Could have used a Handyman

[Ginnie]

Where is Jay when you need him? From all his experience in building sets I could have used his help.
First off, if you really knew me and I said I was tackling a bathroom renovation you would laugh. For a sustained period of time.
It all started out when our neighbour asked if we wanted to go in with them on getting bathroom flooring - it was cheaper between us to get a twelve foot roll.
We agreed and figured, okay, $120 for the flooring.
Later I realized from inspecting the floor that I would have to pull off the old tiles. After that I saw that I would have to remove the linoleum beneath that. And I would have to put down a quarter inch sub-floor. Okay, another $20.
My wife said that since we were going to change the cabinet and sink soon anyway, that we should do that now since the new floor should go underneath it. The cheapest cabinet and sink that looked okay was $130. That was a good deal. After taking the old cabinet out I saw how bad the wall was behind it - a layer of drywall (in spots), gyp rock (again in spots) and even older drywall behind that - in spots. Then she wanted the light fixture over the mirror raised so that the mirror could go in vertically instead of horizontally. I came to the conclusion that the whole wall should come down. So I did that and put up one new sheet of drywall, and of course raising the light box first.
Now we had to paint the whole bathroom, removing wallpaper, all the fixtures, molding along the bottom. Alright, $70 for paint and primer. Luckily, I had waterproof drywall stored at my neighbours.
And why use the old fixtures? Lets get new ones instead. So out we go to get a towel holder ($30), another towel holder ($22), and of course new towels (Our Pokemon or Michelen Tire towels wouldn't look good). $40. And there seemed to be endless things I kept going back to the hardware store for, like nails, caulking and such.
I started this job on Tuesday, and hopefully will be done tomorrow. I'm on holidays this week, so lucky me I get to do something constructive. I'm glad that my better half helped - she spent more time on the project than me in fact.
All I have left is to put the top floor down, the cabinet and sink (don't leak, please!) and all the fixtures.
I just hope that bright orange paint looks better than it does now - I'm not kidding.
It isn't a project from hell, but for me, the 'un-handyman', it comes close.
If it all turns out good, I'll post pictures.
I would imagine that for some of you a project like this is no big deal, but I'm not used to doing this kind of stuff...

Any similar stories?

[Ian Pearse]

It's incredible, isn't it, how what started out as a 20-minute job snowballs into a major project! ;D I've had this happen so many times I've lost count. Known in the trade as "Specification Creep", "Requirements Creep" and various other labels, depending on which Project Management technique you use.

[echnaton]

But you and more importantly your wife will be much happier with the new bathroom. Plus it adds value to you house., except maybe for the orange paint.

[Ginnie]

Jul 11, 2008 12:26:54 GMT -4 echnaton said:

But you and more importantly your wife will be much happier with the new bathroom. Plus it adds value to you house., except maybe for the orange paint.

There must have been some guilt lingering in the back of my brain from my 'Go Blue" days.

Today, I put in the floor. I had to cut a quarter inch off the bottom of the door so that it could open and close. Easier doing that than lowering the floor.
Just realized we need new window curtains and shower curtain. Ching-ching.
And the plumbing work to put in the sink and taps are a little beyond me. The heights don't match up and I have really bad luck trying to extend pipes. So, a plumber is coming on Tuesday. I'll have shut off valves put in at the same time, and a leak from the toilet tank repaired. Ching-ching-ching-ching-a-ling.

...also...from putting in the subfloor and such, I have many, many touchups on the paint to do. Apparently paint takes about 14 days to properly dry, not three hours.
It seems every time I need just a few items I go out and spend eighty dollars. What's with that?
Oh, what an adventure...

[peterscreek]

I've had projects evolve like that myself. Not this time, though. We'll be starting our master bath project sometime around or after the first of the month, after the rest of our special orders arrive. I'm takin' it down to the drywall and subfloor. New whirlpool; tile floor, shower, and tub deck; vanity, medicine cabinets, and vanity top; vessel sinks, fixtures, and lighting; paint...the works. I'm tired just thinking about it.

[Ginnie]

Good luck!
Sounds like a nightmare to me.

I don't know how I could do that considering that our bathroom is the only one in our house that we can use. We have one in the basement too, but that is rented out.
I haven't shaved in five days, but I just put up the mirror, so I guess I'll grab a bowl and shave.

[peterscreek]

Fortunately, we have a full bath downstairs in addtion to the master upstairs. We'll just have to share it with the cats.

I wouldn't call our project a nightmare...not yet anyway...but it will be a lot of work. I even get to practice my plumbing skills. I'm replacing a single-sink vanity with a double so I need to plumb the extra drain and supply lines. I'll also need to replumb the whirlpool a bit since the valves are moving from the wall to the tub deck. Fortunately, I got to hone my drywall patching skills when I moved several electrical outlets earlier in the year to accommodate new baseboard radiators.

[Ginnie]

For those of you who thought I was kidding about the orange I submit the following for evidence:
]

Note all the white areas on the door that were scratched when I put the subfloor down. I'm not making this up folks.

There's more decorating work to be done for sure, but you get the general idea.

ORANGE RULES!
Until I get tired of it and repaint...

[LunarOrbit]

I like it! But you should paint your other bathroom blue, just so people have a choice.

[Ginnie]

Jul 12, 2008 10:08:04 GMT -4 LunarOrbit said:

I like it! But you should paint your other bathroom blue, just so people have a choice.

It would be cool to have a 'theme' switch' beside the light switch and I could switch it to blue, orange, green....at will.
Oh, and the reason I use the blue theme here is that I can tell if I'm logged in easily . If its orange, I'm not logged in, if it's blue, I am.

[peterscreek]

Looks good. You're braver than I, going with such a bold color. When it comes to wall color, I was always a white, bone, or beige kind of guy until we bought this house. I've been slowly working my way up the color chips since then. First it was a pale sunny yellow in the kitchen. Then, when I stripped the wallpaper from the hallway, it was a pale orange kind of like sherbet. Most recently, we painted the guest room "Sassy Lilac". Nothing outrageous planned for the master suite, though...just midtone green and blue.

[Ginnie]

Looks good. You're braver than I, going with such a bold color.

Well, we're unsure now whether to leave it like that. Time will tell.

[Jason]

Thats...really orange.

[JayUtah]

You don't want your house built like sets are built. Sets are built to last only as long as the show (if that long). Only a few general-purpose pieces are built to last.

We generally don't paint them orange.

Bit of trivia, though: my famous white-wigged avatar came from the show 1776, in which also starred as the Courier a young man named Thayne Jasperson, who unfortunately was one of this week's dismissals from Fox's show "So You Think You Can Dance."

[PeterB]

The house we live in could be a renovator's delight if you wanted it to be. The people who built it had so many idiosyncratic ideas that now, 25-odd years down the track, it's going to be quite expensive to replace things as they break or to improve the energy efficiency of the place. For examples, the windows are all aluminium frames with rubber seals, meaning it's almost impossible to retro-fit double-glazing, and hideously expensive to replace the windows frame and all; the ceiling space has R2.0 insulation fitted, when Canberra houses really need R4.0 insulation; the toilets are porcelain, all one piece and single-flush, so we'll have to remove and replace the entire toilet to install dual-flush toilets; the light fittings throughout the house get rid of their heat poorly, meaning the incandescant light globes blow much faster than they normally would; and the ceiling in the lounge room is so high (about 5 metres) that it's always cold at human level in winter, and the lights are nearly impossible to change (see above about how quickly they blow). Having said all that, the house is still very nice, and quite liveable, it's just that it means our winter electricity bill is a lot larger than it really needs to be.

It doesn't help that I'm no handyman. I can only manage the simpler of tasks, though I'm quite proud of the "pelmets" I've made for most of the windows around the house. Along with new, heavier curtains, we should save a bit on heating this winter.

My brothers and my brother-in-law are all pretty good in the handyman area, with my brother-in-law largely building the kit home his family live in. I helped build it (I was 18 at the time), and it was that experience which convinced me to only buy houses which were already built! But I still have one proud memory of the experience. When I started working with BIL, the house was only built up to floor level, and the frames for the house were stacked to one side. The frame pieces had letters scrawled on them, and the plans also had letters scrawled on them. BIL couldn't work out how the two sets of letters corresponded, thinking initially that each frame piece had a unique letter. The problem was that each frame piece had at least two letters on it, and some had more. It was Yours Truly who worked out that the letters corresponded to points where frames joined...