Stealth Geeks Obsess

Is that a dead animal? (or) I changed my mind. Leave the keg

Well frat party boy's are gone. No eviction necessary. I think they were tired of living with each other anyway. There was one stellar fella who celebrated way too much, he had "Cinco de Marty" party's, and celebrated  "Marty Graw" .
The house itself was in good shape, two of the bedrooms just needed cleaning and touch up paint, MartyPartyPant's room needed to have a lot of patching done, where he had installed some car speakers into the walls, and we had to repaint because he turned the room into a dark cave. (that's right ladies) Some scratched floors, a cracked mirror and oddly, the garbage disposal had been removed.

Oddly, all of the closet doors had been removed and put in the attic, my imagination hasn't been able to come up with a reason for that.
Here are some afters.



I know, ignore the dates on the camera.

The biggest problem was the yard. The front needed weeding and mowing, the gravel driveway was being overtaken by weeds, but the backyard (which is not visible from the road) was completely overgrown, and there was garbage everywhere. The attached garage had a lot of stuff as well.

We decided to have 1-800-got junk haul everything away. When they came we added some garbage from the house and were working on the yard as they loaded up, the junk fellas were excited about an engine hoist in the garage and we told them they could have it.

After loading a pile of junk from behind the house - where incidentally we found the garbage disposal - we came across a dead animal of some sort, we didn't look to close, we let junk fellas take care of it since they were still in a good mood about the engine hoist. I am wishing the loosers would have left the keg, FULL of course.

We have some new renters coming in the first of October, a couple, we are hoping that they aren't wackadoo's, but only time will tell.

A Master Bath leaves the '70's

The Arbor Heights house hadn't been touched for many years. It was a good size for the year it was built (because of the many additions) but it was definitely stuck in the '70's. The kitchen and the master bathroom were the most stark examples of this.

The master bath had florescent green paint, pink and brown tiles, faux copper pulls, with laminate counters and floors.

Megan wanted to take out the existing tile in the tub surround. I didn't because I was afraid of what we would find behind the tile and the amount of work it would entail. As usual she was so correct!

Here is a photo of the tub area when we bought the place.

Isn't that a pretty color? So chip away we did at the lovely tile.

It was painstaking and tedious but since Megan was determined she did the lions share of the work. The tile splintered a lot and little glass shards were stuck to our skin for day's but it was the way to go.

Here you can see what  was waiting for us behind the wall.

There was some rot behind the tub spout so we had to put in some new cement board.

We chose a clean light white tile that we laid out in a brick/subway style. We had to keep the level handy because of course nothing is true or flush in any project ... ever.

It cleaned up the room and made it look larger. It also made the tub look new.

Here is a photo of the tile  before the grout was put in. You can see we also painted a neutral beige color. Anything but that green!

The counter tops were long, which is a bonus but the 7ft mirror was something we would have to deal with. Here is a before and after shot.

 

The sinks were old, the kind that have a hootie (sp?) ring around them and of course they don't make that size any more so it was difficult finding a replacement. Nothing caulk, creative tiling & Home Depot couldn't solve though.Taking the laminate off was nerve wracking. We didn't want to damage the mirror, the thought of taking a seven foot mirror off the wall and out of the bathroom was more than we could bare, so we trimmed it out with painted wood trim and tiled up the backsplash using the same brick pattern as the tub surround.

The drawer pulls were spray painted a brusher nickel color and we matched the faucets with the same look.

Here are some during pic's.

We used the same pattern on the floor with 12 X 12 tiles in a light beige shade.

This photo is before we had washed the floor, but you get the idea.

All in all this room was the most satisfying to complete and as alway's we learned a ton.

Tiny Bathroom Part 2

Even Angel had to check out this catastrophe of a sink. It was an extra small one and we knew we would have trouble replacing it, but we had no idea how much.
It needed to be replaced because the bowl had a hairline crack in it and generally it was just an ugly sink.
You can see that they used some wooden curtain dowels, or some scrap (remove the S) wood to hold it up, it tilted a bit and you could not rest a hand on it for fear it would fly off the wall. We could see - as can you - that it was inset into the wall. We assumed it was mounted on the drywall then tiled around, so we added a quarter of an inch and started shopping around for a replacement sink.
We had to work with the tile we had, because we had already decided not to gut the room, our best bet was second use in Seattle, one of my favorite reuse companies. We bought one that we thought would fit and brought it back to the Arbor Heights house ready to rock and roll.
Now luckily there was a small closet behind this wall that housed the furnace and access to the bolts holding up the sink, did I mention that one of the bolts was not holding anything up because the porcelain was cracked, yeah well anyway, when we removed the sink this is what we found.
That's right, they had installed the sink, THEN the drywall, THEN the tile.
Classic.
There was no way we would be able to match the cracked sink exactly so we tried our Second Use sink hoping it would at least cover the gaping holes left by the old one. It was wide enough but too deep. As you can see the stellar installation job on the old sink added about a half inch to the depth.
On a Happier note, when we were removing the bolts from the back wall we found a leak in the supply line for the cold water! YEA!
Yet another thing in plain site that our #@&$^&#&@$ inspector missed. I know, I know, we should have brought out our fine tooth combs to  check every nook and cranny but sometimes you can only find things when you are using the house on a daily basis, or if you are an inspector that has any skills whatsoever. This of course added day's of extra work and oh what fun plumbing can be, especially when the crawl space under the house is just that - a crawl, flat on your tummy with a flashlight in your mouth - kinda space. But I digress, we were talking about the Second Use sink that was too deep, we wanted it to work, but it just wouldn't, the space was so cramped that access to the bathroom was seriously hindered by it so, we broke down and had to get a Home Depot Pedestal sink, I am not very fond of them, and they are a joy to install, but the final product wasn't too bad.
In this photo you can also see that we were trying different way's to caulk the bathroom, I find it easier to just caulk then run a wet finger along the line to smooth it out, but since the tiles were three dimensional we thought we would give this technique a try. It worked okay but I still ended up using the wet finger to smooth the edges that were taped, sooo, jury is out.
The sink isn't bad, and I know it is the best solution but I think I just really hate this bathroom. Yup that's it. The master bathroom was so much fun, and really turned out great, so this one was a disappointment in comparison.
What does that one look like you ask?
That will be my next post. Because Megan again was the driving force behind the way that it turned out, and I disagreed with her in the beginning about what we should do, I am thinking that I should call that post "Megan is alway's right", because she is, and I should know better that to EVER doubt what she say's. Will I never learn.
As always I would love to hear your comments - keeping in mind that I, too, hate this bathroom :-)
Lara

Arbor Heights - the fun begins in a tiny bathroom

When Megan and I purchased the Arbor Heights house the market in Seattle was insane, we had put in offers on 3 other homes and were out bid on every one, the Arbor Heights neighborhood is a little outside the core of West Seattle, but is an up and coming neighborhood with great views, schools and access to parks.
Although this was not our first time buying a house in hindsight we would have done a lot differently. We were particularly disappointed with our inspector, our agent should have fought harder for us, and we would have lined up a lot of our subs ahead of time, but this experience was for just that, to learn. And that we did.
This lovely photo is of the guest bathroom. It was TINY. Our goal with this house was to update, rent, and at some point sell. So we weren't going to move walls or bump out. We needed to replace the sink for sure, if you notice those are curtain dowels holding up the wall mounted sink, the vinyl on the floor is peeling up at the wall and what oh what  to do with the lovely three dimensional tile!
There is a nice sky light in here that adds a lot of light but the heavy curtains on the bathtub undo any natural light benefits by just being that ugly!
There is a cabinet above the toilet as you can see here which really takes up a lot of space, but there are no closets, and a pocket door in this bathroom so you really need to have some sort of storage. The heat lamp fixture needs to be totally re done, it is barely legal and has exposed wires, and a lamp light bulb in there. There are no GFI's and the blue trim on the 3D tiles (what are we going to do with those) is really dated.
The tiles have specks of color in them, the blue trimmed tiles bring out the gray in them. We decided that we did not want to take this room down to studs, so we embraced the heinous tile and decided to take off the blue trim and replace it with a green. Now when I say "WE", as in so many cases, what I really mean is Megan came up with the brilliant idea and executed it beautifully and I took pictures and the play loose with the lingo.

      Now true this before and after picture looks a little like the lady who slouches and sticks out her tummy in the before and smiles with great posture in the after (the light coming in from above also helps) but the difference in the trim tile and the white coat of paint on the wall really warms and brightens this room. We also cleaned out the grout and used a white, for a clean look. Sometimes you just have to take the character of a room/house and just go for it!
We were going to tile this bathroom as well, but we just could not find a tile that looked good. We went to a remnant vinyl/tile/carpet place in Issaquah and got a great inexpensive, okay down right cheap ($5.00) sheet of remnant vinyl and installed it. It isn't the best, but it was the best we could come up with.   This was our first experience with vinyl and it wasn't bad at all, just a little nerve wracking, as is anything you've never tried before.

In my next post I will talk about the wall mounted sink, nothing in older homes is easy to replace or fix and this was no exception. It was made more difficult by the fact that a complete idiot installed the old one. More on the tiny bathroom that could in my next post :-)
Lara
PS, I have added a photo album of the bathroom on the left, check it out.