November 03rd, 2017

Another step completed in the great bathroom reno project!  Woohoo!

To recap for those of you who missed that chapter in the story, our intent this year was to completely blow up and redo bathrooms!  We picked out tile, vanities, mirrors, faucets and everything else necessary. We talked to contracters, we were ready to go.  Well almost. One of the builder guys asked if we had had our plumbing scoped. We did that puppy head tilt to the side and said, "excuse us? what?"  And he went on to explain about houses built before a certain date, which ours was, and houses with no basements to protect pipes, as nearly every house in Florida is, and the issues therein.  There seemed to be no point in spending big bucks on a complete reno and then have the infrastructure go to hell. So this sounded like a reasonable idea and we are reasonable people so we set it up.  Had some lovely people come in and scope the old pipes.  We saw the video.  He didn't have to tell us the bad news, we could see if for ourselves.  Long story shorter, the entire reno budget instead went to repiping the house. The entire house. Yes.

So, upshot of that was the bathrooms are still being re-done just one little bit at a time.  Save up a few dollars, do something, save a little more, do something else.  So far, the floors have been replaced (yay!) there is a new vanity in the bigger bathroom (yay!)  and new shower nozzle sprayer thinger (I don't know what it's called but yay!).  We've talked to a guy aBout putting in an exhaust fan (and that will be yay as soon as it's done when the guy gets back from his vacation) and yesterday the tub was reglazed.

The original colour was........I do not even know what to call that colour.  Yellow/beige/off-whie/yucky, some combination.  I asked the guy yesterday what he would call the existing colour and he paused for a long time and finally said, "well it's kind of yellowish?" with a question mark at the end.  And  has seen better days.  When we first talked about the reno the plan was to get a new tub, but it turns out that they do not make tubs in that size anymore.  It's one inch narrower or shorter or something but the point is, no other tub will fit in that space. Great.  So the only option left was to have it reglazed.  It's a good quality heavy duty cast iron  tub so the structure of it is fine just that colour...ghastly!

It only took the tradesperson about three hours to do the job, which is  nice but the job has to "cure" for 72 hours before it can be touched. Soooo no big deal we are using the guest bathroom for a couple of days.  Monday he will return, move the protective papers, caulk and we are good to go.  Hurrah!  And now it's a beautiful, shiny, pure white.  The yuck colour is gone. I cannot begin to say how happy I am about that!

The only down side is the lingering smell. My God, the smell.  I was assured the it is not toxic in anyway, thank goodness, but it did give me a headache yesterday and yesterday everything we ate or drank tasted exactly like the air smelled.  Disgusting.  We closed the bathroom door to contain it and put little cups of vinegar and mouthwash around to counteract it but I guess it will just have to dissipate over time.  It's worth it in the long run and I can honestly say that the smell is  vastly improved today.  By Monday it should be gone but yesterday's "fragrance" was a surprise.  I was wishing for a gas mask by the end of the day and in fact, we ate out last night because of it.  Dinner out is never a hardship but again, not what we planned.

Tim suggested the perhaps in the short term, once we are allowed back into our bathroom, we should paint the walls white (the walls are the EXACT shame Yuck shade as the old tub was - as hard as that is to believe) which I think is a good idea.  Everytime I look in the bathroom mirror I think, jaundice.  It's that bad.  Nothing we can do about the off-peach colour of the existing tiles for now, but white walls will surely help.

And in the meantime, any step forward still counts of progress.  Bathroom Reno Progress...yay!!!

Everyone have a terrific weekend whatever you do and we will all meet here again on Monday!  Hugs