There has been an unanticipated slow-down here on the blog over the last a couple months, largely due to sudden changes in our lives. Slav started a new job in February which not only resulted in little time at home, but also shifted lots of housework on my shoulder. Comparing to quiet evenings of organizing thoughts and typing on the keyboard, I spent most of my evenings cleaning and cooking.
We have welcomed the Spring to Colorado, on which lots of yard work piggybacks. I hope that you do not have bindweed in your neighborhood. Unfortunately I do. Over the last two years I have established a routine of walking through the garden in the evenings, and taking care of small tasks such as weeding and deadheading. But this Spring I had to pile all these small tasks to weekends, which put me out of commission for renovations and DIY projects.
Knowing our limits we decided to hire a team of professionals to tackle the big renovation coming up in our basement. Last time I brought you down in the basement we demoed the ceilings and closets in the bedroom, installed egress window, and exposed the plumbing in the bathroom. Since then we have demoed the bathroom to the studs:
The wet wall is now completely exposed from both sides:
Both original bathroom door and the bedroom door were removed, and some drywall was cut out to make room for a pocket door between the bedroom and the new bath:
We decided to take this opportunity of renovation to upgrade the plumbing. We were glad that we made this decision – there was lots of water damage behind the walls and mold has been growing around the shower area.
We also removed the small lining closet located in the little hallway between the bedroom and the old bathroom door. Incorporating the closet and hallway space into the bathroom makes room for a double sink vanity.
This is view from the bedroom to the future bath, through the future pocket door opening. The part with lower ceiling was the hallway/closet space, which now becomes part of the future bath. We will frame a door between the living space and the new bath, so we can still access the bathroom from the living area. It will also help with the bathroom ventilation and bringing some nature light in this end of the living space.
Due to the low ceiling the old closet/hallway space will host the toilet:
And the old vanity and toilet space will host a double sink vanity:
The shower will be installed right under the window. We plan to frame the wall out so we can have a large shower niche built-in.
We also removed the ceiling drywall in the basement in order to add can lights and insulation to soundproof the basement. The ceiling drywall had heavy texture and smoothing it out will cost us more than just using new drywall.
Now the demo in the basement has officially finished, our general contractor has moved in and started new framing. The biggest change of the layout down here will be the bathroom area. Both doors to the new bath will be pocket doors to maximize the floor space in the new bathroom. They will be framed in next week:
The overhead heating pipes calls for a pretty big soffit. Our contractor has framed it in.
More framing will happen in the bathroom – the shower niche and a small soffit will be framed in to accommodate the can lighting. As soon as the framing is done, an electrician will come in to install can lights and reconfigure the outlets and light switches. Then the plumbing, then the insulation. It will look pretty rough done here for a while. But every week there will be some progress and we are getting our finger crossed for everything going smoothly. I want to say “knock on wood”, but we are already doing it everyday. Ha!
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