The powder room is completed; well, almost. But darn it is usable and looks great! It has been a long process. Briefly after the memorial service for my father-in-law in March last year (I spoke about his passing <here>) we noticed that whenever we flushed the toilet water would come out underneath the toilet, in between the base and the floor. We stopped using the toilet; we have two others anyway and the trees out back as well. We eventually bit the bullet and decided to have things fixed professionally.
I more or less knew what the issue was. When they built our home in 1970, the
plumbers of the time cut one of the beams in order to install the toilet drain. The floor was sinking right under the
toilet. I had previously installed a few
cheap jacks under it; however, I needed to crawl to the jacks every year or so
to crank them up a bit. Our homes were
built in a swamp and the jacks were slowly sinking into the soft soil. I was resting them on a brick.
Once we retired on June 1 it was time to contact folks to
work on the crawlspace and fix things for good.
I am getting too old to crawl into the crawl space and crank on three jacks. We decided to go for broke: have things fixed
by installing two steel beams under the floor.
These beams are supported by jack placed on concrete pads. After that we
had the crawlspace insulated and a dehumidifier put in. Oh yes, we also found out that the chimney
was separating from the house and needed to be jacked back up against the house. Fun, fun!
We got bids from two companies and finally work started in
August (I briefly mentioned it <here>). We left on our road trip four days after the
work was completed. The plan was to
start when we got back. The work in August
had gutted the entire powder room and we decided to upgrade it. We needed new floor tile and vanity. I wanted to put in a rustic wood wall behind the
toilet and vanity. While shopping around
for tile we saw this tile product that looked like wood and we were sold. A few days before we had decided on a vanity and
it all seemed to match. We ordered the materials
and it was a waiting game.
All the sudden it appeared that our stove was broken. The glass in the oven had cracked and we needed
to do something about that. I detailed some
of the issues with purchasing a new stove <here>. If you
are a regular reader, you have seen some of the crawl space/powder room discussions
there as well, but I could finally make a real start at the renovations around the
beginning of December. This was after I returned
from my strange trip to the bonsai show in North Carolina, which I also detailed
in that post.
It took me two months to finish the project, but I am somewhat
done. We still need to decide about the toilet
paper roll hanger, install a dimmer, and replace a cover to our light switch. A few minor details and that's it. However, we are happy and it looks great.
A quick shout out to all the suppliers etc. Of course we frequented Lowes; the crawlspace
work was done by American Foundation Solutions; the vanity was ordered a Ferguson;
and the tile came through Morris Tile. Oh
yes we got a Bidet toilet seat and light fixture through Amazon. We are happy with the result and the number of
trips that I make to the trees in our back yard have diminished.
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| The finished product! |
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