Home Improvements. The Summer of Upheavel!

This summer our house was a DISASTER! To say the least.

Jeff has been talking about wanting to tear out our shower in our master bathroom for a WHILE but we've just not made the time to do it. He always dreads home improvement b/c he says i'm a freak and insist on him completing a project ASAP. Hmmm. I think thats called NORMAL! But he likes to take his time and get it done as he feels like it. No. thank. you. ;-)

So after being off work ALL summer, he decided the week before we headed out of town on vacation to start this project. His reasoning? "If you never get started it'll never get done". Oh geez. LOL! While I wasnt a fan of his timing (which, btw, he totally did NOT understand... I tried to explain that packing for vaca in a MESS was one issue and not having him available to help b/c all he wanted to do was work on the shower was the other. Yes, i wanted him to work on it, but i also wanted help packing! Oh, the delima! HA!)

I really wish i had a "before" picture of the old shower. We had a gold shower door. And obviously the wall between the shower and tub is a half wall so there was glass there. I had some reservations about the shower Jeff wanted to put in but we ended up agreeing on it.

Let me back up and explain WHY we replaced the shower!
1. It had leaked a couple of times at a joint where the wall and floor pan came together. Jeff had torn out the base molding at the left corner (if you're looking AT the shower) and tried to fix it but he was always hesitant to put the molding back b/c he was worried of more leaking. He took that molding off BEFORE RHYAN WAS BORN!
2. I was sick of re-caulking the shower. ITs hard to feel clean when you shower in a place where the caulk is black. Yes, i've used all kinds of cleaners. Caulk just gets gross. I hated it.
3.We had a GOLD shower door that had gotten to the point that I couldnt clean it anymore and make it clear again.
4. The shower door was leaking, too.

Ok, so how we decided on this particular shower.
1. Tile is beautiful but grout gets yuck. I'm in a phase of life with littles that I feel like all i do is CLEAN. I wanted a shower that didnt require effort
2. Jeff wanted a one piece. Um, hello, that wouldnt fit into the house (those jokers are put in NEW construction and the house built around them... yes, this is an argument we had in home depot. WITH the plumbing/bathroom person who worked there. yes, we ended up buying the one piece AND the two piece b/c i didnt want to get home and not have one that worked and Jeff INSISTED on trying to get the one piece in the house. Really? He's a really smart math teacher, but he just couldnt make sense of the fact that the shower was bigger than our DOOR! lol!!!). Point is, he didnt want to have to worry about leaks!

So, this is what we ended up with! A two piece shower! NO leaking. NO caulking. Minimal cleaning. YAY!

Like i said, Jeff ended up building the half wall up but NOT all the way to the ceiling. I was honestly worried about how much light we would lose in the bathroom but its not been bad at all! Probably b/c just to the left of the shower is the toilet with another window there. So there is still plenty of light!

So, as if the one piece had a chance of getting into our house... the TWO piece gave us trouble! We couldnt get the top part through the hallway. So Jeff's dad suggested just cutting a hole through the living room. I about died! And when I came home that same day, this is what I found.

Jeff said "it makes the house more modern, having a pass through! Its all the rage!" That man is hilarious!

I disagreed, and really, I've never been trendy anyways ;-). So he patched the hole. And this is when we both decided that sheetrock/mudding is a job that takes LOTS of practice to get good at! I think he did a fairly good job for his first ever patch job, but I was grateful that a guy in our neighborhood is a retired construction guy and let me hire him at $12/hour to sheetrock the bathroom wall jeff had built. HA!

And OH MY LORD. Sheetrock is a MESS! Our house was COVERED in sheetrock dust for ages :-(

In the meanwhile of that project, we had project #2 going on. Back in April, we had a friend who owns a flooring company come out and look at our pre-finished hardwoods and asked if they could be re-poly'd. They were pretty scratched up and i HATED the high gloss look so i was hoping for two things:
1. To add a darker tint to the poly
2. To put a sateen sheen instead of high gloss to make it easier to keep clean.

He assured us we could accomplish both, so we did it.

And within a WEEK, it was scratching off. Like clear fingernail polish (but with a tint) you could scratch it right off with literally your shoe, chair leg (even with felt pads!), anything! Toys, etc... It was awful.

They came BACK out and gave us two options.
1. Put down new floors (omg, $$$)
2. Try to sand and refinish.

We decided to test the foryer to see if they could be sanded. Since they are a pre-finshed hardwood and its engineered wood, each layer is thin and runs in the opposite grain of the other. So the risk was there that we might sand through the top layer into the second layer. We were willing to try, though because replacing them was just not an option financially!

And, it WORKED!! I was thrilled! And we decided to move forward with scheduling having them redone :-)

Back to the shower! Jeff kept working on it and within a couple of weeks, presto! We had a shower!
I went out and got new faucets in bronze for the whole bathroom :-) And we couldnt find a shower door that came in bronze that fits our shower (all the ones for our size shower are silver or gold... "builders grade" i guess... most people wouldnt expect you to put in a fiberglass shower and then a nicer door! HA!). The cost of having a door custom made was about $800, so we decided to go with a shower curtain for now. And actually, i LIKE it! It adds softness to the bathroom and i love having a pretty pattern there :-)

I was SO grateful that Jeff worked so hard and got it done so quickly! He really did a GREAT job!

Back to the floors! We ended up staying with Jeffs parents again for the redo. What was estimated to be 2-3 nights turned into a solid 7 days, but i'm really happy with the results... we decided to sand it in the opposite direction of the natural grain to make it look more antique/weathered. That way, if there were any areas that burned through to the second layer, it would look more natural b/c the entire floor would just look older. That turned out to be a really good decision b/c we did have 2-3 burn through spots. But they blend right in!

Daniel, the guy who did the refinishing, was AMAZING. He worked so hard and diligently! I was so grateful for his knowledge and trusted him in choosing the color b/c he's been doing this for so long. He gave us a guide to choose from but I actually just said to him that he should pick and that we would trust him. He ended up going with a dark finish, but i honestly LOVE IT!

Here is the "after the re-poly but before the sanding"

After the sanding but before applying stain/ sateen poly

A sneak preview of the color of the stain... He did under the appliances first and let it dry while he finished up the rest of the flooring. I'll admit, i kind of freaked when i saw this. ;-)

The finished product! Didnt it turn out AMAZING?!?! I LOVE how the stain brought out the grain so much and i love the sateen finish. I sweep/dust mop frequently... but honestly (dont be grossed out), I only mop MAYBE once a month now. These floors dont ever show spots and its so easy to wipe up messes!

So while this summer was a bit crazy in terms of the home renovations, we are truly enjoying all of the hard work and wouldnt change a thing now! We LOVE our floors AND shower :-)

And If we dont do any more home improvements for another few years, I"ll be ok with that!