La Salle de Bain

(Is it kind of pathetic that using pretentious blog titles is as close as I get to speaking French in my current life?)

Anyway, the bathroom! I built up the suspense with what the bathroom used to look like, than didn't post any pictures of all the work Evan has been doing on it. It's still not done, but it's well on it's way!

This was the day Evan tore out our closet and annexed it to the bathroom. It was nice and spacious with the wall down between the two rooms, and I argued for having a lovely master suite and letting the kids tromp downstairs when they needed to go to the bathroom, but Evan was all boring and nixed that idea.

Mostly demolished bathroom. It was very interesting, seeing what had been remodeled in the past (there used to be a window, then it was torn out at one point!) and just what someone had thought about insulation (apparently, it is very important to insulate the wall between the other rooms, but not the walls that actually separate you from the frozen outdoors.). Evan had a lot of fun, tearing down the ceiling where had had carefully blown insulation into the attic a few years ago. Weeks later, Lincoln still has little pieces of blow-in insulation in his mouth every time I check. Even after Evan took care of the insulation displaced by the ceiling being torn down, there was still open walls into two different attic areas, so anytime he swung a hammer or moved anything in the room, more insulation would sift down from there. Fun times in housecleaning history, let me tell you.

Okay, then apparently I was horrible and didn't take pictures for a long time, because here he is with a window!! The kids were hugely interested in the process of cutting a whole in the wall and putting a window in. As I told them then, "Come quick and see, kids! Since you don't live with Uncle Tyler, you don't get to see a window being put in a new place every day!"

This is to the right, from the doorway. The two niches with blue foam insulation are for the medicine cabinets. Note the different heights-- short people AND tall people live here! The other niche is a project sometime down the road. That wall back onto the attic over our kitchen-- it's not a big enough attic to use for anything, but we could have a large storage shelf that is accessed from this wall. Evan framed it in, and then drywalled over it. (This is what we did beside the twin bed in our guest room-- used dead space for a niche.)

The new tub, and the framing for two niches in the shower area. Evan is going to tile the walls, and the niches.

From inside the bathroom, looking back towards the door. The toilet will be there on the left, which is why there's a little half wall there for a privacy screen.

Okay, than another REALLY long space without taking pictures. Because here we are with painted walls, and lights and medicine cabinets installed. We're going to have a chair rail where the paint changes color. The vanity will be under these medicine cabinets.

The shower area, still waiting for tile. Evan has put the waterproofing membrane up (Schluter Kerdi, for those freaks like my husband who would care what kind of membrane it is).
The tub has a board on it, to protect it. And to store Evan's stuff, apparently.

The toilet area (and a glimpse of my bookcase, Lucky Reader!)

The Throne Area. This was when Evan was getting ready to tile the floor.

Here is Evan's concession to my hatred of tile floors. It's a warming system that is under the tile. One of my few demands for the new bathroom was that it did NOT have tile floor. Ha! My husband yearns for opportunities to tile. He did, however, get this system so it wasn't so cold underfoot, even if it is still hard. Installing the warming grid was interesting. Evan painted the wood floor with a special primer, stapled the warming grid to the floor, than mixed up lots of buckets of self-leveling floor mortar. (He mixed up the mortar in the middle of the living room floor-- oh, my, the DUST!) Anyway, the self-leveling mortar is very good at finding the lowest spot-- even if that involves draining down a tiny little hole beside the heating duct, into the downstairs bathroom! That was a late night, let me tell you! Anyway, the mortar holds the warming system in place and is a nice level (except for that little dip by the heating vent) surface for the tile.

Our bathroom fan. I had never seen one like this, it's a light with a fan integrated!

Starting to lay tile yesterday morning.

This morning, the kids checking out the new tile floor! The tile color is "Biscuit" with accent tiles in "Galaxy" blue. The paint in the room is close to the biscuit color on top, and Pittsburgh Paint's "American Anthem" on the bottom. Evan's not sure that the blue paint is going to work, but we're going to wait until the vanity and trim are installed to decide for sure.

The kids are standing where the vanity will be.

Like the little tile "rugs" throughout the room? This was Evan's first time doing a whole floor in little one-inch hexagonal tiles, it's quite labor intensive!

So, what's left? Evan has to grout the tile, tile the whole shower area, install the tub fixtures, build a vanity, install the (still on order) vanity top, install the toilet, put up trim, build a linen cabinet, hang towel rods, toilet paper holder, hooks, etc. Yeah, he's going to be busy with this for a while. Especially since he has steady work for the next couple of months! Which is great news for us financially, it just means we'll be using the downstairs bathroom for a few more months!

Okay, bathroom pictures put up. Still to come are Cheyenne's birthday pictures, and lots more pictures from our Christmas/New Year's at Vaughans'! And maybe a FEW pictures of my kids...