A little progress on the remodel

Since I decided to do the STP with my wife this year, any extra time has been spent  on training for this or recovering from the training.  The outcome of this has meant that almost nothing has gotten done on the remodel.  Over the last few weeks, the time needed to recover from the training has seemed to decrease.  I can now take  a long ride and after resting for a while, do something like mow the lawn or weed the garden, which I hadn’t been able to get to before.  

This freeing up of time combined with the long days of summer has meant getting a little bit done on the remodel.  The painting is now to a point where the cabinets could go in.  My son came home from college and we hired him to remove the old carpet and haul it off.   We also had a cabinet installer to come in and get the first part of the cabinets installed. 

Remodel Update – Forward progress

Finally, getting tile installers lined up, now we have too many.  We signed up for one person to come in on Oct 4 to do the master bath shower and floor area.   And then I received another reference.   He was on vacation to start with, so when we were talking to the other contractors, we couldn’t with him. 
Finally made contact Saturday, received a bid in Sunday.  His price is about 30% higher, but they, (it is actually two partners), can start this week.  Even at 30% higher, it is 1/2 of some of our other bids.
We are still signed up for the other guy on Oct 4th; we may keep this date while I get the main bath prepared to be updated.  Though I’m very concerned that I won’t be able to make that date.  due to the overlap of this tile job, letting it all cure, and ordering and installing the shower door.  However long that all takes, would then be subtracted off the dates between now and Oct 4, since I can’t start in the Main bath until the Master is operational again.
In Order to get a good idea the tile design, we laid it out on the living room floor.  Alex was instrumental in coming up with the tile pattern.  It is great how the remodeling is pulling us closer as a family.  In my opinion, that alone is worth the money invested.
Here is the general idea:

This first picture is a little dark.  The stones represent the floor of shower. 

Remodel – Some Forward Motion

We have a cabinets and a new tub on order.  We ordered a shower surround that came in damaged, so we changed and decided to put in a tiled shower in the master bath. 
Last week I met with a tile guy who is willing to take on the job.  He was recommended by a friend and this weekend we went and saw some of his finished work.  He does an excellent job. 
After I met with him I started the demolition of the master bath.  The demolition is now mostly complete.  I have a few pieces of the sheet rock left at the top of the wall just to give the ceiling extra support (you can see these in the picture below.  On the other side of the ceiling sheet rock is the attic.  I decided not to replace the ceiling sheetrock because I didn’t want to deal with the attic insulation and the heat of the attic at this time.
With my son helping and a borrowed a saz-all, we cut the fiberglass shower into pieces and hauled it out since it would fit through the door.  Taking out shower, sheetrock and flooring probably took two days.    This was stretched over four in order to still be able to look for work and do my other chores, though I got way behind in everything.
Removed the flooring to get the flooring out, this takes us down to one toilet in the house because I removed the laundry room toilet a while back.  So we decided to reinstall the one for the laundry room.
Bringing stuff in and out is not light duty.  I needed to borrow a truck to haul out a load of garbage ( this is the second load to the dump since starting).  And we needed the truck also to haul in new sheetrock. 
Working with the sheet rock has replace my lifting weights at the Y the last few days.  I am feeling new muscles that my regular work out misses.  I measure and cut the sheetrock in the garage and carry the pieces upstairs to the bathroom.  Since I end up measuring about three times, forgetting the tape measure a couple times,  then carrying the piece up to check it out, only to have to take it back down to do a little more adjusting—with each of these meaning a trip up and down the stairs—this turns out to mean many trips up and down the stairs for each piece of sheet rock installed.