Putting Walls Up... Literally

If you haven't been following along via my FB posts & pics, here's the latest on our bathroom. Over the last few weeks, we've made a lot of progress. The up side is, we're saving a ton of money doing a lot of the work ourselves. The down side is, everything takes longer when you do it yourself (as well as when you find crappy repair work from the previous owners).

We decided the damaged decking didn't need replacing. I talked to my older bro (who used to be a general contractor in the area) and he said that if they're 75% or more "good", they don't need to be replaced. Since we were a little concerned that the subfloor wouldn't attach to the damaged wood, Ace decided to scoop out the damage, and fill it back in with some bonding/leveling compound. That, alone, took over a week, because each VERY THIN layer has to dry for six hours before another can be applied.

While he worked on that, we also got the subfloor trimmed out (nothing's attached, yet, though) and all the drywall cut & hung (that we can for now, anyway -- can't cover the "wet wall", or anywhere in the alcove yet). Once the ceiling was drywalled, the room stayed a lot cooler; making it easier for Ace to keep working (doesn't seem to bother me as much as it does him). Keep in mind, Ace and I are both working our real jobs while we're working on the bathroom. One of the days I worked last week, I stopped by Ferguson again. We're leaning toward a tub/shower hardware set we found there, but haven't committed yet. Ace's biggest issue with that is that nothing is made 100% of metal anymore. This set I found is about 50%.

Somewhere in all of this, the tub was delivered. And, by "delivered", I mean that Ace had to meet the semi they sent at HD up the street, which we had told them wouldn't fit when they called to confirm delivery, but they sent anyway. He couldn't fit the boxed tub in the back of our SUV, so he took it out of the box, and inspected for damage. All good, the semi driver helped him load it into the back of the 4Runner.

We got notice from the (non-food) dump up the road that they were reinstating their "free dump" policy for the area, up to 4 truckloads per year. However, for all of our bathroom debris (sitting on a large tarp in our backyard at this point), we'd have to rent a large truck ($19.95 from HD; I think you get it for four hours, but I could be wrong). So, we just sucked it up, and rented a large dumpster, which we had for five days. We also let our neighbors put some things in, because we knew we wouldn't fill it by ourselves (but the next size down was too small).

So, now we're at the stage where we need a plumber. We decided that the best route would be to have him fix the plumbing under the house for the toilet, then get the pipes/etc done for the new tub, as well as see if we need to move vanity plumbing, and do that if necessary. Can't get the plumber here until we decide on hardware. Time for Ace to make the final decision on that...