D.I.Y. Budget Bathroom Makeover: Part 2

In this post we're putting it all back together, basically.

James roughed in all the new/relocated plumbing fixtures.

He added the required venting and drain pipes. At this point the plumbing inspector was called and, once he finished his eggs (we got him at home), he stopped by. We passed our plumbing inspection, phew. The dogs approved highly of this "plumber"* and did their part by wiggling and schmoozing throughout the inspection. An especially enthusiastic Pippi disgraced herself/us by leaping into the air to deliver a lick to his lips on his way out. Thank you, dogs, for your efforts...for your impassioned, clumsy diplomacy. But thanks mostly to James' good work. (*See earlier post re: all visiting tradesmen/officials labeled 'plumbers': http://wildathomeblog.blogspot.com/2016/04/tips-for-calmer-pets-during-omg.html)

Vent pipes in...

The shower got two coats of Red Guard.

With the inspection passed, we could start rebuilding the room. Earlier we'd bought some floor boards from a retired gent who salvages entire buildings solo, using hand tools, and stores everything in his yard. Our floor came out of an old cannery. Since there were two colors, I decided to go with stripes. Because they are making up a bathroom floor, I varnished the crud out of all sides of these boards (using Varathane for floors), James got the ends as he installed, and we'll give them another coat or two after installation. Our walls are cedar--the same cedar we'll use in the shower. We got these boards from a guy who makes store displays, baskets, etc. He doesn't need the better boards, so sells them on. Technically they were surplus rather than salvage. We found these purveyors of well-priced timber on Craigslist and Uncle Henry's, respectively.

Skirting board + salvaged floor. (I painted the border grey because we had more red/brown than grey, and to make it sharper
than the more weathered, arguably character-filled center boards. Fret not, that big chip will be hidden under the tub.)

The walls going in: I started painting them pre-installation, then decided that was pointless.

We had to tear out the ceiling to put in the exhaust fan and plumbing vent pipes. This was a good excuse to go with a tin ceiling. (This is where I confess we are not going for a rock-bottom budget here. I think what we've come to aim for is a reasonably affordable fancy-ish bathroom. Budget is a major factor, but aesthetics reign supreme.) I got possibly a little carried away and went with a design based on an old schoolhouse from American Tin Ceilings. I love a tin ceiling that leads your eye around various patterns flowing from tile to tile. These are a bit bigger than I thought they were, which is just a case of me being a tad dopey when I looked at the website. I kind of wish they were smaller, but I think they'll tie in better with a coat of matte paint (right now they are primed and painted with Rustoleum metal paint).

Plywood ceiling up...

Tin ceiling tiles installed and awaiting final paint job.

The fixtures are prepped and waiting in the wings. These photos touch on just how maddeningly cluttered the workshop has been throughout this project:

Sink, tub, heater, medicine cabinets, clutter, etc.

The medicine cabinet, found at an auction for around $80: an old end cabinet once turned into gun rack, that
I've now turned into a medicine cabinet with the addition of a painted red cross and shelves. I got 29 cigar boxes
and one vintage tin at the same auction for $35...Yup, now I'm just bragging and reveling/salivating over
my finds like a typical bargain hunter.

As for Pippi, seasoned apprentice...

Pips uncharacteristically sat out this phase of the project. She did not approve of the nail gun, and there was
 no swaying her. Here she is eyeing it suspiciously while a headless teddy provides back-up/moral support.

...And here she has decided unequivocally that the nail gun is 100% bad news, and she must seek refuge under the desk with the renovation dust, making this face. She's from the Bronx originally, and her reaction led us to wonder where she's seen a gun before and formed this impression: in the inner city, or whilst sneaking off to tear through the Maine woods (equally likely). I mean, this is a dog who climbs icy ladders and leaps into moving UPS trucks if given half a chance. Sitting Under Desk is usually reserved for when her people argue. (We're a couple spending oodles of time together fussing over a lengthy renovation project. It's/we're going well, but I'm not going to pretend we don't cross wires from time to time, thus leading our dogs to make the above face, alas.)

The Floors

When I renovated a small early 1900's cottage in Australia, I found some beautiful hardwood floorboards hidden under shag carpet and black tiles. Chipping the tiles up was a chore, but once I'd finished, there was the floor, ready to be sanded and polished.

Nothing in this house has been that straightforward. Originally the entire first floor was done in nice maple floorboards. When James and I began this project, the kitchen was half aging linoleum and half tiles. The mudroom and bathroom were done in the same tiles. The hallway, and master bedroom that we converted back to a living room, were covered in wall to wall carpet. 

When all of these floor coverings were removed we found (in addition to the black mold in the mudroom/laundry area and bathroom): a complete patchwork of flooring. The maple floors were mostly intact in the living room, hallway and kitchen, albeit covered in glue. We scraped this off with a scraper and rented a floor sander to do the living room. It took us a full three days of tag team style working to sand the floor, due to how undulating the surface was, and how much glue remained. I've heard said floor sanding should be left to the professionals; you can end up with sanding drum marks if you don't have the right touch/timing. We have some light scuffing here and there, but it looks much improved from the tired old carpet. This isn't a museum quality renovation: we're not killing ourselves here. Working with what we've got, I coined the look I'm shooting for in this renovation: Rustic Farmhouse Chic.

As I mentioned in the first post, I don't believe this house ever was built to perfection. 

When we did all the glue-scraping and sanding in the living room, we came across an unpleasant surprise. At some point someone decided to stick a square of plywood in the middle of the room (maybe this was an opening to the basement?). At that, the perfectionist in me had to admit defeat. Did we want to try to track down some matching maple boards and re-floor half the room? No. We were renovating to a deadline and budget: our living room doubles as our guest room and summer, a.k.a. guest/tourist season, was upon us. I decided this eyesore would probably be under a throw rug, anyway. I took a straight edge, drew some pencil lines matching the adjoining floorboards, and the entire floor was finished in a couple coats of Varathane. It still pains me, but at least your eye doesn't shoot to that spot anymore. It is under a rug now.

WTF

In the kitchen there was more glue under the lino. I've slowly been scraping if off when I have a spare moment. Sometimes I prefer to work that way, rather than spend an entire afternoon in tedium. Plus, my wrist gets sore, so my scraping is less effective anyway. So short bursts, here and there is my preferred approach, when James is working on some heavy duty one man job and I feel like I'm just standing around. Eventually it'll be ready by the time we need sand and paint. (This is how I got the tiles up, too, for the most part: a few concentrated bursts.) I've discovered white vinegar poured and left to soak into the glue allows it to be wiped off instead of scraped. It's messy, but effective.

Speaking of tiles, once those were gone, it became apparent so too were the original maple floorboards: they'd been cut away and replaced with plywood. I managed to track down some maple flooring on Craigslist the same depth as our boards, but not the same length or width. We decided to paint the floors to tie them in better. Considering the kitchen/hallway/mudroom used to be part tiles, part lino, and part carpet, even with mismatched boards, our new look would be more uniform, and painted floors are in keeping with the old farmhouse aesthetic. 

We're re-flooring the bathroom, too, but our bathroom reno has gotten so involved I'm going to leave the entire topic for another post.

Literally chipping away

Tiles are off here. Plywood and various bits and pieces are being removed to make way for new flooring.

A new sub-floor: most of the old boards needed replacing.

The new (secondhand) floor going in over tar paper. The original floors are on the far right.
(Edit: I should add, before we laid this floor, we brought the wood inside to acclimate to the
temperature and humidity of the space we were installing it in (a week or more is recommended).
Because these were secondhand floors, we had to file out the grit that had accumulated in the
tongues and grooves. It had already been de-nailed.)

Pippi helped a lot. She made off with the chalk line chalk and proposed a game with Thomas, our older,
somewhat more sedate dog. His bed was covered in chalk, but her paws bore the tell-tale mark of a chalk thief.

I don't know who's reading this (bar a handful of our friends/family), so I am erring on the side of not boring you senseless with minutiae. But, when I'm mid-task/quandary and poring over the Internet, that is sometimes exactly what I want: the finer details, the tools used, etc. So please, ask away if you ever want me to go into more detail. 

Starting a garden

The first thing we did once Spring sprung was put in a garden. We used felled trees from the neighboring forest for the posts, and rough-sawn boards James' grandfather had lying around his property for the rails. (Grandpa Bob lives just down the road and has an old timer's...erm...passion for salvage.) The gate I salvaged from the first rental I lived in on the island. I built it from some interesting scrap metal I found in the old farm dump, i.e. that spot on the property where everything unwanted was thrown and left to rot...cars, glass bottles, old stoves, etc. I even found a bed frame...

Anyway, I rescued that gate when I moved out, and added it to the garden James and I put in here. Garden fences are a must here. Appropriately, there are a lot of deer on Deer Isle.

James tilling the soil with his constant helper, Pippi Shortstocking

...still holding strong a few years later. This was last winter.

I got some good tips from this fun book I found at a yard sale. It has all manner of old-timey gardening and homesteading advice and anecdotes. We decided to give magnetic gardening a whirl, and added some copper wire to the perimeter. (You can just make it out by a line of snow sitting about a foot and a half up from the top rail.)

I spotted this book for sale on a certain giant online retailer's site, so it's still out there...