Monday, November 15, 2010

The Bathcave

One of my recent excuses for not updating the blog is that whenever I could be working on the blog, I think about how I could be making progress on the bathroom and go do that. I was stalled for a while while working some long hours, but am back in the swing of things.

This weekend, I purchased baseboards, including one for the kitchen. The bathroom took a bit of a backseat to the fridge project. I had to pull the fridge completely out to get the adjacent baseboard out and while I was there, did the annual filter change on the icemaker line. I was pleased to note that there was only a little bit of dust and a lonely craisin under the fridge after a year of lost food possibilities. After about 18 tiny adjustments with the new sliding compound miter saw (due to trying to shove the baseboard partly under the cabinet but needing room to angle it in), I finally got it in.

I'm attaching the pre-primed baseboards with construction adhesive, which is going ok, but has enough width to it that I need to fill in a gap at the top. I figured white caulk would do the trick. At the home depot, the person at the paint counter, who would help me find such things, was probably the most butch lady I've seen in my little red-state-socal town. After a momentary pause during which I decided there was no way in the world I could ask her for caulk, I settled on "caulking" instead. Two seconds later, I had waterproof white caulk. ing. An hour later and the kitchen was reassembled.

The baseboard on the big wall was tricky to do without nails - I hadn't prepped enough support pieces so there's a screw in one corner, but it went alright, and now I can measure my shelves that will go between that and the sink. (I couldn't stop the baseboard at the cabinet or the lowest drawer wouldn't open.)

Taking down the closet wall and the built-in vanity left a row of missing tile. I managed to cobble together enough partial pieces to cover all the bits that show easily, and filled in the rest with a similar tile. The fill tile isn't a total match, but I figure anyone who finds it under the cabinet is going to be replacing the rest of the tile anyway. It took a while to figure out which tiles would go where and whether they'd even fit under the legs of the back cabinet. They did fit - by the hair of my chinny chin chin, but I got them in. Tonight was the night to actually stick them down, and it went twice as well as I'd hoped for. It was very satisfying to see the puzzle I'd had to solve actually work out in reality. Tomorrow will be grout day and I'll try to start posting pictures.

Due to having an appointment at 6 and doing an utterly wacky dance class t 7:30, I got the tiles in but posting pictures is outside my abilities for the evening. I could show you how to dance like a whacked out marionette that can do a little "house" style jig, however.

2 comments:

Amy in CA said...

Can't wait to see the "new" bathroom and kitchen pictures!!

CrankyOtter said...

Just for you, there are 16 before-during-after photos in the next entry, if you read through the jump. I'm feeling pretty happy about the progress today. Extra props to my organizer who can cut in like a pro. I'm too spastic to do it without tape, but she just got it done right. We had a fun day with the construction.

Then I got my backside handed to me at a dance workshop but was ok with that as i'm still new and we got delicious Thai food after ward at "Thai Purple" in Alahambra.