The past two weeks have been very quiet, maddeningly so. We had painters finish the walls in the kitchen, new 3/4 bath, and mudroom and hallways last week. That took a surprisingly long time, and that time delayed finishing the full functionality of the new bath. That has been frustrating while we (90 % Dan) moved most of our stuff from the master bedroom into the guest bedroom, which will be our room for the next few months. Dan was doing nearly all of that work because very late last week, my University asked me to work full time as a lecturer. That meant the entire weekend was building two more courses before we began Monday. Yea Dan!
We had really hoped that our new, 3/4 bath would be at least fully usable before classes began this past Monday, but we learned today workers won’t finish even the temporary work until tomorrow–meaning finishing cleaning the grout haze, paint mistakes, and installing all of the hardware. Today, we had hardware installed as well as a temporary shower curtain until the custom-made glass door is finished and installed. Here’s a look:
This is the door to the new bath from the mudroom. It is the original cherry door that opened from the hallway that connects the mudroom to the kitchen (to the right of this photo), but has been painted white to coordinate with the mudroom. It is also now a pocket door to allow more space in the bathroom.
A view from the shower stall of the new appliances and fixtures. The pocket doorway is the light shining from the right of this photo. The mirror is a hand-made cherry frame from Etsy. The natural cherry echoes the doors throughout the house (which are darker from age) and the new cabinets in the kitchen. Searching Etsy has shown us that we can get exactly what we hoped for for LESS than what we could buy at a big-box store.
This is the opposite view from the toilet to the shower. You can see that the floors still need to be finished, as in cleaned up of excess grout. The contractor installed the shower curtain temporarily so that when those floors are finished, we can use the shower until the custom-glass shower door is complete.
Some detail of the new shower tile and fixtures.
The new (dusty) shower niche. The hexoganal tle is the same that is on the shower floor.
This is a pretty significant renovation and expansion of a previously tiny powder room. Here’s what it looked like:
This is how the previous owners had decorated the powder room. Our changes were not very dramatic because we knew we would renovate, eventually. This is looking from the original doorway that had been in the hall between the kitchen and the mudroom. The current toilet is where the original doorway was. The new shower begins about where the wall with the window is, and extends four-five feet beyond it.
Tomorrow, the crew will clean up the grout glaze so that we can actually use the bathroom completely. On Friday, the hardwood floor experts will finish the last step of refinishing the new oak floors in the mudroom, hallways, and kitchen. That will mean that we won’t be able to use any of those spaces for at least eight hours, but we anticipate the floors looking amazing. We can also put down rugs that will protect the spaces!
Friday is also the day that our construction team will set up air and floor protection upstairs for the demo and construction of our new master bathroom.
DEMO STARTS MONDAY!
1936into2023 
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