Finishing up the walls and the Bathroom

After the sheetrock was hung on the 2x4s nailed into the concrete walls, we taped them up and mudded them so they could be ready for paint. We went ahead and painted the staircase because we knew that that would be the hardest. Oh yea, and before that we sprayed orange peel on the sheetrock for a little bit of texture. We didn't want to paint all of the walls just yet though because we didn't want the freshly painted walls to be covered in dust from sanding the floors.

So here you can see, the floors finally sanded and all the walls still bare. This was my husband's project. Mine was finishing up the bathroom. Once the walls were built, the plumbing was run, and the cement board was hung, I tiled the bathroom, laid the laminate floor down, and painted the walls (well with help, of course :D).

 

So here is a picture of my beautiful new bathroom, and just in case you forgot what it used to look like, I put a before picture below it. Amazing difference HUH?! If you are wondering where everything is (besides our ginormous shower!) the toilet is behind the shower, to the left of that small door (which goes to our closet), the bathtub is in front of the shower (in the very front left of the picture), and you can see one vanity on the right (the other vanity is behind our exposed brick chimney. 

Here's a picture of the vanity. Matthew is still working on them, but they will be done soon. It's just nice to get an idea of what they will look like when they are done and that's why they have the sink on top.

 

The bathroom door used to be the old front door of the upstair apartment that it once was. I like it for the bathroom door because of the glass (some may feel the opposite haha). Anywho, at this point all was coming together quite nicely.

Steffane B.

Fixing problems and creating solutions

After the bathroom was quickly coming together, we were able to look a little closer into the master bedroom. The house had a termite problem 30 years before it was given to us but that problem was quickly managed. The remains of the damage, however, was left behind and needed to be fixed so that bigger problems wouldn't happen in the future. When Matthew went into the attic he was able to see that some of the support beams needed to be reinforced. But along with the beams it looked like termites liked to damage sheetrock also. So down came the ceiling over the stairway we tried to salvage.

Here you can see Matthew taking the old nails out of the beams so we could install new sheetrock for the ceiling. Behind him is the beams for wall separating the master bedroom and the bathroom. You can see to the left, behind my mother-in-law, the old door opening that went into the old kitchen. 

So after that problem was fixed we noticed that there were no outlets on ANY of the walls in the master bedroom. How do put outlets into concrete walls you ask? You build a floating wall. We had to nail 2x4s 6 inches apart, run wiring through the ceiling and down the walls, and then nail sheetrock to the 2x4s. Now we have new walls that I can easily hang pictures on and outlets for lamps :).

Steffane B.