Our Home Remodeling Project

The Beginning

I started this blog, not so much to publish, but rather, to preserve the record of our progress on remodeling our home. You see, I had recorded the progress for what I believed to be forever on the hard drive of my computer through pictures, but that wasn't a wise thing to do because the hard drive of that computer crashed, therefore losing those precious images. I searched and searched for ways of safely storing our story, and I finally came here.

In the early going of this blog we will not be going in chronological order, nor is it always going to be in real time. The reason is because I got the idea to do this blog now that we are 90% complete on our home remodeling project. In fact, the only two rooms left to do are the guest bathroom and the kitchen. We are actually remodeling our entire home from ceiling to floor, room by room. There are also plans for some work on the outside.

This blog will not read like a daily diary like most blogs. I am deliberately manipulating the post dates so that my entries will read from top to bottom, not from bottom to top. Most of the work that you will see posted here has long been completed, I am assembling this blog, for the most part, after the fact as I have time to do so.

So, here goes:

I guess I will start with the master bath. This was a room that we literally gutted from ceiling to floor and totaly rebuilt. This house was built in 1995, yet cabinetry appeared to be left over remnants from the demolition of a 1970's era apartment complex.

Notice the small makeup table at the end that my
wife never used. It seemed like a terrible waste
of space that ended up being more of a catch all.

I figured it could be utilized for additional cabinet space.

There was also some real ugly linoleum to get rid of.You will notice in the left background that I had already built and tiled the garden tub enclosure. I didn't think to do a photo journal of this part of the project until I was already well underway.

Masterbath Demolition Begins!

After I built the tub enclosure, we removed
those gaudy cabinets.
However, some of the pieces I saved for later use in the project.
You'll notice in the right background the shower enclosure. That is the one thing in this room we left untouched. It is sound and serves the purpose, so we figured we will do something with that at a later time. Besides, we are doing all this work while we are living in the house. We left the toilet until last and left the shower alone completely so that we could still use this as a fuctioning bathroom while we did our work.

Some Bad Lighting

The lighting was also interesting. It consisted of a couple
of flourescent shop lights above four white honeycomb
plastic difusers.

Aside from one medium size central overhead light, these provided all the lighting for the bathroom.

Pre-work For The Jacuzzi

In our remodeled master bath, we wanted a heated Jacuzzi tub. We had a 60" garden tub, but it was in bad shape and actually had a crack in the bottom.
It was neccessary to pretty much demolish everything and start from scratch.

In preparation for the Jacuzzi, I had to rebuild the enclosure and wire in two separate dedicated 15 amp GFCI circuits, one for the heater, and one for the pump motor. I actually went with 20 amp circuits. I didn't take any pictures of the wiring of the Jacuzzi circuits, because it would have been too cumbersome under the house. But, in a nutshell,
I installed two circuit breakers in open spots on my inside power distribution box and made two runs under the house in conduit and ended them near the area where the tub would be mounted above
in the house. I created two electrical outlets each separately mounted in a single gang box with two GFCI outlets. GFCI is essential when dealing with electricity and water. So, if there is any chance of an issue I always use GFCI.

After installing my two circuits, it was time to get the enclosure ready for the tub. Of course this involved a lot of measuring and remeasuring.

When I decided that my mounting box was correct, I decided that I needed to tile it. The reason that I wanted to tile it before I set the tub in was so that once the tub was in place, the top edge of the tub would actually set on top of the tile. I felt that this would create a more complete look to the tile, that is if the tile actually went under the top edge of the tub. I felt that I could create a more water tight seal that way as well. My wife and I had actually purchased the tile about a year prior to this project. We walked into a home improvement store, and noticed some tile that was being clearanced out. We bought a bunch of it, even though we had no idea where we would use it. We put it in storage, then decided to use it on this project a year later. By trial and error, matching up different accent pieces, we came up with a design that we both liked. The lighter color 12" tile is the one that we bought on clearance, and we used a darker 6" bullnose to provide contrast.

You'll also notice that we added a mozaic tile across the middle to give even more character. Of course, in this illustration, there is no grout yet, and the backsplash is not completed, so I am going to jump ahead, and give you a more complete picture of what we did. In this illustration, we didn't have all the grout work done, and I didn't have the tile baseboards in place yet, but this gives you a sence of what the finished product looks like.

Of course, this picture was taken at a much further advanced stage, as you can see that, at this point, the floor is pretty much done.

The Jacuzzi Goes In!

Ok, now I am going to jump ahead to the installation of the Jacuzzi tub. I didn't actually install the tub until the near the end of the project, but it seems appropriate to show the what we did to get the tub completed.
Before dropping the tub in the hole, I wanted to make absolutely certain that it was going to fit properly, and that all the plumbing was correctly lined up. To do this, I suspened the tub over the hole using 2X4 supports that I nailed together, and taped a series of plumb-bobs around the tub in various places to check the alignment of everything.

After making sure that everything was right, I could drop the unit in the hole. From under the house, I ran appropriately sized screws into predetermined locations into the tub deck to secure it in place. I also connected the plumbing, and plugged the cords from the pump and heater into the GFCI outlets that I previously created. I also used spray foam insulation to seal all openings around pipes and wires to prevent air leaks and pests from entering the house.

I found this great teapot Roman faucet set, which I believe really accents this tub nicely.

At this point, some of the grout remained to be done, but it was starting to look very inviting.

Wiring In a New Lighting System

Now, I would like to show what we did about the lighting. Over the vanity area, there was a soffit assembly with two shop lights over four white honeycomb lenses or light difusers. There were two circuits present, each shop light on it's own wall switch by the entrance. In fact, at the entrance, there were four switches. Two of the switches were to the lights you see to the above right, one switch was to the vent fan, and the fourth switch went to a single overhead light in the center of the bathroom.

I did not change the circuit in any way to either the fan nor the central overhead light, but I did rerout the other two circuits and used them differently than they were before.

I used one of the two circuits present to wire in 4 boxes like the one in the above left picture, and mounted one above each of the 4 panel openings. The result was that I created four legs of that one circuit from a wall switch, with each leg ending at a box mounted inside the soffit assembly to provide power to four individual lights.

With the other circuit, I split it into two legs and ran each leg down inside of the wall, one on each side of the mirror area.

I ended each leg at a wall box so that I could mount a light on each side of the mirror.

More Light on the Subject!

After my wiring was completed, with the overhead lights now on one switch, and the side lights now on a different switch, I installed "eyeball" can lights on the soffit and sconce light bases on the sides.

Remember the old cabinets that I mentioned in the onset that I saved for possible salvage of parts at a later time? Well, I am glad that I did, because in that pile of junk was exactly what I needed for my brainchild to work. I managed to find exactly enough thin smooth surface wood panels to create 4 panels to mount my "eyeball" can lights in.

I then measured, cut, and painted the panels, and mounted the light frames in the panels.

I installed the can lights into the panel that I had made, and installed them into the four panel openings in the overhead soffit. I wired each light into the available power sources that I had created over each panel opening. So when it was all said and done, this is what the lighting looked like over the vanity.

Finishing the Lights!

We replaced the two regular on/off switches that were on the two vanity lighting circuits with slider/dimmer switches.

We had purchased 4 sconce lights, 2 of which we installed on either side of the mirror area over the vanity. The other 2 are planned for use on the 2 back walls behind the corner Jacuzzi garden tub.

And so now I will jump ahead to a finished picture of the lighting system.

You will notice that the walls have been painted, so has all the trim. We found a bargain on a beautiful mirror at a home improvement store. It was interesting to us that the regular price was close to $150.00, but had been reduced on clearance down to $25.00! We bought it at $25.00, but for some reason, we noticed just a few days later that the mirrors had been taken off clearance, and placed back on at the regular price. Wierd, huh? I thought the definition of "clearance" was that they were clearing them out, and they would never be back.

Anyway, here is how the final vanity lighting and mirror turned out:

The four overhead lights are on a separate dimmer switch apart from the sconces which are on their own dimmer switch. The plan is to eventually use the remaining two sconces that we purchased on the walls behind the tub, as previously stated, and tie them into the same circuit as the sconces in this photo are on.

It would be good to point out that this entire room is completely GFCI protected. We have the lights, fan, and all outlets powered through a GFCI supplied source. This is separate from the other two GFCI circuits that power the Jacuzzi pump and heater.

Planning for New Cabnets

Now we get to talk about the cabnetry. First, let me say that I do not believe in paying more than I have to for anything. But, I am not a cheap skate. I believe in quality. My motto is you pay for quality once, but you pay for junk forever.

In my pursuit of quality bathroom cabnets, at the best price possible, I noticed something: There is no such thing as reasonbly priced bathroom cabnetry. For some strange reason, all the cabnet makers out there seem to follow the same business plan. They will take their kitchen cabnet designs, cut about three inches off the height, cut two inches off the depth, double the price, and call them bathroom cabnets.

Fortunately, I was not limited by space in the renovation of this master bath. I failed to mention this before, but the dimensions of this bath is about 14 feet by about 12 feet. Over 150 sq feet of bathroom space. The area where the vanity would occupy is 116 inches long. That is almost 10 feet of vanity area. So I had a lot of options for this space. At one end of the vanity area is an outside wall where the window is, and the other end is a linen closet.

For months prior to beginning this project, I toiled with the decision on what to do about the cabnets. At some point, I had even decided to buy two separate vanity assemblies, possibly going with a table top design with a vessel sink. I also considered several other options, but none would actually stick, until I decided to go in an entirely different direction.

Remember that I compared bathroom cabnets to kitchen cabnets with a couple of inches cut off in either direction? Well, that is basically what they are. There is almost no difference between a lot of production bathroom cabnets and production kitchen cabnets. The colors are the same, the drawers are the same, the doors and the hardware are the same. Just one main difference. Kitchen cabnets are 34 and a half inches tall and they are 24 inches deep. Bathroom cabnets are 31 inches tall and 21 inches deep. So therefore all the bathroom vanity tops in production are made for a 21 inch deep cabnet.

Enter the brain storm! Did you smell the smoke? Yup, I decided to use kitchen cabnets, and make the vanity top myself from a stock countertop slab. Would the height be an issue? Not for me. I'm 6 '5" tall, and my wife is 5'7" tall. But seriously....three and one half inches? That's the only height difference between a bathroom cabnet and a kitchen cabnet. Just three and one half inches. If a little more than three inches is a problem for someone, then they will likely be standing on a stool to brush their teeth regardless of how high the sink is.

Now, since I had 116 inches of length to play with, I had a heck of a lot of options on cabnets. I chose to go with two 36" sink bases in the center separated by a filler strip, flanked by two 18" three-drawer units each with a 3" filler strip against each wall.

For the countertop, we chose a formica top slab that matched the bathroom colors. I thought about granite, but I decided that since I plan to use granite in the kitchen, and that alone will be about 80 sq feet of granite at about $5000, I figured that was enough. We'll make due with a $110 formica slab in the bathroom.

I would love to share some pictures with you at this point, but I will have to keep you in suspense a little while longer, until I can tell you about the tile.

Designing and Laying the Tile Work

So lets get right into the tile, shall we?

Ok, the tile, of course was a bargain clearance tile that we had bought about a year before, not even knowing for sure where we would use it.

We decided that we did not want just plain old boring tile, and we didn't want it to just be laid out vertically with no particular character to it. We decided we wanted all elements of the bathroom to draw attention in some way, including the floor.

One thing that Jennifer decided was that she wanted the tile to be laid in a diamond pattern, rather than a square pattern. Ok, no problem, we turned it to point at the doorway, instead of parallel to the doorway. But we also wanted to give a little more character to it. The idea of a plain beige tile didn't fly too well with us, so we wanted to add some jazz to it. Jenniffer found a nice mozaic tile, not too expensive, that blended well with the tile and the colors of the room. If you remember toward the beginning of this blog, there are some pictures of how all this came together for the garden tub. We continued the same pattern across the floor.

One thing that I wanted to do was kind of create a pattern that draws toward what I believe is the highlight of the room, the Jacuzzi garden tub. So as we laid out the tile in a diamond pattern, I made breaks in the pattern using the mozaics that sort of creates an effect that I believe draws the eyes toward the tub area.

We laid it out in a couple of various ways to decide on what would be the final design prior to the actual gluing and grouting. In this picture, you also get a glimpse of the cabnetry on the right.

Notice the little accent pieces between every other tile. We created those by separating some of the squares from the mozaic tiles. We later decided that an accent every other tile was too many and too busy looking, so we reduced that to one every other tile. It would end up that there would be a pattern within the overall pattern of four tiles surrounding one accent piece, in essence creating a larger 24" X 24" square out of four 12" tiles with accent in the middle. With my tile saw, I cut one corner off of each tile so that when laid out, there was a square space formed to place the accent piece.

So, here is what we ended up with...

...and using my tile saw, I made tile baseboard.

Finishing the Sinks and Vanities

For the sinks, I actually saved the old ones. They were nice sinks, and I couldn't find anything decent at a reasonable price. There was no reason that I could justify replacing them.

After measuring and cutting the spaces to mount the sinks, I was ready for the plumbing.

I don't have any pictures of how I ran the plumbling, but I thought that it was rather cool the way I decided to route the pipes.

Since I had also completely re-plumbed the entire house, I had thought ahead to this renovation, and made provision for new water circuits for this project at that time. Now, during this renovation, I brought the hot and cold water out of the floor under one of the drawer units at the side. I ran the water supply lines up the back of the inside of a drawer unit, so that I could access them in case of repair need by removing the drawers. I ran the water lines to the top of the drawer cabnet, then across into one of the sink bases from the side at the top. I connected the first sink, then continued the water supply lines from there across into the second sink base. I also placed both my sink drain traps directly at the bottom of the sink bowl, and aimed them toward the rear of the cabnets. I ran my sink drain line across the back of the cabnets and joined them into one drain line at the middle by a T-union, and ran it down through the rear corner of one of the cabnets, and through the floor. By doing all of this, not only do you NOT see virtually any pipes or water lines when you open the doors of the sink cabnets, you also have almost no wasted space in the cabnets. I greatly increased the amount of storage under the sinks simply by using a little enginuity and planning in the way that I ran the water supply and drain lines.

I found some really nice faucets for a great price and used the old sinks over again, and we ended up with a pretty nice arrangement.

In this picture, you can get a sense of how elegant it is when the lights are dimmed slightly.

...and here is a couple more pictures of the mirror/vanity area after completion:

We also bought some handles that we still have as of yet to install, but we will get to it one day soon, I am sure.

A Few Finishing Touches

There remain a few finishing touches to be done with the master bath. We found have two nice wall

hangings that we have put up on the walls behind the jaccuzi and I plan to flank them with two sconces that match the others over the vanity. Now that you get a sense of what we have done in the master bath, I will move on to the rest of the house, beginning with the family room.

The Family Room

As I stated in the beginning, I had a problem with my computer, and the pictures that had saved of our home prior to the renovation were lost. However, I can show you what the family room had in the way of carpet and wall covering prior to starting the renovation. First, the walls were done in some really dark paneling that to me reminded me of something from The Brady Bunch. Incredibly, this house was built in 1995, but the paneling in the family room was rediculously old looking. It made us feel though we were in a cave. It was very depressing. The walls were done in some

old dark brown paneling that was extremely out of date. It did not broadcast the light at all, and it made us feel bad just to sit in this room.

So, I did away with it, along with the dark brown crown moulding and all the dark door case mouldings. I then sheet-rocked the room, replaced all the door case and crown mouldings.

The carpet was also terrible. It was a grey-blue carpet that was worn thin and was impossible to clean. Also,the people who lived in this house prior to us appearantly had inside pets who were likely not fully house-broken. There was an odor in this room when the sun hit the carpet that was very unpleasant.

So, we removed the carpeting. When we did so, there was a horrible sour smell that we could hardly stand. We are so glad that we got rid of that carpet! We actually removed all the carpeting in the entire house.

In this picture, you can see that we installed genuine hardwood floors in place of the carpet. This picture is a little unflattering, because we had just installed the flat screen TV on the wall and surround sound system, and there was a lot of dust that we had not yet cleaned up. Some better pictures are toward the bottom of this post.

I would like to point out a couple of things that we did as some extra perks.

For one thing, we networked the walls of the room for theater surround-sound. I actually wired the walls in such a way that we have several possible configurations should we decide to rearrange the room. So, not only do we have our own family theater, we are not stuck with any permanent setup.

Also notice the fireplace and bookcases in the background.

Pay no attention to the ceiling fan/light assembly. We replaced that with a nice flush mount later.

First, let me tell you what we did with the fireplace. The fireplace was origionally surrounded by a fake brick facade and had a fake brick hearth. We removed that and I in-laid a genuine slate tile into the floor and built the surround from the same slate tile as the hearth.

As you can see, the results were quite nice.

I built the mantel from scratch. There was a single dark brown board shelf over the fireplace that was built so solidly into the wall, that it was impossible to remove without tearing the wall down, so I decided to use it as my basis to build my mantel around. I had never built a mantel before, and I drove my wife nuts for weeks while I agonized over what to do about it. I looked at every picture I could find of mantels everywhere, and everytime we went into a home improvement store, I was checking out what displays they had to get ideas. It was crazy, but I finally figured out what to do, and I think it paid off in the end.

The bookcases were also very interesting. They were simply three brown board shelves stuck back into a recess in the wall on either side of the fireplace with a cabnet under each set of shelves. I refinished the shelves in white and added a half-round edge to each shelf. I then surrounded each set of shelves in door case moulding that I finished to match the shelves. I then finished the cabnets underneath to match the whole assembly. The result is that now when you walk into the room, you don't see sets of shelves over cabnets, but you see two complete bookcases on each side of the fireplace.