Well, sorry about the absence from blogging. Once we had received the green-light go from the building dep't. to finish our drywall, we began taping and mudding immediately. Since then I have been either too busy, too tired, or too lazy to update this blog. Truth is I have just been extremely, extremely busy and have just tonight forced myself to sit down and share with you our story since we last left off.
Rough Frame Complete. This allowed us to go forward with drywalling BOTH sides of the walls. This part of the project went pretty well. But when we hit taping and mudding, we hit a wall. It just commanded so much time that a few days turned into a few weeks. Looking back I wish I could have hired a crew to tape and mud...but we made it through.
Tiling. I got a pretty smoking deal from a local supplier for 18"x18" travertine tile. Travertine is a young version of marble. A bit more grainy, pocky, and soft. But it's GORGEOUS! Kat and I decided to use this for the floor (with accent dots) and the shower walls. Easy enough? I've never tiled, but fortunately Jeff, Nate, and I made it through the tough parts together and slammed out the shower and floor portions. All we have left to do are the walls in the bathroom, the ceiling of the shower, and the floor of the shower. Getting close!!
The bathroom is really tough to photograph without a wide lens. I'm going to get my buddy Paul out to really shoot the space well for us so that you can have a better sense of the tiles and patterns.
One of the tasks we had to do before tiling the shower was water-proofing the membrane. Since it's a steam shower, we had to make sure that water could not damage the structure. Here you see us applying the membrane. It went on pink and dried bright red.
Mudding. Did I tell you how much we hated mudding? Fortunately for us our good friends, John and John (not married) joined us for some help in getting the walls mudded. John is a near expert at mudding and proved to be a great help at teaching us how to mud. The other John is a dear friend and is always a pleasure to have around! Thanks to both of them!
Nicolette Sheridan stopped by the set one day to help us mud. That was pretty cool! She's a great mudder....and fun to work with!
Painting. Kathy has been doing a wonderful job of painting the spaces (I HATE PAINTING!) She's been spending her free afternoons knocking out the spaces that we've completed the mudding and sanding in by painting 2 primer coats and a finish color. Thank you! Here she is placing the ceremonious last dot on the floor! Sorry Kat -- I owe you a picture here for the posting!
Fireplace. DIY came out to shoot us laying up the fireplace stone. It went a bit slow, but we got-er-done. It looked beautiful. Then Nate and I were working on getting the wood mantel in place and walked away for a brief second: CRASH! Oh, it hurt!! The 7' long wood beam crashed down upon the hearth, destroying one of the 19"x20" stones and ripping off about 1/3 of the stone that we had meticulously lain that day. There are really no words that can describe how I felt.....well, maybe one word. Anyways, I just left. Then tonight after our softball game, Kat and I came back and
restored the work. Pretty sharp little fireplace unit!
That's about it for now. Nate leaves on Friday. So Kat and I (and sometimes Jeff) are left to wrap up the space ourselves. Stupid drywall! We should be far enough along in about 3 weeks to be able to move in and start living in the space, unfinished.
Well, it's late and I have an early morning appointment. Good night my friends!
We finished up the fireplace this weekend -- yeah! John (S.) came over and gave me a hand. Together we knocked out the final pieces of stone -- looks GREAT!!
Then John (B.) also stopped by on Sat. AND Sun. to help with his expertise: drywall finishing! He's an amazing worker and is just a great guy to have around.
