Can you hear me screaming? Though only
in my mind, it is very loud. Seems that every cut of trim, every line
of tile, every everything in our beloved 1924 house needs to be custom.
It takes so long and is so very resource consuming. It just goes on
and on and on. First one wall of the original bathroom had to be
covered with a false wall in order to properly fit the plumbing and
electrical. This is because the original wall was comletely covered
both by a layer of 1”x 6” lumber and lath and plaster that sat
directly over a concrete foundation wall. You could not get through
the floor to the crawl space and you could not get into the wall
because of the Fort Knox construction. But that was only the
beginning. Nothing in the room is square, plumb, or level. Thence,
all the customizing. But I must say, it is looking pretty good.
My son Rick originally took a week of
family sick time off from work to remodel our bathroom to meet
handicap standards for his dad who was in a rehab center. It took two
days just to gut the room and to construct walls for the new shower.
Thre was trouble finding a preformed handicap shower locally and the
cost was prohibitive. So that had to be custom built, starting with a
36”x36” shower pan. Would you believe that plain white subway
tile was hard to find? Well enough of it anyway. Rick ran into
trouble with old plumbing and electrical, losing precious hours
before we finally ended up calling in the pros. Thank God both were
available. On other projects, I have had to schedule their services
weeks in advance. Needless to say, the week was soon done but the
project not nearly so. So a couple weeks later, over a long Memorial
Day weekend, Rick took another stab at it, hoping to complete the
work in 2 ½ days. Don't laugh, he worked his tail off and made a lot
of progress.
It was Rick's intention to work until
about noon so that he would have time to finish the job, clean up,
load his truck and spend a couple hours relaxing before the long
drive back to Seattle. At 4:00 p.m. he still had not finished the
trim, grouted any of the tile, or repaired the wall in the hallway
were the bathroom door was widened. By 5:30 he did manage to hang
sheetrock on the hallway wall, cut the ¼ round that goes around the
floor between the tiled floor and baseboard in the bathroom, and
drill holes in the shower tile for attaching the grab bars. But
someone else, most likely my daughter Dianna will need to do the
grouting, nail in the ¼ round, and actually hang the last two grab
bars. I will need to do the fill work, painting and papering before
this project can be declared complete. Thank goodness I still have
some more of the wallpaper left that is in the hallway. I don't want
to redo the whole thing.
All our kids contributed some funding
and/or labor, and we re-used what materials we could, but this
bathroom will keep us pretty broke for the rest of the year.
Supplies, professional tradesmen, and equipment rentals are to the
point where I don't even want to think about them.We have been
talking about remodeling this bathroom for many years, but there have
always been “other things” that took priority. So what can I say,
our hand was forced and it will end up being a room safe for my
husband to use, a room styled to the period of the house, a room we
can be proud of. Please tell me it will be finished soon.
