Living without a Master Bath: Day 7

Guy and I are lucky. Not win-the-lottery lucky, but second-shower-on-premises lucky.

Our initial plan (True do-it-yourselfers know that you almost always end up throwing most of your first ideas out the window early on) was to remove the tile and put up new tile. The tiles are tiny and after chipping 893 (about 15 actually) off the walls, GUY (not me...) got the sledgehammer and we knocked the everloving crap out of the walls! Color ME surprised! It ended up being a good thing because under the window there was a tiny bit of mold and a lot of old carpenter ant damage. Even the studs needed repair in a couple areas, and we had to remove and replace some insulation.

Here's some progress photos.

Guy vs. Tile

Agg! Rotted/eaten wood!

Yeah, this piece of wood might as well have been paper

Insulation removed. This will wait till tomorrow.

Cutting out the rotten wood

New insulation and Durock cement board

All walls down, wood & insulation replaced and recessed shelves roughed in.

Pedestal sink all gone!

We had to remove some sanded grout that was on all three sides of the tub, who knew it would be so freaking difficult? We bought Sulfamic Acid Cleaner from the Home Depot to soften it. We saturated it and re-saturated it, then chipped it off. Yikes.

Next up is installing cement board walls then wall tiles. I'd like to get the shower up and running then demo the floor.

The online picture lacks detail

We did end up agreeing on using some mosaic tile. It's called "Silver Tip" and it's also from the Home Depot.

I love the metal bits!!

Little Cape Guest Spot: Euclid Boo!

So I have a nifty little thing we came across tonight, but it didn't happen at the Little Cape, but rather my mom's house, Boo!

Guy and I lived at Boo for years, and we painted quite a bit of it, along with numerous other upgrades during our stay. The walls always had a weird thickness to them and the paint was cracked, and I mean cracked... like crazy... all over.

It went through a few looks while we lived there, here's a very brief visual history of Ninny's dining room:

Boo's Dining Room in white - move in day

In purple, with light purple trim and builtin. Ack.

Dining room in stripes Gingerbread removed from built-in

I loved the stripes, but they ended up being painted over with an incredibly neutral light tan. Long story. We also pried the gingerbread trim off, as you can see.

Guy's parents are giving my mom a set of beautiful corner cabinets, so naturally my mom wanted the very builders-grade, old built in to go. As we started to pry the wood from the walls tonight, we found something that surprised me - paint underneath! I thought the built-in was original to the house... guess not!

We pulled more out, and it was when we removed the middle shelf that I saw a strip of wallpaper.

So of course, we slowly tear off some paint that gives easily, and next thing you know, we can make out that under the numerous but expected layers of paint, there are THREE layers of wallpaper!

What happens next? We stripped the entire room! My husband, me, my brother, his girlfriend, we're in there stripping... err, well you know.

This wallpaper is definitely from the 1940's. I didn't get any good photos of the one layer of paper under IT, which I'd peg as original to the dining room. House was built in 1941. Neat!!

Just peeling paint with our fingers!

Totes cray, right?!?

The insanity goes on, remember how I said the walls up and down were cracking, splitting, and sagging? Turns out the once upon a timers wallpapered EVERYTHING (even DOORWAYS that don't have wood trim)! So we're going to strip everything off (with just our hands, it literally peels off) and go to town!

Do I sound excited? I kinda am. Why?

House history = porn for me and,
The walls have looked bad for years and we never knew why.

I'm kind of surprised the freaking paint stayed up this long. Maybe one more coat would have been the back-breaking straw, ya think?