house and put up the gorgeous pictures.  We went with the freestanding version to keep the bathroom feeling open and airy and I love it.  It took some time and involved one very nearly squished cat to get it into place with just the two of us but fortunately, the weight of it does not match the size and we were able to get it into place without any non-cat casualties.  Now it's time to pour a drink and enjoy the remaining 13 hours until the shower glass installers show up bright and early tomorrow morning!

Weekend, Part I

We've been hard at work this weekend after I, in an overly optimistic moment, scheduled the glass installation for our master bath shower for Monday morning at 7am.  This meant that the bathroom, which a few days ago looked like the first picture, needed to be completely finished this weekend.  After a few late nights this week and a lot of work this weekend, I can officially say that we're ready - although due to the fact that I can't seem to get blogger to post more than 4 photos at a time, it's going to take me one more post to get the final pictures up.  But, in the course of a few days, we decided upon adding wainscotting to the bathroom, added it, caulked, puttied, and primed the new accent wall, painted the entire bathroom, including trim, in two coats, sealed the shower tile, installed all the fixtures, and installed the tub.  In short, we're both ready for Monday to get here so we can rest!  Oh, and we also painted one of the front bedrooms since we had the paint out already - we did both the master bathroom and one of the bedrooms in a gray-blue called "Urban Mist," which is what I'm going to call air pollution from now on ("can't breathe?  oh, that's just the urban mist!").  Next up, pictures of the finished product... 

Finish line in sight

The master bath is trimmed and primed. We decided to put some more wainscoting around the tub area to make it pop a little more. This weekend we will paint and get everything clean because the shower glass is coming Monday morning. We are almost there!

How to trim out a pocket door

This weekend we would like to be done with the master bathroom completely so tonight I had to trim out the pocket door to the toilet room. Our door was a little bit tricky since it closes against a perpendicular wall, but the steps are generally the same. First I had to rip 1.5" strips to go on either side of the door closing so the door disappears flush when it's open. Before I did this I adjusted the backstop on the door with a couple pieces of wood to make sure when the trim was installed everything was perfectly flush. Not the easiest task, but it definitely pays off to be exact. Then I installed a 4.5" strip for the door to close against and the wall trim to rest against.

Since this wall was going to be a little odd looking with the regular 4" trim we've been using around the doors I decided to give it some more detail by using 1/4" MDF in a wainscoting effect. The rest of the bathroom is going to get a bluish/grey paint, but this wall will remain white to make it pop and give the bathroom some character.

A good day for indoor work

It was a dark and stormy day...and, well, nothing exciting really happened.  But it was a productive day nonetheless as we move forward on the detail work on the second floor.  We spent the day finishing installing the base trim, puttied and caulked all the trim, and - after a few false starts while Brian figured out how to cut the crown molding (and I stood around and said vaguely encouraging things) - started installing the crown in the master bedroom.  The pictures above show one half of the entry hall with crown and one without so it's a nice snapshot of the difference.  We got about halfway through the master bedroom installation and then put the project on hold because we're going to take back the rest of the molding that we previously purchased and exchange it.  A word to the wise - do not buy the double-sided crown molding.  It seems like it would be easier to work with, but it doesn't line up quite right from front to back so it actually just creates more problems.  So, if you're planning to do this yourself, save a trip and just buy the one-sided crown molding the first time!

We also had a helper in today - a friend of our drywall guys who came over to give us a hand with painting.  He finished both built-in closets in the two guest bedrooms and put two coats of paint on the trim and doors in one of the bedrooms so that is a great help.  We'll probably have him back over next weekend as well.  It feels like we've spent the last two weeks doing nothing but installing and puttying and caulking trim so we know exactly how much there is still to paint...and we could certainly use a hand with that!  All in all, it turned out to be a good day to spend inside and get a lot of work done!

Consequences of not planning...

...Or better yet - consequences of changing the plan after the fact. Originally we were going to put sconces in the master bath. So I wired everything up in the bathroom for future sconces. We didn't have the vanity picked out yet either so I left the wires dangling in the general area we wanted to eventually put the electrical boxes. I would highly suggest you not do this if you're planning something similar. Next time we will definitely have these decisions (lights/vanity/spacing) made before we close up the walls.

Fast forward to present day... We couldn't find any sconces we liked enough so we decided to go with normal above the mirror lighting... oops. The drywallers poked the wires through where they could and now the wires are way off from where I want them to be. I toyed with the idea of poking a series of holes to reroute each one, but that seemed like it was going to be a huge pain and make a huge mess. I decided on ripping off about a 6x2 section of drywall to give me better access. It was messy, but I was able to get everything routed to where I needed them to be. After some cleanup I got the lights wired up and the outlets roughed in. The last picture is my first of probably about 6 coats of drywall mud to get that wall back to being smooth. At least it will mostly be covered by mirrors in case I don't get it perfect.

You can also check out the granite we picked out for the master bath. Soon we'll post some pics of the whole space. Still some work to do in there this week/weekend before we can call it finished.