Progress

What a whirlwind of a week! We had my parents and my brother David stay with us from Monday night through Saturday morning. Our main objective was to remodel the bathroom, which proved to be a lot more involved than any of us had planned. We all rotated taking care of little boys, keeping everyone fed, making countless runs back and forth from Lowe's and Ace Hardware, and getting the job done in the bathroom itself.

To give you an idea of what we started with, here are some lovely befores:

I caught a few pictures of the fun part. The last time Peter had seen my family was when he was 9 months old, so it was a good opportunity for him to get reacquainted with them. I wish I had any pictures of the boys with my Mom! She was the superstar who cared for children while overhauling our dirty, under-construction basement into a usable play area and doing tons of other odd jobs around the house.

When he wasn't actively supervised, this is what Peter was doing. Grandpa brought so many fun tools with him!
Benjamin helped with the demolition of the walls. we tried carefully scraping off the micro-tiles to preserve the wall, but soon resorted to hammers.
And we were glad we did. There were some interesting issues going on behind the drywall. The plumbing needed to be addressed, and so did the area behind the old mirror (many thanks to my Dad, who was the expert at fixing everything!). There were large chunks cut out of the framing so there was hollow dead space where an old medicine cabinet must have been. We also got to see some traces of awesome wallpaper that must have looked terrific with all that brown tile on the walls!
The floor was another amazing discovery. Under the old linoleum squares was a layer of cement, sick aqua mini tiles, and a layer of really old brittle linoleum under that. Oh, and then the plywood around the toilet was rotted. Fun stuff. So after finally getting the floor sound and clean, we laid the hardibacker to level the floor for the tiles. Lucky for us, Paul has lots of experience laying tile!
Paul and I worked together to get the design right on the tiles. I was pretty insistent on a diagonal pattern, which added substantially to the awkward angles and cuts we had to make, but it worked out and I'm glad we did. I did the measuring an the cutting, and Paul laid. It was actually a lot of fun working together. Then we gave David (who wants to be an orthodontist) lots of practice scraping and cleaning once the tiles were set and dry.
Then we worked quickly getting the wainscoting up.
And here's about where we're at now. We've almost got the new toilet in, but we still need to level it before caulking. The new sink should be pretty easy to put in as well. We decided to leave the tub and shower as is, at least for now. There is a window hidden behind the tub fitter, so it's not going to be easy to redo. The walls are where most of the work is still going to come. The upper half has an ugly gummy texture and needs to blend somehow with the new drywall... but I'll just be happy to have a functioning toilet, sink and and shower upstairs at this point! Running to the downstairs bathroom is getting old.
I'm sure we'll have another dozen trips to Lowe's and Ace Hardware before this is all done. And Benjamin's face here about sums up how we feel about it. We'll keep the updates coming!