A couple of months ago, we swapped out our old programmable thermostats with new Nest learning thermostats … and we’ve been really happy with them.  Although there’s a lot we like about the Nest, one of the features we’ve missed from the beginning is the ability to analyze all of the data collected by the thermostat.  Access to this data is listed as one of the top requested enhancements on the Nest community site, but as of now, the only data that’s available is the energy usage graphs for the past 10 days.  While this is an ok start, the data isn’t viewable until the next day and this history isn’t there to be able to do any meaningful analysis.

While we still hope that the Nest provides official access to all of the behind the scenes data in the future, Chad spent some time this weekend working on an alternate solution that we think will be really useful in the meantime.  It’s based on this (unofficial) Nest Learning Thermostat API, which accesses the Nest website to retrieve status information for both of our thermostats.

We’ve used the API in a simple .php script that’s scheduled as a cron job on our server.  Once we’ve retrieved the information from the Nest website, we’re using Zabbix as the logging and charting platform for putting together some graphs that provide an at-a-glace overview of temperature,  humidity, and status (running or not) for each thermostat.  Here’s a snapshot of the graphs we’ve configured initially:

While Zabbix may not be the obvious choice for charting temperature-related data, we already had it in place for monitoring availability of our networked devices, so it was a matter of simple configuration to add the Nest data to it.  In addition to enabling the charting functionality, Zabbix also provides the ability to configure alerts based on trigger points.  We’re still thinking through how we’ll make the best use of this, but it would be a simple thing to send email or SMS alerts when the furnace is running, when the temperature has reached (or fallen below) a threshold, when the furnace hasn’t ran in a defined period of time, etc.  This functionality has also been logged as a feature request on the Nest community site.

We’ve initially chosen to poll the Nest website for updated data every 5 minutes, which accounts for latency between the Nest thermostats and the data on the website.  Although it would be  better if we could connect directly to the thermostats for actual real-time data rather than going to the website for updates, the 5 minute interval is certainly close enough to real-time to meet our needs.

While we’ve only been logging data from the Nest thermostats for a little over  a day, we’ve already noticed a couple of things:  1-Nest seems to do really well at keeping the house temperature within a pretty tight range of the set point temperature.  2-The closer-to-real-time nature of the data is allowing us to pick out some trends that will likely influence our behavior going forward.  For example, the upstairs furnace runs longer to maintain the same temperature when the door to the master bedroom (where the thermostat is located) is closed.

Pretty cool, huh?

It’s been a couple of weeks since we installed the new room darkening shades in Haley’s nursery to replace her old wooden mini blinds (which required that the windows also be covered in foil to make the room acceptably dark for napping) … and I’m now realizing that we lived with the foil on the windows for entirely too long.  The new binds are awesome!

Just a reminder, here’s where we started.  Attractive, I know.

As always, installation of shades seems like such a simple task, but was more frustrating than it should be and took about twice as long as we expected.  This had a lot to do with the fact that we ordered the new shades to be inside mounted and the pretty window trim in our old house isn’t perfectly square.  Go figure.  Anyway, no pictures of that, but imagine a lot of tedious adjustments and head scratching … and the shades going up and coming down at least 3 times each before we called it good.

Once all that was worked out, though, I decided that all of (Chad’s) installation-related frustration was totally worth it.  Here are the “After” pictures with the new shades installed:

We picked the Levolor Accordia room darkening cellular shades in lavender (from the “Designer Textures” palette) and we chose the cordless option since they were being installed in a nursery.

The lavender color turned out to be fun and youthful, but more subdued than it might have been, which we think will be a good thing.  It coordinates well with the decals on her wall, her lamp, and the canvas bins on her shelves (although the color isn’t quite as saturated as any of those items), but it’s not so overpowering that the shades will scream purple if we re-do Haley’s room with a slightly different color palette when she gets older.  We’re hoping they should grow with her and be able to stay constant in the room as it evolves.

The cordless option on the shades is really good from a safety perspective and we’re getting used to it otherwise.  I’m not sure if it’s an option I would select again if we were ordering shades for a room where the presence of a cord wasn’t a problem  For one thing, the shades are loud!  It’s not really a problem, just something you don’t necessarily expect from window treatments.  Also, because our windows are so wide, it’s hard to keep the shade straight while raising and lowering it.  Again, not really a problem and it’s easy to adjust them, but it bugs me.  If I don’t pay attention to it, the shades wind up looking like this every time.

We also noticed that lowering the shades is a little more difficult when there’s furniture in front of the window.  We have an old cabinet sitting in front of one of Haley’s windows for her baby monitors (yes, we have two … but that’s another story).  Since the cabinet is a little higher than the window sill, we have to reach behind it to push the shade down every time we close it.  Again, not a major issue, but kind of annoying and something we didn’t think about before ordering the shades.  Might be time to think about a new location for the baby monitors … but, for now, we’re working with it.

Anyway, the new blinds are great overall.  They make the room almost as dark as the foil-covered and Haley doesn’t seem to mind the difference.  The even better part, though, is how bright the room is when the shades are open.  We never actually raised the old mini blinds (just twisted them open) and I never realized how much light they were blocking even when they were open.  I absolutely love how sunny and bright her room is now that we actually make a habit of raising the shades!  The only bad part is that it has become completely obvious how badly the windows need to be cleaned.  I’m ignoring that point.

So, bottom line – shades are up and we love them.  One step closer to a finished nursery for Haley!  Up next:  wall art … assuming, of course, that I can actually make a decision and commit to something …

On Monday, we’re taking the first steps toward a project we should have completed long ago – removing a couple of wall-mounted window air conditioners from the sunroom and master bedroom.

In the Sunroom / Family Room

In the Master Bedroom

(Yes, that’s Haley’s no-longer-used cradle in the corner of our bedroom.  I still haven’t figured out how she got old enough to not be using it any more and I’m so not ready to put it in storage.)

Other than being old and not so efficient, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with having window air conditioners in these two rooms – in theory – but they were there when we bought the house 5 years ago and we’ve never used them.  We aren’t even sure that they work.  Aside from being an eye sore, they also aren’t very weather tight or critter tight – they’re usually home to a nest of something or other and we’re pretty sure the one in our bedroom has let a few unwelcome bats in.  On top of that, they’re just plain loud.  It sounds strange, but it’s true.  We can hear everything that goes on outside like it’s happening in the bedroom because of the stupid air conditioner.

Having said all of that, I suppose there was a time when they made a lot of sense.  The sunroom used to be a screened in porch that was closed in sometime in the 50s.  The master bedroom is located right over the sunroom and used to be an open sleeping porch that was converted to living space around the same time.  Before the house had central air, it was probably a great feature to have air conditioning in these two rooms … but now that we have central air, there’s just not much of a need for them.  We’ve been ready to say goodbye for quite a while and just haven’t done anything about it, but that’s about to change.

So, the project starts on Monday with a visit from the electrician to remove the middle-of-the-wall outlet in the master bedroom since that would be pretty a pretty awkward location once the air conditioner is gone.

Up close and personal.

(And, yes – in case you were wondering, that is window film covering the air conditioner in the bedroom.  It’s our attempt to make the thing a little more weather tight.  It also collects dead bugs – ick.)

Our expectation is that it shouldn’t be a problem for the electrician to remove the outlet and associated wiring completely so that we can patch the wall and pretend it was never there.  If not, our second choice will be to just relocate the outlet lower in the wall so that it’s at a more normal height and won’t draw so much attention.  Either way, it’ll be an improvement.

Once the outlet is removed, the next step is taking out both air conditioners and patching the wall, inside and out.  We’ve hired this part also – largely because the second floor air conditioner is up high and that side of the house borders a pretty steep ravine so there’s really no safe way to do the work without setting up scaffolding.  Plus, it really wasn’t that expensive.  This is loosely scheduled for when the weather gets a little better, but we’re hoping for sometime in March.

It seems like such a trivial change – I mean, it’s just a couple of air conditioners – but we’re both so happy that they’re on their way out.  No more nights spent listening to birds or squirrels or whatever else is living in the air conditioner, more comfortable (less drafty) rooms, fewer bugs/bats/mice making their way in.  I am sooo ready to say goodbye!

I’m so excited – I got the shipping notification today that the room darkening shades for Haley’s nursery should be here by the end of the week … which means we should be able to say goodbye to the foil (yes, foil) that’s been gracing her windows for the past month or so.  And I can’t wait!

Her room actually does have blinds already and they’re actually pretty attractive custom wood mini-blinds.  I’m not sure if it’s what we would have picked, but they were there when we bought the house and they worked fine with the rest of her nursery.  While she was a really little baby who could sleep through anything, they worked fine for her, too.

Now that she’s a bit older, though, she’s awake a lot more (which I really enjoy), but naps are also becoming a little tricker.  She no longer sleeps when she needs to regardless of where she is or what else is going on in the room.  Now, things like a crazy dark room and lots of white noise are a big help for successful napping.  And her mini blinds (while pretty) didn’t do such a great job of blocking out the light.  In fact, the window on the west side of the room lit up so pretty in the afternoon, that even with the shade shut, she would just stare at it rather than fall asleep for her nap.  It was fine with her, but not so much with me.

So, to test out the idea that room darkening shades might help with her sleeping, I lined the windows with aluminum foil.  It looks really ghetto and I absolutely hate that there’s no sunlight in her room ever (we spend almost no time in there now), but having the room nice and dark for naps seems to be helping (at least a little – and I’ll take what I can get).

While it’s kind of sad to replace perfectly good (and probably pretty expensive) wood blinds with something different, we decided that she would probably always sleep better in a dark room (we do), so it was worth the investment to install some room darkening shades which (unlike the foil) could be opened to let some sun in when she’s not sleeping.

Since extra time isn’t something that I have a lot of these days, I decided to make things easy and order the same kind of room darkening shades (Levolor Accordia) that we have in our master bedroom – just in a more kid friendly color.  I started by picking out a few likely candidates from both the “Designer Textures” and “Designer Colors” palettes and ordering some free samples so that we could pick something that would coordinate with her room and hopefully continue to work for her as her nursery grows into a big girl room.

In the end, we decided on Lavender from the “Designer Textures” collection.  The samples turned out to be a bit difficult to photograph, but here’s a photo from the Levolor website:

We landed on this color pretty quickly.  After seeing the samples for the “Designer Colors” collection, we realized that the way they were lined to become room darkening made the shades a little shiny, which we weren’t sure we liked, so we eliminated all of those options right away.  From the “Designer Textures” collection, which looks more like fabric, we liked the “Lavender” color and also “Fresh Green”, which would have been a really close match to the curtains in her room, but we were concerned that it might be too much green.  The “Petal” color was a pretty shade of pale pink, but didn’t look right in her room since the pinks we’ve used in there are much darker and the more neutral options seemed awfully bland for a kids room.  I think the “Lavender” color will be nice also since it will add another girly element to the room (which is starting out pretty gender-neutral since we didn’t find out whether Haley was a girl or a boy before she was born).

I ordered the shades a week or so ago from BlindsGalore.com.  I’ve ordered some shades from them before for our previous house and it turns out they were running the best promotions (33% off plus an additional 15% off and a free cordless upgrade) again as of a week or so ago, so I placed the order with them again.  I still can’t figure out, though, how it can be that just about everyone runs huge sales on blinds all the time and they’re still so pricy!  Window treatments in general are so outrageously expensive – it just baffles me!

Anyway, I’m counting the days until I can rip that foil off her windows and replace them with some pretty, girly blinds … and then finally take (and post!) some pictures of her nursery in the daylight!

Over Christmas vacation, we installed two new Nest thermostats.  One was a Christmas gift and (after seeing how cool it was) we ordered the other online and installed it upstairs.  We’ve only been using them for about 6 weeks, but so far we’re really liking them.

The Nest for the Main Floor (installed in the dining room)

The Nest for the Second Floor (installed in the master bedroom)

We love the way they look in both locations – much more streamlined and unobtrusive than the old touch screen thermostats we had.  Probably more than that, though, we love the fact that they’re internet enabled so we can adjust the temperature from anywhere in the house or even from the car (so the house will be all warmed up by the time we get home).  We also like being able to set the “away” status of both thermostats at the same time from the iPhone app (one of the benefits of having multiple Nests), but since Haley and I are home most of the time, we haven’t yet turned on the auto-away feature.

Installation was really simple.  We took a photo of how the old thermostat was wired and used the online tool on the Nest website to map that wiring to the new thermostat.  Easy peasy.

The Wiring for the Old Thermostat

The wiring for the Nest

To be honest, the “hardest” part of the installation in both cases was touching up the paint around the new thermostat since the paint in both rooms had been applied around (and not behind) the old thermostats.  We had the left over paint in both cases, but had mixed results in touching up the walls.  Everything turned out fine in the dining room, but the bedroom paint doesn’t quite match up – I guess that’s what happens when you try to paint a patch in the middle of a wall that was last painted 5 years ago.  It’s good enough for now, but we’ll probably wind up re-painting the wall sometime later on.

So far, everything about our installation of the thermostats has been working exactly as expected.  Our only concern going forward is that the thermostat is designed to do what Nest calls “power sharing”, which means that the it charges the battery by using power from the circuit only when the furnace (or air conditioning) is running.  This is discussed a lot on various forums as a concern – some folks have issues with it, others don’t.  So far, we haven’t seen any problems, but our plan is to keep an eye on it as the weather changes and the furnace runs less.  At that time, we’ll probably update the wiring for both thermostats to make use of the “C” wire, which is a common ground that would allow the Nest to charge as needed without the unit running.

We’re also super excited about how the Nest will continue to improve and evolve over time.  A new forum was recently launched to provide a place for the Nest community to request and vote for enhancements to the current Nest solution.  We’re pretty excited about the top two items on the list:  1- increased access to the data that’s collected by the Nest (the reports currently provided are ok, but not great and not available until the next day) and 2- a networked thermometer accessory that could be placed in a location separate from the wired thermostat.  For us, this would be really great since Haley’s room (which is on the second floor of our house) is serviced by the furnace on the main floor since that was the easiest (only?) way to get duct work to the room when the house was re-fitted with a forced air system.  It works fine except that it causes us to heat the main floor of the house probably more than required in an attempt to keep her room at an acceptable temperature overnight.  With a networked thermometer that we could place in her room and link to the Nest on the main floor, we would be able to tell Nest to run the downstairs furnace to maintain the temperature according to the thermometer in her room at night and the main thermostat in the dining room during the day, which would eliminate the guess work.

Anyway, so far, so good.  We’re happy with how the Nests are working for us so far … and excited for what’s (hopefully) coming!

Over the weekend, we thought it might be time to (finally) start tackling the last few remaining items on the checklist for the master bathroom remodel so we can (only 5 months later) mark the project complete and move on to something new.  Among other things, that list included updating the door hardware on the door to the bathroom and the door to the linen closet.

When we started the project, the hinges and doorknobs on both doors were shiny gold (a-la-1980-something):

This obviously isn’t the original hardware on either door and we’re definitely not in love with it (not to mention that it really stands out now that the rest of the bathroom has been updated).  So, it’s clearly time for an update.  The great door knob dilemma, though, is what to update them to – do we try to match what’s in the rest of the house?  Or do we pick what we think would look best in the bathroom regardless of how well it matches (or doesn’t match) with anything else in the house?

If our goal is to match the existing hardware elsewhere in the house, we have a number of options to choose from:

1. solid brass knobs (on the main floor)
2. crystal knobs with brass (on the second floor)
3. crystal knob with chrome (only on the kitchen closet door – probably not original?)
4. oil rubbed bronze (newer/replacement knobs used throughout the house)

On top of that, we’re not sure if it’s right to match door hardware with the rest of the house or with the finishes in the bathroom itself.  The faucets and other hardware in the bathroom is all chrome, so we’re not sure if it would look out of place to pick door knobs that match something in the rest of the house, but not the finishes in the bathroom?

Just for kicks, we tried a modern oil rubbed bronze knob from Lowe’s (that we had left over from another project) on the linen closet door.  Here’s what that looks like:

So, you see we have a dilemma – what type of door knobs are right for the newly remodeled bathroom?  We both agree that shiny gold isn’t right, but we’re not sure what to replace it with or what/if we should try to match.

I tried Googling the topic over the weekend and found a pretty good thread discussing the various options over on Garden Web, but even after reading through the whole thing, it seems to come down to what seems right to you and there’s no standard approach.

Anyway, here are the options we’re considering:

1) Use the knobs from Lowe’s that most closely matches with any of the finishes in the house and move on.  This is by far the most economical solution and would probably be a standard oil rubbed bronze knob similar to the one we’ve got temporarily installed on the linen closet door now:

2) Pick a knob that has more historical styling, but stick with the oil rubbed bronze finish.  In this case, we could pick the same door knobs we used when we completed the entry way addition a few years back.  They’re from House of Antique Hardware and they’re aging nicely – eventually they might look similar to some of the existing brass hardware, I’m not sure:

3) Match the majority of the door knobs on the second floor (including the ones for all of the bedrooms and bedroom closets), which are brass with crystal handles:

This would probably equate to ordering something like this from House of Antique Hardware:

4) Stick with something more historical, but match the finishes in the bathroom (i.e., chrome with a crystal handle).  We’d probably pick the same knob as option #3 from House of Antique Hardware, just in a chrome finish:

So, what do you think?  Our initial thought was to go with option #1 and just pick something functional from Lowe’s, but after seeing the knob on the linen closet door, I’m not sure.  Now, I’m wondering if I might prefer the chrome finish in option #4.  Ugh.

Last September, when the contractors finished up the work on our master bathroom, there were still some finishing touches left for us to complete.  All of the major work (replacing the fixtures, tile, vanity, countertop, faucets, etc.) was all done, but the room still needed paint.  Kind of odd, I know, but the place we hired to do the remodeling work was a local home improvement center that focuses on kitchens and baths … and not paint.  So, they had no painter on staff and told us up front they would do everything but any paint, wallpaper, stain, etc. that we wanted for final finishes.  We figured painting was a really small portion of the job, so we were ok with that.  The plan was actually for me to paint the bathroom myself … or at least that was the plan that I made when I was 4 months pregnant and painting still sounded like a reasonable activity.  By the time the remodeling work was done (only 9 days before Haley was born), I had different ideas.

So, the bathroom sat in a remodeled, but unpainted state from September until the beginning of January when I finally acknowledged that there was just no way I would find time to paint in the course of a normal day (especially when finding time for a daily shower is sometimes a challenge).  So, we finally picked a paint color and hired someone to apply it … easy peasy.  Anyway, just a refresher – here’s what the bathroom looked like for those 3 long months:

The walls were partially the old paint color (Sherwin Williams Sand Dune – SW6086) and partially covered in fresh plaster patches … with lots of mars and dings.  Same was true for the doors and the woodwork – everything just needed a fresh coat.

Picking a trim color was easy since we wanted the room to match the rest of the house, so we picked Sherwin Williams Modest White (SW6084).  For the walls, we figured we could use just about any color since we weren’t really trying to coordinate with anything.  I liked the idea of picking something a little darker to provide some contrast with the tile, and I really wasn’t all that crazy about anything in the same color family as the beige we started with.  Just looking at the room, my first thought was to pick a nice shade of blue, which I’m sure would have looked lovely … but we’ve recently painted our entry way and foyer a couple of different shades of blue and I thought it was probably a good idea to change it up a bit.  So, I dug out my (embarrassingly large) collection of paint samples and started picking some likely candidates.  After living with paint chips taped to the wall for a few weeks, Chad and I both had a favorite – and it was the same color!  So, we figured we might as well just go for it.  In the end, we picked Sherwin Williams Green Earth (SW7748).

The painters spent the better part of 3 days putting a fresh coat of paint on all of the trim, doors, window, medicine cabinet, walls, and linen closet, but by the time they left, the room actually looked like it had been remodeled … rather than looking like it was a construction project in progress … finally!

In the end, we love the color.  It’s just the right amount of contrast with the white tile without being too stark.  The trim color, too, turned out really well,  I like that it matches with the rest of the house, but I was initially concerned that it would be obviously not white against the rest of the whites in the room and might look dingy.  While it definitely does look creamier, I actually like the contrast.  I think it makes the room seem a little warmer and helps the trim stand out from everything else that’s going on in the room.  I’m so happy it worked out … I really hate painting trim, so I’m glad we don’t have to add updating the color to our list of things to do!

Besides the paint, you might also notice that we swapped out the light fixtures since the last set of pictures for something a little different.  That had been part of the plan all along – although we’d planned to install some light fixtures I ordered from Pottery Barn rather than the ones we wound up with … but that’s a story for another time.  Regardless, we’re really happy with the new look.

So, now you’re pretty much caught up – this is how the bathroom looks today, although we still have some finishing touches left before we’ll consider it complete.  We need to hang towel bars, swap out the door knobs and hinges for something that matches with the rest of the bathroom (rather than shiny gold!), seal the grout (probably several times!), and work on a little decorating.  With any luck, we’ll find some time to wrap up the last items on the “punch list” in the next few weeks, so stay tuned for more updates!

Ok, so I’ve been really bad about updating the blog over the past few months.  We brought a new baby girl home from the hospital in September and everything else has kind of taken a back seat since then.  So, yes, it’s been forever, but we figured better late than never!

We left off last fall talking about our decision to remodel our master bathroom.  We started off with 2 goals for the project:  1 – to fix some issues with the bathtub so that it would be usable when we eventually needed it for the baby and also to make it functional as a shower for adults … and 2 – to install an exhaust fan so that showering in the master bathroom is actually a practical option.  You can read more here about how those two goals turned into a complete bathroom remodel, if you’re interested.

First off, here’s a quick reminder of what we started with:

One happy side effect of deciding to do a full bathroom remodel rather than just addressing the issues with the tub/shower was that  it gave us the opportunity to completely change the look of the room.  While it was in really good shape, we just weren’t really in love with the green tile, gold fixtures, or oak cabinetry, so I welcomed the opportunity to change it out for something that fit better with our taste and the era of the house.  (And never fear – if we ever miss that green tile, we still have plenty in the matching laundry room bathroom.)

When it came to what we should replace the green tile and gold fixtures with, there really wasn’t much discussion.  We pretty much knew from the beginning that we wanted a white bathroom with chrome fixtures.  After spending way too much time on Pinterest and Google image search (it was a great excuse to plant my pregnant self on the couch!), I put together the following “mood board” with some of our favorite things for the new bathroom:

Starting in the upper left corner and moving clock-wise around, we made the following selections for the new bathroom:  1) Chenowith medicine cabinet from Rejuvenation (our “splurge” for the bathroom – love the way it looks, but it was waaay too expensive for what it is),  2) Bertch vanity in white with “Hudson” style doors, 3) Daltile Rittenhouse subway tile in Matte Arctic White for the walls (we also loved the countertop in this photo, but ended up with a quartz remnant instead …), 4) Kohler Fairfax fixtures for the bath and sink, 5) Kohler Devonshire bathtub, and 6) American Olean Satinglo 1″ hex tile in Ice White for the floor.

As far as actually completing the work, we hired a local contractor to complete the remodel before the baby came in September.  So, work started at the beginning of August and progressed at a pretty good pace through the second week in September.  When the contractors left (just 9 days before Haley was born!), everything was done except for paint … it’s a long story – these contractors don’t paint.

So, whirlwind tour of the bathroom remodel – ready?  Here we go!

First up - some pictures with demo (and framing for the new medicine cabinet) completed.  Note the original tile floor that was hiding underneath the lovely green faux marble tile … and the mess of plumbing/framing in the general bathtub area.  You can read more about that here, if you want more details.

Next ,we decided to take advantage of the opened bathroom walls to replace the galvanized hot and cold supply lines that come from the basement to the master bathroom on the 2nd floor and then continue to the powder room on the 3rd floor.  We hadn’t planned on this from the beginning, but we figured it made sense to make this upgrade now since we (hopefully!) will never have the tub ripped out of this bathroom in order to have easy access to it again.  So, here are some pictures of the updated plumbing and the new bathtub in place:

With the tub installed, the next few work days were spent installing the new tile:  Rittenhouse Matte Arctic White subway tile on the walls and American Olean Satinglo Ice White 1″ hex tile on the floors.  For grout, we opted for light gray (Hydroment Silver Bullet) for a few reasons:  1- we liked that it would be lower maintenance and (hopefully!) not show wear as much as bright white grout, 2- we liked that it mimicked the look of older tile, which would have been set in a bed of concrete and 3- we liked the subtle contrast between the grout and the tile.  I was really nervous about whether we’d picked the right shade of gray … we wanted it dark enough that it was obviously not white, but not so dark that it would create too much contrast and cause all of the grout joints to appear busy.  I think the color we picked works well.  We probably could have gone a little darker, but I like the way it turned out …

With the tile complete, the next days were spent installing the vanity, faucets, counter top, toilet, medicine cabinet, light fixtures, trim, etc. to finish up the room.  By the time the contractors left, the room was basically done … just paint (and a few other minor things) remaining.

It might be kind of hard to see without all of the finishing touches in place, but the bathroom sure came a long way in just a few weeks … and then Haley was born and this is how it sat … for months.  We finally picked a paint color, painted, updated some hardware, and changed up the sconces in January (more on that next time!) and we still have a few finishing touches (door hardware, towel bars, decorating, etc.) left, so look for more on that soon!

Last Friday was the start of our master bathroom remodel project … and what a difference one day makes!  Two carpenters showed up at about 8:30 in the morning and worked until about 3:00pm and got most everything (including the tile) removed.  Here are some before & after pictures:

Our best guess is that the bathroom had been remodeled a couple of times before, with the most recent version probably happening in the late 80′s or early 90′s, judging by the tile, vanity, etc.  Based on the plumbing work, we’re also guessing that there was some work completed in the 1950′s when the previous owner told us a lot of the plumbing and electrical had been replaced.

One of the things we were surprised by when the demo was over was that the original tile floor matches (almost exactly!) the floor we chose to be installed with this remodel:  1″ white hex tile with gray grout.  One difference, though, is that the existing tile floor appears to be set in a bed of concrete between 3 and 4″ thick.  This seemed to surprise everyone – the contractors mentioned they’d seen tile installed in an inch or so of concrete before, but no one had ever seen anything quite like this – especially on a second floor bathroom.  Although we’d love to be able to re-use the existing floor, it’s really not in that great of shape, so we’re continuing with our plan to install the new floor over the top of this one.

Original Tile Floor

New Floor Tile

The other thing that came as a surprise was what we found (or rather didn’t find) under the bathtub.  We had assumed that the bathroom had (at one time) had a big old cast iron claw foot tub, but when the existing fiberglass tub was removed, we found that there was no floor under it – the original concrete and tile stopped short.  The framing under the tub was a little unusual, but didn’t appear to necessarily be the result of multiple generations of plumbing work – a lot of it seemed to be original.  Best we can figure, there was some kind of sunken tub at the time the house was built, although we have no idea what that would have looked like.

We were also a little shocked to see how much plumbing was in the walls behind the shower or the floor under the tub.  We found supply lines coming up from the basement, cutting through the concrete floor to the sink on the other side of the room, and continuing up to the powder room on the 3rd floor.  We also found what we assume is a vent pipe and some old plumbing that we assume is part of the old radiator system, but that don’t seem to be in use any longer.

In the old tile, just a few inches from the bathtub, we also found an old clean-out (now covered in wood) that’s embedded in the floor.  Our best guess is that the drain for the tub snakes through this trap to the wall on the opposite side of the bathroom where it meets up with the drain from the waste from the sink and toilet.  It’s just so amazing to us how different this arrangement is than what you’d find in a newer home.

A lot of the plumbing that was uncovered when the tub and shower was removed appears to be galvanized, so we’re planning to replace as much as we can with copper as part of this remodel – hopefully including the run to the 3rd floor powder room and also the run up from the basement.  The plumber comes tomorrow to start working on that task – we’re hoping he won’t run in to too many challenges along the way.

So, the goal for tomorrow, then, is to get the plumbing and framing around the tub cleaned up so that the new one can be installed. In the meantime, our bedroom has been the staging area for all of the new bathroom stuff that we’re anxiously awaiting to see in place in the updated bathroom.

With any luck, the tub should be set by the end of the day tomorrow!

Like any house, when we first walked through ours with a realtor about 5 years ago, we knew there were some projects we’d eventually want to tackle.  One of those was the master bathroom.  From a cosmetic standpoint, it was very green … but more importantly, we were concerned about the condition of the bathtub.  Although the tub itself looked fine, we were concerned about the faucet handles that weren’t sealed against the shower wall (potentially allowing water to get into the wall), the rusted (and very slow) drain, and the fact that the tub wasn’t installed level (so that water pooled in the back rather than draining) and generally didn’t seem very solid.  On top of this, there was no exhaust fan in the master bathroom and a single shower left water running down the walls.

So, for these reasons, we’ve opted to use the shower in the laundry room instead and this has worked pretty well for us.  Now, with a baby on the way, though, we decided it might make sense to re-think the condition of the bathtub since it’s the only one in the house and we’ll (eventually) need it in working order.  And, so, the project started with a plan to install an exhaust fan and a new tub faucet that would be properly sealed against the wall.  At the same time, we planned to also do some work on the drain to hopefully correct the issues with it.  The more we talked about this plan, though, the more we realized that, even with these changes, we still wouldn’t really feel like the tub would be usable as a shower for adults, so then the project grew to include replacing the bathtub/shower with one that was properly installed.

We’d done a bathroom remodel ourselves before (in our last house – pictures below) and would have tackled this one ourselves too except that we weren’t so confident we could actually complete the project before the baby comes especially since I’m not really able to help so much.  So, we started working with a contractor to put together a plan for installing a new tub.  After working through a few different variations of that project, though, we figured out that the tub was really a good portion of the work and the cost of a full bathroom remodel and that updating the rest of the room at the same time really made a lot of sense – especially considering that those updates were something we’d planned to do in the next 5 or so years anyway.  And so the project grew from the installation of an exhaust fan and new tub faucet to an all-out bathroom remodel including the tub, tile, vanity, medicine cabinet, and light fixtures – in addition to the exhaust fan and faucet.

Since we were so over loaded with color (green!) in the current bathroom, our plan for the new one was to stay pretty neutral.  In addition to being neutral, our other goal was that the new bathroom look more consistent with the age and style of the house, which is a 1915 colonial revival.  After reviewing a bunch of online photos to figure out what we liked and what we didn’t, we landed on a plan for a very white bathroom.

Just as a quick reminder, here’s what we’re starting with:

And here’s some of the inspiration for our bathroom remodel:

After making some final decisions back in June about what we wanted for the bathroom, the waiting game began … until yesterday when a crew showed up to start tearing out the old bathroom.  More details on that later, but for now, here’s a photo of the bathroom with demo basically completed.

The schedule for next week includes some time from a plumber to re-route and replace a good portion of the plumbing that was uncovered under and in the walls behind the old tub before installing the new one, a visit from the electrician to re-locate the light fixtures above the vanity so we can install some new sconces on either side of the mirror (rather than having a light bar across the top), and a plasterer coming by to clean up the wall where it was patched around the old medicine cabinet.

There should be a lot of changes coming in the next few days – we’re so excited to see how quickly the space is being transformed into something totally different than what we started with.