Kid Bathroom Makeover-Part 1

While most normal people were spending their Christmas break visiting friends and family, eating hoards of delicious foods, analyzing their Holiday spending receipts and pondering bankruptcy, or coming up with excuse after excuse to get out of traveling to see those relatives, I was spending quality time with my ipod.  And paintbrush.  And sharing close quarters with a toilet used solely by a six year old boy.  One, which I have recently discovered, possesses the aim of a blind bat.  Fabulous times, let me tell ya!

Since I was off work for almost two weeks (which is unheard of), I'm out of school for a few more weeks (again, almost unheard of), and I (gasp) don't have too many other things on my to-do list other than DIY projects, I figured I'd start to tackle one of the projects which has been on the painfully slow moving to-do list for awhile.  Like, for a year and a half. 

Step into my office. . . .err, my canvas?. . .no, my PROJECT!. . .

This is Tyler's bathroom.  Well, kind of.  I took this picture after I had already started in on some of the makeover.  Oh, not those blue blocks.  Those have been there for a year and a half.  Yeah, I'm a little slow.  I had already started moving in my tool friends and had removed the cabinet doors by time the thought occurred to me to grab my camera and document the process for you blogger friends of mine. 

The next few pictures are courtesy of my over eager six year old.  Ty wanted to help SO bad but there was just no way I could give him a paintbrush during the (much dreaded) cutting in phase.  So, I told him he could be the photographer instead.  I must say that the kid might have some talent.  At least they came out clear.  This pic is of me cutting in around the tub.  Unfortunately, Tyler doesn't know how to zoom in and out on the camera so he didn't capture the interesting way that I had myself positioned with one foot on the edge of the tub and the other braced on the back of the top of the toilet.  This is dangerous work, people! 



Another photo of the cutting in process.  I HATE CUTTING IN!  I don't mind painting. . .well, not a whole lot. . .I don't love it while I'm actually doing it, but I like when it's done.  I'd like painting much better if I could just snap my fingers and have it be done.  Regardless, I HATE cutting in.  It's slow, it's painful (seriously!  My wrists hurt really bad right now.  Typing is killer after painting for several hours!), and it's dreadfully boring.  I'm much happier when the cutting in part is over.  And right now, it's far from over.  So, I'm far from happy. 

I've got to get back to painting.  For now, here's a sneak peek at the progress that I've made so far.  There's some color on the wall.  Be sure to come back soon to catch up on the progress as I go. 

You Cannot Seriously Be Serious! Part Two

Yes, there's a part two.  Because only having a Part one wouldn't be sufficient enough.   My motto is "Go Big or Go Home".  And that's just what I was about to do when we got to the beach house.  Turn around and go home. 

By time we made it to the beach house after the unexpected side of the road detour that we made, it was almost 1:00 a.m.  Since there are only visitors to the house every other month or so, we have the water and heat/AC turned off when we're not there.  So standard ritual when we first get there involves turning the water on and getting everything flowing.  Yeah. . .I should have known that I was in for an unpleasant surprise.  As soon as I turned on the water, I heard BD shouting frantically "Turn it off, Turn it off, TURN IT OFF!". 

Apparently, when the water first turned on, he heard a spitting sound coming from behind the washing machine.  He went over to the water valve behind the washer and attempted to turn the water off at the problem.  It didn't turn out so well.  The valve was so corroded that it literally broke off in his hand. 

Oh the four letter words that were running through my head.  I was SO tired and dealing with a plumbing problem was the abolute.last.thing. I wanted to deal with.  Instead of breaking down in tears (which is what I wanted to do), I just turned off the water to the entire house and went to bed.  I was defeated and figured we'd just deal with it in the morning.  Afterall, how hard of a fix could it possibly be?  I would live to regret that thought.

The next morning, we got up, ate breakfast and BD ran out to Lowes to get the parts that he thought he needed to fix the problem.  I didn't care what he did, I just wanted it fixed so I could take a shower.  And flush the toilet.  Again, I was seriously thankful that BD was at the house with me so that I at least had some help to deal with this problem.  Plumbing isn't necessarily his thing but he'll work on any problem until he can get it figured out so I knew he would be able to get it fixed. 

Once he came back with the parts he was going to need to fix the problem, BD got to work.  He had been working for about an hour when he came and told me that I needed to call my mom.  He said he was going to need to cut into the wall to get to the pipes that he thought were the problem (he was convinced that the pipes were leaking down into the interior of the wall--bad news) and he didn't want to do that without at least talking to her about it first. 

Of course, my Mom told us to do whatever we needed to do in order to get it fixed.  She just didn't want us in a house for three days with no running water.  And she certainly didn't want a leak to continue that was leaking down the inside of the walls!  So, with that, BD started cutting a hole into the wall. 

Once he got a hole cut into the wall, he explained to me that what he saw wasn't what he was expecting.  At that point, I wasn't sure if that was good news or bad news. 



Of course, I could see the water damage that the leaking pipe had done to the interior of the wall but aside from that, I wasn't sure what exactly it was that he was expecting to see.  He explained to me that the way that the pipe was connected to the valve wasn't something that could be undone and fixed.  What did that mean?  It meant that he was going to have to cut the pipe off of the valve and replace the entire pipe.  And he didn't have the parts necessary for that job.  So, back to Lowes he went.  About two hours later, he was back with more parts.  Back to work he went.

So, he worked for a couple more hours and seemed like he was making progress.  In fact, he had new valves installed and had reconnected the plumbing.  At about 6:30 p.m., he asked me to go turn on the water again.  B-A-D NEWS!  As soon as I turned on the water, he started screaming for me to turn it back off.  When I walked back into the kitchen, I saw that he was soaked, the floor was soaked, the washing machine was soaked, and the wall (including the cut out part) was completely soggy.  Yeah, the water had been on for about 3 seconds total.  Clearly, we still had a huge problem.  So after throwing around almost every four letter word that the two of us knew, we got back to work trying to figure out what the problem was.  BD indicated that he thought he was going to have to cut deeper into the wall.  And that's just what he did.  Cut a bigger hole. 

Once a bigger hole was cut, he realized that this problem was much bigger than he had initially thought.  It was going to require a complete replacement of the pipe.  That meant more tools and materials that we didn't have.  For the third time in one day, BD was making a trip to Lowes.  But this time, Ty and I went with him.  Off to Lowes we went.  Again.  The greatest (read the sarcasm.  It's dripping right here.) part is that Lowes didn't have all of the materials that we needed.  Great, it's almost 8:00 at night and I'm being told that after working on this problem all.day.long that I may need to pack up the car and head the five hours back to Richmond (at this point, we still can't shower, make coffee, or flush a toilet) all because Lowes doesn't have all of the materials?  Fabulous.  The guy at Lowes was trying to be helpful and called over to Home Depot to see if they had the items that we needed.  They did, but they were also across town which meant that we were going to end up about 30 minutes away from the beach house.  What choice did we have?  This woman needed a shower!  So, off to Home Depot we went to get the rest of the materials that we were going to need in order to fix the problem. 

By time we got back to the beach house, it was almost 9:30, and we still hadn't eaten dinner.  We had picked up a pizza on the way back and Tyler quickly ate before heading off to bed.  Thankfully, he didn't need a bath before bed!  Once Ty was in bed, BD and I got busy.  Not like that!  Busy working on getting this darn plumbing issue fixed. 

It took a couple more hours but we finally. . .FINALLY. . .got the darn thing fixed.  It was nearly the stroke of 2 a.m. when BD told me to turn on the water to the house and, thankfully, didn't scream (or stomp--we had to adapt our communication method after Ty went to sleep) for me to turn it back off.  I nearly passed out from exhaustion and exhilaration that we were done.  Or maybe I almost passed out from smelling my own stink all day?  Who knows.  Either way, the water was fixed.  FIXED! 

And I think Mom will be happy when she sees that the washer totally disguised the hole that BD had to cut in order to fix the problem.



After that was done, all I wanted (aside from a shower) was to sleep and enjoy my trip to the beach.  Luckily, I got to do just that the next day.