The Bates Way

This is part of the way that we do things...just so everyone knows. The bathroom is completely torn apart. The plumber was supposed to bring the new bath tub last week. He finally brought it today and it was the wrong size. Nothing can go on until we get that in...so we put it on hold over the weekend and decided to clean the house. While we were cleaning we decided to go to IKEA and get some curtains to act as closet doors. Well, after we bought some we decided to finish cleaning out the rooms and it ended up being a good time to pull out the carpet and put in the flooring. and that made it possible to repaint the room. So after we decided to clean the house over the weekend we ended up with everything out of Jessi's room and spread around the house, with only a couple of places left to sit and a weeks worth of project to get working on! And that, ladies and gentelmen, is how WE roll!

When to call a plumber

So, there are a few lessons to be learned in my first remodel. Number one...prepare to be over budget. I got part of the tile off and realized I was going to have to go down to the studs. Which is going to cost extra...then I tried my hand at plumbing. This first picture is an example of what my work looked like after about 4 hours of trying to solder and one full day (and night) without water. You will notice that the copper no longer looks like copper and the whole thing looks a little amateurish to say the least.

The next picture is what happens when you call a plumber over, because you realize you are way out of your league. You will notice that the copper looks like copper and the brass looks like brass and the whole thing is really pretty. Some times you just have to know when to call in the pros!

The mother of all projects...so far

So Jessi and I have made a goal. We want to have the bathroom done by the time our families get together for Thanksgiving. There is only one problem...neither of us have ever re-done a bathroom. Oh yeah, and we are limited on funds so we have to do the majority of the work ourselves. Today I got started with a little demolition. And let me say this...if the demolition is the easy part, then we may have bitten off more than we can chew! After about five hours, I can not swing my arm anymore and it hurts to make a fist. But this is how far the first day brought us and I will keep adding pics as we go along. The first three are before or as I like to call it, early in the afternoon