Master Bathroom Reborn

We cannot believe that we are actually back at the house in Payson two full weekends in one month.  That has not happened since July of 2012.  This weekend promises to be a busy one as we try to put our master bathroom back together. The first task of the weekend was to seal the new tile in the master bathroom, guest bathtub and foyer.  This was a fairly simple task, except that Mike dripped sealer in Laurie's hair when he was working on the higher spots and she was working on the lower.  Since the tile around the guest bathtub will be subjected to water on a regular basis, we decided to apply a second coat of sealer while the other areas only got one.

Foyer taped off to avoid getting sealer on carpet

Laurie did the lower tiles so Mike could drip sealer in her hair

The guest bathroom also required one other change due to the tile work.  Joe (our tile guy) ran the bullnose tile on the outside of the tub which made the new towel shelf we put up too close to the tile.  Mike had to pull out the old screw anchors, patch the holes and re-center the shelf on the wall.  It was not much effort, but still took time.  We also applied an enamel paint to the chipped areas on the tub.  We can't say that this was a good fix, but having white spots is much better than exposed metal.  It will eventually need to be re-finished professionally, but it should get us through until next year (when our new home improvement budget kicks in).  After applying the second sealer coating on the tub tile and fixing the chips, we were able to put up the shower curtain/rod.  We will need to pull out the toilet and sink/cabinet one more time in order to paint this summer.

Bathroom is complete for now until we paint this room

Since Mike painted most of the rest of the house with the primer, and already painted the master bathroom one time (Laurie changed her mind about the off white color we originally chose), we decided to let Laurie tackle the bathroom paint job this time.  With the paint colors that she picked out with our niece last summer, Laurie bought the new paint at a Sherwin Williams in the valley and we brought it up with us.  Sherwin Williams was having a 4 day, 40% off sale and we luckily hit it at just the right time. We have usually painted together, so this was her first time on her own.  She had some problems at first, but got the job done.  There were some touch-ups she had to do later and she had to wait for the water leak patch to be fixed to finish the whole job.  Once that was all done, it all looked very good.

Did not get any of Laurie working, but this was her prep work

The finished product after the patch and touch-up

While Laurie worked on the painting, Mike's job was to work on the water leak in the bathroom.  We found in January that the sharkbite valve on the cold water pipe in the master bathroom was leaking, possibly due to a bad seal.  The new valve was placed on an old pipe and the plastic on the pipe end was very rough when the sharkbite was removed.  These pipes were not replaced in our remodel since the walls in the bathrooms were not removed. There was not enough pipe protruding from the wall to make a clean cut for the valve, so a new pipe needed to be installed. Mike looked in the crawl space and found that our electrician/plumber ran new plumbing under the house and then coupled those new pipes with sharkbites to the older pipes that were not replaced.  So replacing the old pipe was a lot easier than running new pipe all the way back to the source.  After Laurie was done with the painting and Mike made a run to Home Depot for the proper parts, he removed the old pipes and ran new ones through the hole in the wall and down to the crawl space.  He used the same sharkbite connectors for both the splices and the valves.  It all worked very well until we turned the water back on.  The hot water line at both the splice and valve was dry and the cold water valve was no longer leaking, but the splice connection under the house was leaking like a sieve.  Mike tried cutting the pipes for clean connections and even got a new sharkbite connector, but could only reduce the bad leak to a periodic drip.  He finally got a different type of connector at Home Depot and tried that before we finished for the weekend and it seemed to be holding better, but we left a bucket under the connection to see how it does while we are away.

New pipes going down into the crawlspace

New pipes with valves attached

Once the pipes were replaced and the valves were no longer leaking, Mike next had to patch the drywall around the pipes.  We still had some old 5/8" drywall and some joint compound for the patch, but had to get drywall tape.  After some cutting, trimming, taping and applying joint compound, we had a fairly clean patch job.  Mike thought it was only necessary to do two coats with the compound and when that was dry and sanded, he applied primer paint to the spot.  When that was dry, Laurie applied her coats of paint while doing the touch-ups and afterward the patch was barely noticeable.  Of course we were not too concerned as the patch would be behind the vanity.

Putting the patch into place

After taping and joint compound

Patch with the primer

While Laurie was working on the painting, Mike constructed a pet fence for the 11' opening to the kitchen out of PVC pipe he picked up on one of his Home Depot runs.  After Laurie's week with Zena and rain, he had created a design that would hopefully work.  His original design had three sections that could be taken apart and easily stored, but during the actual construction he found it was better to have four sections as these would fit better behind the short wall in the kitchen.  Laurie found it was really more of a fence than a gate (too tall for her to step over), but it does provide a block that will keep Zena in the kitchen.  After getting the fence up, we found that there was enough room to slide it to one side to go around it instead of climbing over and Mike has thought of a way to add a gate on a later visit.

Our PVC pet fence, hopefully it will have a gate in the future

Once the master bathroom had all its fixes and paint, we were able to put the fixtures back up and install the toilet and sink.  Laurie wants to wait on installing the two cabinets to allow the wall paint to cure longer since, when we pulled the cabinets off the wall, a few small pieces of paint came with them.  But for now we are able to use the bathroom for more than just showers.

Almost fully back together, still need front and side cabinets

The last part of the weekend work involved taking care of the weeds and mowing the grass/weeds in the front.  During downtime on Sunday, Mike started spraying the weeds with Round-Up and then finished on Monday.  He also spent time on Saturday trimming the dead branches from two of the trees in the back yard and piling all our dead branches behind our small shed.  Hopefully we can find some time to burn this dead wood instead of taking up space in our dumpster.  Mike did use our Hula Hoe to remove and rake up many of the bigger weeds and dead stuff and then mowed the front.  It was so much easier and faster to mow that area than use the weed-eater as he has done in the past, plus a lot less stress on his back.  We will see how well the Round-Up does on the weeds left over when we visit again.

The two small tress Mike trimmed and then removed much of the old dead weeds/grasses

After using the mower we brought up a few weeks ago.

The weekend was not all work as we found time to visit a couple of restaurants in town including our most favorite place, the 260 Cafe (great breakfast), and go to the local movie theater.  Even though we accomplished a lot, and it was very tiring, it was nice to have the house back to being fully functional so we can start having guests which is hard to do with just one bathroom.

Stats: 3 Home Depot trips; 0 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 4/13-4/22: $144
Remodeling expense to date: $47,585