One Setback Leads to Another

It has not been a productive week, construction wise.

Troy and I moved the vanity into the bathroom so he could continue on the plumbing. What should have been a triumphant milestone moment quickly moved to confusion, then continued to disbelief and landed at resignation.

The medicine cabinets, sockets and light boxes that Troy carefully centered over the vanity didn't actually center over the vanity. It was off by only about 3 inches, but that's enough. And adjusting all of it 3 inches is just as much work as adjusting it 12 or 20 inches, but it hurts more.

On top of that, there wasn't enough room for where the toilet was supposed to go. After many minutes, we decided the vanity would moved into the far corner (against the east wall) and the toilet would go on the other side:

At least we have a good solution, but this means Troy will be redoing the entire wall behind the vanity. But that was going to happen as soon as we saw that the vanity wouldn't center. At least we found a solution that will work.

So Troy will need to redo that wall. It took a week the first time so he is figuring on that much time again. But maybe it will go quicker the second time.

And as soon as we moved the vanity, I knew I would have a problem in the floor that I will have to fix. See that big gap behind the toilet?

When I realized that was going to happen (my error), I thought long and hard about fixing it at the time. But it was going to be under the vanity and just how  much of a perfectionist was I going to be? Well, now it's not under the vanity but visible behind the toilet. Not a view I get a lot, but Troy will be looking at it every day. :) So I will be working on ripping out a row or two of flooring and redoing it. Is this what they mean by "misery loves company"?

The box with the vanity top was open so I snapped a picture.

I don't think I've shown it before. It's a dark brown. The undermount sinks are porcelain. It's not my favourite (I think I've mentioned that I wanted square sinks and would have liked a different finish) but even I have to limit how far I can apply my reasoning that if we're doing the work ourselves, we can buy more expensive supplies. In this case the limit was twice the price. (Although, to be honest, if Troy was less reluctant, I probably could have applied my logic to this case too!)

But don't worry...when I'm using those sinks in the bathroom right next to my bedroom, I will not be bemoaning the vanity top. I will be so happy to have plumbing. Upstairs and next to my bedroom!

Mistakes and Lost Causes

No pictures today. It's been a frustrating week with not a lot of progress.

On Wednesday, Troy set to finishing the wiring for the vanity wall. He needed his drill that can make holes at 90° because he couldn't fit the "regular" drill between the studs. While he was using it, it made a bad noise and started smelling like burnt plastic. Never a good thing.

So he took it apart, discovered what was wrong, fixed it and put it back together. And then it did the same thing. So he tried again, and maybe even one more time. And then it still wasn't working. So he was done for the day and now he has a new drill.

It feels like a lot of wasted time, but at least now he can be very sure that getting a new one was necessary.

I, on the other hand, was still working on putting the shims on the hallway floor so the subfloor would be level. Last night I discovered that I used the wrong screw as a reference point not only on the strip that I had just installed, but also the previous strip where the glue was well-dried.

So I spent the evening with a hammer and crowbar removing the incorrect shims, grinding off or pulling out the brads, and cleaning up the surface so I could put shims down again. The glue gave pretty quickly on the old floor boards because they were painted, but there was another section where the shims were glued to some new lumber and that was some work. Troy ended up finishing up the cleaning with a chisel.

Now I should be all set to redo that work today. After thoughts last night of maybe finishing that section in one big push, I now have the same thought today. There's more to do, but I have more time too so we'll see.

It can be frustrating to go backwards but it hasn't happened very often to us so we're going to chalk this up to the cost of doing business.

Shop Follies & Judgment Time

Finally more progress was made. I shouldn't say "finally." Troy has done some work without me. The interior walls, for example, are now firmly attached to the roof (ceiling? trusses?); and more ceiling has drywall. But tonight we "laid" another course of plastic to prepare for even more drywall. We are getting quite good and quick about it now. Just in time to finish strong.

Except for how we started the night. I'll let you be the judge of whether I just messed up...or whether I was led astray.

We unroll the plastic to mark 12' so we know where to start. (Do I need to explain more so you can picture this? We start stapling where the wall meets the ceiling, so we need to know how much plastic to leave hanging toward the floor. So we measure 12', add a couple inches, draw a line, and put that at the ceiling and off we go.) So anyway, I'm measuring 12'. I mark it with my Sharpie. Troy asks, "Do you have your square?" Yes. I mark a straight line. Troy asks, "Do you have your knife?" Yes. And I proceed to cut along the line.

Do you see what just went wrong here?

This was not the case where I was to cut a piece for the wall. This was the case where I was to mark the top of the wall. Just draw the line. Draw, not cut.

But do you see how that might have happened because Troy asked if I had my knife?

When I pointed this out to Troy, he claimed he was just checking if I had all my tools and it was completed unrelated to the task I was attending, or to whether he was thinking I would be cutting the plastic. Really?

I'll let you decide. Please post a comment on whether you think I just brain-farted my way into that all by myself, or whether I was perhaps pushed by the bad smell of someone else's brain flatulence. Your opinions will stay on the blog, and will in no way influence how well or poorly I treat you in person, or even what I think of you as a person. (Promise.)

Cast your vote now, if you dare...