The downstairs bathroom

We've been busy the last two months... wait... weeks! 

The downstairs is almost done... The laundry and the fixtures are all installed. Just need to install a divider with an exit for the dryer hose. Mum did an amazing job rebuilding the vanity. She took it apart refinished all the bits and applied a few decoupage jellyfish to the side and the door. It's a tiny little space so pictures don't really do it justice...

There's Sam checking his laundry... meanwhile below is mum going for the first walk down our new basement steps. 

Omg those old steps were treacherous. But they're all better now! Meanwhile a few random shots of Carl inspecting the steps before installation, a lamp under the hot water tank to keep the lines from freezing (A new cold weather problem), and a sneak peak of the new shower base upstairs.

Meanwhile our pensive Carl thinking about the work left to be done...

Brrrr! It's cold outside!

I've been putting off adding another post (sorry everyone) in the hopes that I'd have a completed room for you but noooOooooOOOOOooo! So here's an update of where we're at. It's been 10 months and I'm starting to freak out a little about our schedule but we're not into panic mode yet... We've been working on the downstairs bathroom and have it almost all ready for the furnishings to be installed. I'm just waiting for the taps to arrive so I can finish pluming in the laundry.

"Before"

The downstairs bathroom as it is right now. 

We had to cut the door frame out and install a larger door so that we can get the laundry unit into the room.

Mum dry-walling the downstairs bathroom. 

We had to lay a new sub floor which meant ripping up the old one and we replaced the ceiling tiles with pine slats to match the mudroom and kitchen. And floored it with our laminate. Heh flooring the bathroom meant flooring the dining room (which is now our living room as the living room is now a workshop).

The sub floor  at the foyer between the dining and living room and the front door that nobody uses. 

The foyer floor finished. 

The dining room with all our furniture moved to one side and then the other as we laid the laminate. 

In other news the cat has found a new home with the dirty dishes!

Another project we have done is install the back splash along the kitchen cabinets.

You can see the white panel on the table in the back. The door of the vanity waiting for an acrylic pour as well. We did up the vanity a little differently but that'll be another post.

Mum hand-washing a load of laundry after the laundry p-trap under the house froze and our laundry machine spewed water all over the back workroom. 

Rounding back to cold weather mum built a storm door using those pine slats and plywood to make a very nice looking storm door on the back of the house. What a difference! we;re thinking about building two more storm doors for the other doors on the house.

Our new homemade storm door 

Closeup of storm door.

Speaking of doors here's the back room door we installed yesterday. 

It's an older door we took from upstairs and installed added a frame for the latch and hinges. What a difference it's made as the overall temperature in the house has risen over 3 degrees since installing that door.

January

Mum going for a *short* walk in the snow

Well... You know it's cold outside when the ocean starts to freeze!

Our view this morning.

It's so cold I've had to get up at 2:30 am to add wood to the fire to help keep the temperature up. Our electric bill for Nov-Dec was... insane... like we might as well close the house down and travel south in the RV for the winter because it's cheaper insane. It's not really the cold that's killing us it's the wind. Holy molly why everyone doesn't have a personal wind power station!? It's been a steady 40+ kph with gusts upwards of 70+. Ooooh and then windstorms bringing up up to 115+ kph!

Well that's my rant for the day... off to town for more supplies before the next storm hits tomorrow.

Merry Christmas!

Well another few months sneak by... I left off with us about to start the front entrance way and, of course, this quickly expanded to the kitchen!

The Kitchen before

The disaster that is our dinning room...

The house is like an episode out of hoarders! It's almost choking but once the kitchen was put into place and all of the displaced kitchen things find a new home the mess has subsided for a few days until we start our next project....

The dining room has become out temporary cookery.

Tyler packing the dishes upstairs in little wash basins to be washed in the bathtub

My least favorite part of loosing the kitchen was loosing the sink and running water and the drain. So like in the motorhome I'd do the dishes in my little basins.


Once we got started the floor went very quickly. Mum could cut them as fast as I could lay them. Below is a shot of the blue underlay and the flooring being placed over it. It's kind of weird to me that the flooring isn't actually attached to anything and just floats on to of the blue stuff but hey it works.

Started Flooring

We went with an Ikea kitchen mostly for the cost. As the competition was about twice the price for the same thing and Ikea cabinets are of equal quality. I particularly like the rail system that Ikea uses now. Just put the rail up and the cabinets hang on the rail. Of course the rail assumes the beams are a standard distance apart for mounting so there was some extra drilling through the rail to find a stud.

The first cabinet installed

One side done

We ended up cutting out the door frames and making them bigger so we ended up loosing the end cabinet on one side and have to take it back to get a smaller one. 

Next was making the counter tops. That was a lot of fun; if not a bit challenging! The first step was to measure and cut 2 pieces of plywood to the right size. Our counters are longer than 8 feet so we had to cut and glue multiple panels together. You can see the seam in the picture below but once the paint and resin is on it becomes really, really difficult to find.

The new counter tops (2 sheets of plywood cut and glued together) painted

Getting the colours ready for the acryllic pour

To get the effect we wanted we poured each colour into a little cup with about 1:1 ratio of white glue and just a splash of water to thin it out. Then in the bigger cups we would pour a little amount of each colour in layers with a few squirts of silicone lubricant. Afterwards we put the cups of layered paint upside down on top of the countertop and pull the cup straight up dumping the paint into a puddle on the counter top.

The cups set upside down and pulled straight up leaving a pool of paint

A paint pool

Next was the... interesting... part. Lifting the countertops high enough for the paint to flow around and cover the entire counter.

One of the smaller counter tops.

Another small counter top

The two large countertops

Once that's all done it takes about 3 days for the acrylic to dry before we can pour resin as a protective layer. It took us two resin pours as the first pour had troubles covering areas of the acrylic below. We think it was being repelled by the silicone and took an extra thick bit which is a good thing anyway as its just more counter top protection.

The two large countertops covered in resin

A closeup

Resin has dried leaving a shiny counter top that's almost like water.

The counter top installed with the sink cutout sitting on top of the sink.

Cutting the sink hole out of the counter was, well, difficult. I had a really tough time time getting over that I had to put a hole through such a piece of art! 

A cutout of the counter top (The wood is about 1/2 the thickness of the overall counter)

The kitchen as is stands right now

Yay kitchen!

 It's been a fun build! There were some little things like moving the lights over 6 inches so that the new doors would open. Oh and finally replacing those awful florescent lights with LED lights.
There's a few things left to do like the back splash and toe kicks. And the trim around the ceiling floors and door frames. Oh and the microwave has to be removed and a one inch spacer added to pull it forward a bit so it doesn't hit the door next to it. (My bad I measured before installing the doors and forgot to take the extra distance in account when we installed the microwave).

But it's Christmas day and I'm surrounded by my hoard which includes a new action camera! I'll have to make some videos now!

The next big job is the downstairs bathroom where we'll need to remove the old shower and toilet, relay the sub floor and move the washing machine in. Actaully that was a fun day... Doing the laundry which is in the back room and it turns out not insulated underneath at all and the drain pipe froze solid so it exploded water all over the floor! Luckily I caught it quickly and it didn't cause any permanent damage. So now there's a space heater under the floor for when it gets too cold again. Like today.... Oh dear the mercury dropped time to go turn it on again!

Merry Christmas... (Or Happy Tuesday if your not into that sort of thing!)