Master Bathroom Progress

Progress has been made in the master bathroom… Here’s where we are to date.

The tile setter has been busy at work. The wall tile is set. The blue tape holds the tile in place while the mortar dries. The floor is painted with pink water-proofing.

Another view of the walk-in shower.

The soap / shampoo niche. All of the lighting is coming from the skylight above.

The floor tile is installed. It is Montauk black slate. It is not cleaned or grouted in this photo. The floor slopes in one direction to a linear drain (the white thing in this photo).

This is a view of the master bathroom from the master bedroom. The floor tile is installed, but not cleaned or grouted.

The master shower with un-grouted floor. The spots are just water. The drain cover is not installed in this photo. The walls are Bianco Striatta marble (we call it Awesome Stone).

The toilet room with un-grouted tile.

The floor is grouted. The base for the sink vanity is installed. The light fixtures are installed. The door levers are installed.

The shower fixtures are installed. The linear drain is installed in the floor.

We have a potty – separate from any other room!

The soap / shampoo niche.

The linear drain. We are able to use this shower – so there is a bit of water on the floor.

This is hard to photograph… This is looking up at the skylight above the shower. The bath fan and a light are mounted up there. You can see the trees through the skylight!

 

Hall Shower Door

Before we could use the hall shower, we needed a shower door. Here it is!

The guys measured for the glass a week earlier. Then they set it in place…

Then they drill into the tile – yikes!

They set the glass with metal clips.

The shower door is fitted…

The shower door is installed and we can use the shower! The jury is still out on the handle… We might replace it with one that is more square looking… TBD… The blue tape on the side wall is where we’ll mount some towel hooks – coming soon.

 

 

Front door and sidelite

You might have been wondering why there was a big blank panel next to our front door… Well, that is a sidelite, and it was installed last month.

This is a view of the outside of the front door with the new sidelite. Both are clear-coated fir. The upper wire hanging out of the wall is for a wall-mounted light. The lower wire is for the doorbell.

Another view with the front door open.

This is a view of the sidelite and front door from the interior. The painters will come back and paint the exposed wood white to match the trim. This is a lot of glass – so much so that the shower door installer (see next post) walked right into the sidelite and left a nose print – ouch!

The front door with hardware installed!

A close-up of the new front door hardware.

Hall Bath Progress

The hall bathroom (which will be the boy’s and the guest bathroom) is almost done! Here is the progress to date…

 

The vanity cabinet is delivered by Bob, my favorite cabinet maker. That’s Bob in the middle, double checking the length of the cabinet.

The Uselesspieceoffur inspects the cabinets prior to installation.

This is a view of Bob installing the cabinet.

This is a view of the installed cabinet without the drawer faces or toe kick. The material is rift-cut walnut.

This is a view looking in the other direction, towards the shower. The tile is installed in the shower. The floor tile is almost finished – but you can see where it is not done at the threshold to the shower. None of it is grouted in this photo. The wall tile is Carrara marble and the floor tile is Montauk black slate.

This is a view of the soap / shampoo niche in the shower.

The countertop is installed. It is also Carrara marble.

This is a view of the plumber setting the final fixtures. You can see the rest of the countertop / backsplash shelf above.

The shower head is installed!

This is the shower control valve – although he handles are reversed in this photo. That’s fixed now 🙂

We have a potty!

The sink vanity is done and the mirror is installed! The pink Ikea cup is really not going to work with this color scheme…

 

 

Interior Paint

I haven’t posted in a while, but that doesn’t mean things haven’t been happening over here at The Pocket. Last month, the entire interior was painted. We moved downstairs for a week while the guys from Brush Painting went to town on the main floor.

The first step in painting was to remove all of the doors and stack them in one room. They papered all the floors and then painted the ceilings.

This is a view of the living room with all of our stuff covered and the ceilings painted. That’s our fridge on the right hand side. It’s been in the living room for 5 months. It was covered with plastic while painting, but we were able to bust through now and then in order to eat. This fridge gets banished to the garage once the kitchen is done.

This is a view of the built in cabinetry in the living room with the ceilings painted. That’s our sofa and living room stuff piled in the center of the room.

After the ceilings were painted they prepped to paint the trim. They covered the ceilings with plastic so they didn’t get any trim paint on them. They then covered the walls around the trim.

This is a view of the master bedroom. The ceilings are covered with plastic. The walls are masked with paper next to the trim. The bare lightbulb is also covered with paper.

All of the trim, including the built-in, are sprayed with paint.

The shelves for the built in were laid on the floor and sprayed at the same time as the trim.

The doors were stood up and held with blocks of wood. These were sprayed at the same time as the trim. This is a view of all of the doors in the master bedroom.

This is a view looking down the bedroom hall while they were spraying trim.

This is a view of the entry hall while they were painting trim.

This is a view of the living room while they were painting trim.

This is the built in while they were painting trim.

90% of the time was spent on prep – 6 guys for 6 hours. The guys sanded every surface over and over. The trim finish is like glass – it’s so smooth! Once they sanded, one guy came through with the sprayer and sprayed everything in about an hour. They then repeated the process until it was perfect.

Another view of the built-in during trim painting.

To quickly dry and seal the paint, they heated up the house with a propane heater. This is the propane tank, sitting on the front porch.

Inside the entry hall was the heater. It was over 100 degrees inside and incredibly humid with all of the wet paint. Quite frankly, it was unbearable inside! But no pain, no gain 🙂

We lived in the basement for the week while painting happened. Not the most comfortable accommodations – but at least the dog was happy. That’s my sleeping bag he’s lying on!

We hosted a BBQ for the painters one day – they deserved it!

After the trim was painted, the paper masking was removed and the walls were painted. They covered the trim with paper – but I don’t have any pictures of that! This is a view of the kitchen.

This is a view of the doors after painting. The painters re-installed all of the doors when they were done.

 

More doors.

Fireplace tile!

The next step in refinishing the fireplace was to cover the old brick with slate tile to match the new hearth. The hearth and tile are Montauk Black honed slate from Brazil. If you look back a few posts, you can see the old brick.

This is Vladimir, our tile guy. (He also did all of the floor and wall tile in the kitchen and bathrooms). Here he’s covered the old brick with 1/4″ cement board (that’s what the white stuff is).

Here Vlad smears thin set on the back of the cement board. The cement board and tile are on the face of the fireplace surround and also turn into the sides of the firebox.

Outside, Vlad’s son, Andre, cuts the tile into 3″ x 12″ pieces. (The tile came in 12″x12″ pieces). Andre also has a great three point shot, as was witnessed many times when he played basketball with E in our driveway!

The tile is set in a stacked bond pattern.

Once it’s all set, Vlad held it in place with some temporary wood shoring.

It’s almost done! The stone is sealed with an enhancer to bring out the color and protect it from staining.

Even through the stone is very dark, it still has a lot of variation in color. It looks like the outline of South America on the hearth!

The final step is to install a black woven steel fire screen / curtain to prevent embers from popping out. I can’t wait until the floors are stained dark brown as well! (I also need to clean up last year’s ash from the firebox!)

Terrace Guardrail

Yesterday, the guys building the guardrail for the dining room terrace showed up at 8am with it all ready to be installed! We weren’t expecting that, but were super excited to see it go in!

The truck showed up at 8am, just as I was leaving for my morning run. We weren’t expecting them!

They core-drilled into the concrete curb. When the concrete guys were here building the wall, A made sure there was no rebar in the areas where the rail would be attached – we didn’t want the drill to hit rebar! In the end, they grazed one piece, but didn’t hit any!

This is a close-up view of one of the holes.

They had to drill 7 holes.

They poured water in each hole to clean out the dust.

They stuck a rag in each hole to clean out the schmutz and dry it out.

After the holes were drilled, they set the rail in the holes.

The rail is made from solid steel bars, not tubing. So it is really heavy! We wanted bar stock and not tubing because we wanted all of the members to have square corners (tubing has rounded corners).

They shimmed the rail so that it was level.

Setting the corner.

The rail came to our house in three pieces. The three pieces were built in the shop and sent to a powder coater for painting. They field welded the three pieces together on site. The welds were then touched up with paint.

Once everything was level and welded together, the holes were filled with super strong concrete to hold the rail in place.

This shot shows a shim and the hole filled with concrete.

The (almost) finished rail! This summer, A is going to build a wood cap out of ipe that will run the length of the top of the rail.

Living Room Bookshelves

We designed built-in bookshelves for one wall of the living room. The bookshelves flank both sides of the fireplace. A mantle spans across the entire 23′.

My favorite cabinet maker, Bob, arrived early with his truck full of shelves. The mantle rides on top.

The base for the shelves is positioned.

Bob’s helper preps for installing the base.

Once the base is installed, the bookcase frames are set into place.

When all of the frames are in place, they spent a lot of time leveling them and making sure they were perfect.

More leveling and shimming.

Once the frames are placed, blocking sits on top so they can set the mantle.

Screwing in the blocking.

The mantle is set.

Clamps hold the mantle in place while the glue dries.

Fast forward a week… They’re all painted and the shelves are in.

The shelves are adjustable. The area with the junction boxes is where the tv will sit (the junction boxes are power and cable).

The next step is to cover up the old brick with slate tiles that will match the new slate hearth. Then we’ll stain the wood floors nice and dark to tie it all together!

 

Master Bathroom Tile

Meet Awesome Stone. This is the tile we chose for the master bathroom. It’s actually called Bianco Striatta, but when we saw it for the first time at the tile store, we called it AWESOME Stone. It’s real marble – not manmade. But it has an incredibly straight veining that appealed to us.

The tile comes in a 12″x24″ size.

The tile setter cut all of the pieces in half lengthwise. He mixed them all up so we wouldn’t have two pieces from the same stone next to each other. He stacked them in the toilet room (pictured here).

The tile is laid in a staggered (brick) layout. This is a view as you enter the bathroom and see the entry to the shower. (The door in the background leads to the toilet room).

This is a view of the shower before you step into it.

This is a view of the far shower wall. The floor will be 12″x24″ Montauk black slate.

In this photo, you can see where the soap / shampoo niche will go. That will be tiled with the same tile. The sill will be a piece of Awesome Stone slab. The pipe at the top is a shower head. The box in the middle of the wall is the shower control and to the right is a handheld shower.

This is a view of the opposite wall. There is another shower head and control on this wall.

This is a view of the niche wall.

The tile setter is doing an amazing job. Where a 12″ tile meets a corner, he book-matched the cut tile around the corner.

Hall Bathroom Tile

The hall bathroom shower walls are tiled with Carrara marble. It’s not quite done, but here are some pictures of where we are this week. (Note – it’s not grouted yet).

This is a view of the shower standing at the sink vanity. There will be a glass door on the right and a glass panel on top of the partial height wall. We realized this week that the opening to the shower was framed too small! So we had to have the framer out to surgically cut the wall without messing up the shower pan. Fortunately, the tile wasn’t installed or grouted on this wall yet. The drywaller will return next week to patch the drywall at this area.

This is the soap / shampoo niche.

The shelves of the niche are Carrara slab. The rest of the niche is tile.

This is a view of the wall where the shower head will go (the little circle towards the top).