Bathroom Cabinets

Sometimes, going on vacation is exactly what you need to do since many home repairs are a lot like making sausage – you’ll enjoy the end product a lot more if you don’t see what really goes into it.

 

Plus, you get to be uber-surprised when you come back and progress has occurred.  Through the wonder of the internet (or text messaging, to be more exact), though, you get to see what’s happening while you’re gone.

 

In this case, bathroom cabinets went in the hall bathroom.  This follows the plan that there must be at least one working bathroom in the house when we return.

 

The hall bath is one of the rooms that changes the most.  The vintage diagonal cast-iron tub that was installed in 1968 is long gone.  Now there’s a new normal-sized bathtub, a separate over-sized shower and the twin sinks have been reduced to a single sink in the corner, with expanded counterspace on each side.

 

Mom’s mandate that the laundry chute was non-negotiable and must stay has been met.  The new linen cabinet has a nifty lockable pull-out door that drops the clothes through the expanded opening directly to the remodeled laundry area below.

 

While we sit on the beach.   Life is pretty good.  

Painting has begun

While we are on vacation Berry is working his magic with coordinating all the work being done at the house.  We are thankful to have someone that we trust.   

Master bedroom

Jordan's room

Saturday, August 3, 2013

The first obstacle to overcome related to transportation.  Specifically, how to get 10 adults – none of whom are small enough to choose “jockey” as a career path but several of whom who could pick “Opera Star”.

 

We then had to combine that with the fact that the house we are renting – called “Cardiff by the Sea” is 7 miles beyond the end of the pavement up the beach.  They’re very adamant about the fact that you have to have a 4WD vehicle (not “All Wheel” drive, as we saw some people trying).  

 

A nuisance, but not insurmountable – after all, we have EB’s new-to-us Jeep (a beautiful red 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee that only had 2,700 miles on it when we got it last month) and the phone number for a car rental place.

 

So back in June – yes, over 60 days prior to our departure – calls were made to Enterprise Rent-A-Car and, after a conversation of over 30 minutes with the young lady on the phone explaining exactly what we were doing and what we were needing a reservation was in place for a super-size SUV with 4WD capabilities.

 

So imagine my frustration when I called to confirm earlier this week only to be told, “Oh, sorry, but we don’t ever have any 4WD vehicles.  We have you down for a regular size SUV,” or roughly the equivalent of the Jeep we already had.

 

For seven people.

 

At least six of whom are at least one standard deviation above the norm in all dimensions.

 

So I talked with the manager, who seemed remarkably flipabout the fact that this middle-aged guy who was now scrambling to try to figure out how to transport 10 people to the beach was only semi-stable emotionally was quickly becoming a raving lunatic on the phone.

 

So I got the manager on the phone.

 

Here’s a hint to all managers who deal in service industries.  If a customer is close to melting down on the phone because of something that is clearly the fault of your company (because, remember, I had a printed confirmation that showed exactly what I’d ordered and when), DO NOT under any circumstances offer the fact that an unpaid high school student who was in the office as an intern the week the customer made the reservation and didn’t know any better as an excuse.

 

I didn’t call the number for “unpaid, untrained interns having a bit of fun”. I called the number for a national organization that advertises all the heck over the place to do what they advertise to do AND got written proof of what I’d been promised.

 

And don’t be flip about it.  Even if you’re not going to do squat, at least pretend you are if for no other reason than to keep a raving lunatic from coming to your office to discuss the situation with you in person.

 

The regional manager was a bit more perceptive as to the severity of the situation, and to his credit, called back within half an hour, had found a 4WD Yukon on the eastern side of NC and was having it transported over for us.

 

That was good, because it meant there was not going to be a need to use any of the vacation fund to post bail before we left home.

A Slight Detour

There comes a time in every project when one’s best option is to follow the old military adage and “un-ass the area.”  Having reached that point with the home renovations, being without bathrooms for over a month (a single toilet behind an old sheet does NOT count as a bathroom, especially if you have to go elsewhere to shower or brush your teeth in a paper cup!) it was time to do something different.

And that was just at the kid’s house.  Similarly, those of us who live across town were looking for our summer hiatus.  Normally that happens in June.  This year, though, summerschool, football and Eagle Projects meant that there was a one week window of opportunity to get away as a family.  Given that the twins have now topped two decades and Caleb is in his last year of high school, those chances are undoubtedly going to be harder to come by in the future, so we snagged it.

 

Hello, Corolla/Carova Beach, North Carolina.

For those not in the know, Carova Beach is a 12-15 mile strip of beach beyond the end of the pavement at the northern end of the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  It’s hard to get there, no matter what.  You have to have a 4 wheel drive vehicle and are encouraged to carry a shovel, a board and a tide chart with you, lest you end up paying the deductible on your rental car’s insurance policy.  You actually drive on the beach that last part of the way to get to your vacation home.

 

The hardest part, though, is simply getting from Hickory to the Outer Banks.  It’s between 8 and 9 hours to drive there, which is a long time, any way you look at it.  Especially if the dog is insistent that he sit on your lap and either nap or look out the window.  

So ten of us packed the bare essentials we need to travel and live for a week, which is roughly equivalent to that which Hannibal used to cross the Alps and invade Italy from Carthage, except we did it without the elephants.  In addition to the core family, our extras include Lawson and Griffin, who’ve been peripheral members for a while but haven’t been on a long trip with us before.

 

Anyone who’s read the earlier trip blogs knows that travel with the Clan is not for the faint of heart.  Robby and Brian will fly into Virginia Beach on Saturday and then drive down to meet us so we’ll be 12 for the week.

 

And once again, the adventure begins (plus EB/LJ & RR/BR).

Interim Arrangements

So the floors are being redone in the bedrooms and tile is going into the bathrooms.  That doesn’t mean that life stops, though, and internet connectivity is crucial.

 

So essential that even a few minutes interruption is potentially a major crisis, especially with the kids in summerschool.

 

But the modem and other little blinky boxes that make this possible were previously located in the office downstairs, which is getting ready to be a major construction area.  We’d planned them into the renovation – they are moving into the new bookcases that will surround the HVAC changes next to the fireplace in the den.  Those things aren’t ready yet, though, and the system needed to move.

 

That meant we needed a temporary fix to hold things.  Fortunately, we have about 200 feet of wire shelving that had to be removed from assorted closets.

 

Problem solved.

Floors and Doors

Updating and improving means you get to get rid of those minor annoyances that you otherwise live with, because, “. . . . as long as we’re here. . . . “ we may as well.

 

The patio door in the master bedroom is one of those annoyances.  A sliding patio door that was a good unit in the early 90’s, it had lived out its usefulness.  It no longer opened or closed without a significant amount of effort and opened onto a deck that the carpenters immediately condemned when they saw it.

 

New French doors and a re-designed (read “smaller”) deck with a set of stairs that go down, providing an alternate exit to the second floor of the house.  It was supposed to be a window seat, with the deck going away.  But then the realization hit that nobody thought to put in the support beams for that, and it would have required ripping out both the electrical and HVAC that was just installed.

 

This prompted (a) a minor meltdown by some of us and (b) a re-design of the plan, keeping the deck in place and modifying it to let a bit more sunlight in through the patio door directly under the one in the Master Bedroom.

 

Turns out this wasn’t a bad option, as the new French door lets in lots of light and gives a really updated look to the bedroom.

 

It was also time to move forward on refinishing the floors in the bedrooms.  Drywall dust and floor dust aren’t all that different – they sift into everything through the entire house.  Imagine going through your house with a 10 pound bag of flour and a leaf blower, and you’ve got the idea of what a mess it is.

 

The floors got an updated color, too – the center one in the picture – and take some planning because as the polyurethane dries you can’t walk on them.  

 

Not even a tiny bit.

 

Not a single step.

 

This can be a hard message to get across to some folks.  It takes tape and signs and threats.

 

In the bathrooms, drywall is followed by tile.  Well, first there’s a bit of concrete poured in the shower floor to create the base for it, then tile goes in on top.  That’s when you can understand the entire vision and how it all meshes together.

 

And, in the midst of all this, we got ready and left on vacation.

Drywall

Nothing starts to make you realize that a project is truly happening like drywall.

 

For most of us, you can measure things out, do drawings, put tape on the floor – and all of that is essential so you can start to conceptualize what’s happening, but until the studs go in and the sheetrock starts to go onto the walls, you can’t tell a whole lot about what’s happening.

 

We started seeing major differences when the  new closet was formed in, and realized, “Hey, the bedroom really didn’t shrink that much.  We just took all the dead space and put it in one place and made it useful.”  It works both ways, though, because then you realize that the new closet isn’t that huge expanse that you thought it would be.

 

It’s big and will be wonderful – but it’s not unlimited space.  Organization will help, though, and the master bedroom will now have “his” and “hers” closets which, stereotypically, puts the “hers” more than twice as big as the “his”.

 

Similarly, it’s a lot easier to visualize the bathrooms once walls start going up.  What looked to be an enormous shower turns out to be generous, but not oversized.  They have blissfully high ceilings (which is important when the orthopedist says that your son will top out at about 6’7”) with the shower head actually up close to the ceiling, so nobody has to duck to wash their hair.

 

There are also “nooks” built into the shower to hold shampoo and soap and all the accoutrements that seem to collect in the shower so there will no longer be any need for those spring loaded metal units that fit in the corner to spread rust stains all over.