2nd Floor Reno - Week 10

This was a short work week since we lost a couple days to the holiday. All tile is laid, and grouting has started!

Here's a closeup of the niche 

We carried out the accent band to the other wall as well

Photo on the left was our inspiration shower. 

We saw this at a tile showroom and really liked it.  

Photo on the right is our shower.  

Like I mentioned previously, our niche had to be on the opposite wall as the inspiration shower in order to minimize noise outside of the bathroom (because of less installation).

 

Here you can see the shower bench and the other side of the bathroom

Half of the tile is grouted.  We went with a light grey grout which matches 

the marble really nicely.

2nd Floor Reno - Week 9

We're getting closer! This week, the contractors waterproofed the shower and started installing the tile.  Here's a pic of the lovely herringbone shower floor! You can also see the linear drain that was installed.

And here's the shower again, a couple of days later. We went with a 2X3 subway marble tile for the walls.  You can also see the niche built out here. Originally, we wanted the niche to go along the longer wall (to the right), but after discussing it with the architect and contractor we realized that if we put it on the longer wall you'd probably hear the shower from the hallway a lot more since we'd lose some installation/soundproofing. The shorter wall  that we went with is up against our closet, so there's still a sound barrier.

Here's a picture of the bathroom floor.  LOVE the large hexagon.

PICK US for America's Most Desperate Landscape!

Every now and then Adrian and I visit the DIY and HGTV casting call pages to see if they're looking for folks from the Chicagoland area to be on any of their home makeover shows.  I mean, we all know WE could use all the help we could get, plus, who wouldn't love a home makeover? So each time we visit the sites we see the same thing, casting calls for everywhere BUT Chicago! Well, not this time! Last Monday, I happened to search the DIY website like I normally do and saw that they were looking for people with ugly front yards to be on their America's Most Desperate Landscape show.

This was perfect!  Our front yard sucks!  Just one issue, the casting call had been going on for 2 months and was coming to a close on Friday. We had about 4 days to pull together some of the best (worst) photos of our yard.  Ones that showed how awful our porch, stairs and lawn were. We soon realized our pictures weren't that great, so we decided we would take some new ones since we had to go to the house anyways to check the bathroom progress. 

Luckily, the porch looks even worse than it has previously this year because Adrian had  plans to redo it this past summer/fall, but didn't get around to it.  He did most of the prep work by scrapping all of the spindles, and had even started to take down one section of the railing (shown above). This is probably the ONLY time I was grateful that Adrian didn't finish a project he started.
 
So we submitted our application just in time on the final day of the casting call. We're keeping our fingers crossed!  How cool would it be to have the front yard fixed?!?!

2nd Floor Reno - Week 8

Here we are, Week 8.  This was my "Worst Case Scenario" timeframe...double what the contractor had projected. Yes, we had delays because of the structural concerns, but this is taking forever. I'm trying to stay optimistic, but it's difficult.  There is progress being made...it's just slow progress.

Here's a photo of the drywall in the 2nd floor hallway, all taped and sanded.

Here's the bathroom

This is where the shower will be. The shower bench is framed, and IT'S HUGE!  It's over 4 ft long...I could almost lay across it :). You can't see very well, but we have a linear drain installed under that piece of white foam.

Laundry room is all taped, sanded and primed. Undercabinet lighting is ready to go.

2nd Floor Reno - Week 7

This week drywall went up.  Here are some photos showing the drywall on the first floor where they had replaced the headers.

New drywall for where the door to the bathroom used to be.

Patched drywall for the new hallway electrical

Drywall in the master closet

Durock cement board for the master bath. Now it's starting to look like a room.