Finishing Work

At the end of last week our finishers came up and got a bunch of work done on the house. They showed up Wednesday evening and were gone Saturday morning. They got all of the interior doors installed, the baseboard and trim installed, the laminate flooring laid, some of the wainscoting and some custom shelving done. That's a lot of work in not a lot of time.

For the most part we are impressed with their work but there are some spots where you can tell that they were in a hurry to get out of here. Like in the Main Bath. We had some floating shelves installed and they hung them crooked. What kind of finisher doesn't use a level? Now we get to rip those shelves out and redo them. Like we didn't have enough to do. Our painter is going to hate us for the damage this is going to do to the walls. That's construction for you though, I guess!

I don't have too much to comment on here, I pretty much stayed out of their way but I do have some pictures to share. Things are looking a bit rough because they still need to be painted or stained or things are only partly installed but things are starting to come together!!

The Front Entry. Don't worry the front door isn't staying that ugly brown color (no offence if that's the color of your front door). It's going to be stained a dark brown similar to the floors and dark cabinetry. 

A peek into the Pantry. 

The trim and wainscoting in the Family Room. The bottom half will be painted white. I wish the painter would have painted the first coat differently but it'll get fixed.  

Looking from the Master Bedroom down to what we call the kids floor. Don't know if we are having kids yet but if we did this would be their space. If we don't then I guess it'll be the guest floor? It has a bathroom and 2 bedrooms. Also, right at the top of the stairs (the closed door) is the linen closet. 

Look up at the landing to the Master Bedroom.

 

Her side of the closet. These shelves will all be painted white though. 

His side of the closet. There is also an island in the middle of the closet with some drawers, shelving, and a bench but it's not quite done yet. 

Master Bedroom and Reading Corner.

Close up the flooring (Armstrong White Wash Campfire).

It actually looks like we can move in soon! Looks are deceiving though, it'll still be at least 4 weeks (probably more though). We have two weeks of painting left, the countertop delivery and install, final plumbing, electrical, and HVAC. Plus we are having some weather delays for our sewer and geothermal install. Hopefully it's sooner rather than later though! 

Wallpaper From Hell

Or at least that's what The Husband was calling it.

We have this little tucked away corner in our Master Bedroom that has become my reading corner. I wanted to doing something a bit different in that space. Our Master is on the larger size and it needed something besides just the main wall color. I thought the reading corner would be a good place to mix things up in. You get a bit of pop without it being in your face all. the. time. At first I wanted to paint bold grey and white horizontal stripes but The Husband suggested wallpaper instead. I just want to clarify, it was HIS idea to do wallpaper. His. Not mine. His. Got it?

So off I went to find some wallpaper. First, I checked our local paint store and found a lot of samples that I am sure my Grandma would love. I then turned to the internet. I love the internet. I have been able to add so many little touches to our house with things I have found online that I wouldn't be able to find locally. Oh, the joys of living in a small town. Anyways, back to my wallpaper search. I wanted something modern but not to graphic or crazy. I managed to stumble across Darcy by Graham and Brown. It was perfect. It's modern and geometric and it adds a pop but it's still neutral. What more could a girl ask for?

Our finishers are starting right away (eek!) and we wanted to get the wallpaper hung before they started so that the baseboard would help keep the bottom of the paper from curling up. So it was time to hang the wallpaper.

This was a fun experience. NOT. Not at all.

First we dry cut all the paper so that it would be long enough for the wall but that the pattern would still line up. This step was good, pretty straight forward. Then we had to apply the wallpaper paste, again, pretty straightforward. We then hung the first strip, this went okay too. Then we went to hang the second strip. This is when everything went downhill. The pattern from the first sheet we hung didn't line up with the pattern of any of the other sheets we had pre-cut. Turns out we had hung the first sheet of paper upside down. We had to peel it all off and re-paste and start again. Then when we actually got to the second piece The Husband was a bit over zealous with his paper smoother and ripped a chunk of the paper. Thankfully it was close to the edge so we could just lap the next sheet over the tear. Then we get to the last sheet which had been set aside for safekeeping. Somehow beyond any logical explanation the sheet stuck to itself (it was loosely folded in half). Both The Husband and I don't recall it getting wet or being even remotely close to the glue but yet it stuck to itself. So we had to very slowly and very carefully pull it apart. Of course the paper got wrinkled and damaged in this process. It ended up working out that that piece needed to be cut just on the other side of the damaged section. Thank goodness because we didn't have enough extra to cut a new piece.

In the end it all worked out and the finished result is awesome. It just wasn't fun getting there.

Straight on view

See how it's tucked away from the bedroom?

Tile Update

We are finally finished laying the floor tile!! Done like dinner. We still have the grout to do but hopefully that won't be as time consuming as actually laying the tile. Tile is a sllloooowww process. A couple of people had told me that tile takes awhile to do, they weren't kidding. There are a lot of steps and most of them are tedious, but I think it was worth it. Our tile turned out pretty good!

Main Bath Tile. Done.

Master Bath Tile. Done.

Next up is the wall tile (tub surround and shower). We won't be starting on that right away though, we have some things to finish up before finishing starts so we are taking a quick break from tiling. We do have the prep work done for the wall tile. 

You don't want to use drywall in a tiled shower or tub in case water gets through the tile and it probably will, grout isn't waterproof. You do need a backer for the tile though. We decided to use Wedi board as a backer. It's styrofoam sheets that are covered on both sides with a thin layer of concrete. Concrete board is another option but Wedi board is a lot lighter and easier to manage. 

Shower before the Wedi board

Shower after Wedi board is installed

Wedi board installed in the tub

The Wedi board is fairly easily to install. You cut the sheets to fit your tub or shower with an exacto knife, screw the sheets to the wall and caulk the seams. The hardest part was that we kept running out of caulking.

Blogiversary

Today is my 1st Blogiversary. I can't believe that I have been blogging about this process for one year already and we still aren't moved in.

Happy Blogiversary to meee!

When we first started construction we thought that we could be done in 6 months. What were we thinking?

Right now with the way our schedule is looking we could realistically be moved in, in 5-6 weeks. On one hand that seems really quick. Only 5 more weeks of this!! On the other hand, that's 5 or 6 more weeks of showering at my mother in-laws. It's 6 more trips to do our laundry. It's 105 more meals that I have to cook from the kitchen in our camper. And that's assuming things go according to schedule. We should all know by now that that is not usually the case. 6 weeks could easily turn into 8, and 8 into 10. Who knows? At this point I am just hoping we'll be in before the snow flies, again.

I wonder what I'll be blogging about a year from now? I hope it's not construction related...

Tiling: Part II - Floor Tile

Once we had the Ditra all laid (more about that here) it was time to start tiling.

The tile we choose for the floor was Daltile Fabrique Blanc Linen:

It's a white tile that has varying shades of grey lines running across it. It picks up our grey wall color and it mimics the hand painted/brushed effect in our dark brown cabinetry.

We decided to start with the largest area first, the laundry/mudroom area. We felt that the size and shape of the room would be the best out of our three rooms that are getting tiled to figure out what we were doing without having too many angled wall cuts or wall tile to take into account. It also an area that most people probably won't see so if we didn't do that great of a job off the start we'd be the only ones who would have to deal with it. 

We started by doing a dry cut of the tiles of the whole room and got our cuts and spacing all figured out. We were originally going to do a traditional on centre brick pattern but when we went to lay out the tile we found that we liked it set out in thirds better so that's the pattern we went with. We both felt that it is a bit more modern but still has a classic feel to it. 

The tiles dry cut

Once we got the spacing all figured out and we were satisfied with the layout we starting laying the tile.    
To lay the tile you spread thinset on top of the Ditra with a notched trowel (different tiles and thinsets require different sized trowels). You then back butter each tile, basically spreading an even layer of thinset on the back of each tile. Not all tile applications require back buttering. Due to the size and weight of our tiles this step was necessary for us. We learned pretty quickly that you go through thinset like crazy when you need to back butter the tiles.

The tiles laid and set 

The first day we started laying the tile The Husband thought that it would work better if he did it all himself. It ended up being a lot of steps for one person to do. I have started helping him with the back buttering and it seems to give him more time to adjust each tile to make sure it's level with all the neighbouring tiles. I don't know if he's just getting better or if having a second person is that much more helpful but we seem to be getting better results.

The Tile in the laundry/mudroom

We still need to do the grout but the Laundry Room/Mudroom tile is all set. We have the tile in the Main Bath almost all set, we just have three rows left to lay. The Master Bath tile is almost all dry cut but we have run out of tile :(. We are 3 or 4 tiles short of having enough. Bah. We'll have to call our tile rep and see if she can order us another box ASAP.

Close up of the tile pattern

Next we get to tackle wall tile. We have a tub surround that we are going to stat with and then we have the shower in the Master Bath to do too. 

Something's early..sort of.

The Husband's brother (so um, my brother in law) is a finish carpenter/site superintendent. He is coming up for a few days with his crew to do all the finishing work in the house. That would include the interior doors, interior door hardware, laminate flooring, door and window trim, baseboard, wainscoting, and shelving. He figures they can have a good chunk of the work done in 4 days. 4 DAYS! We aren't even going to recognize our house after they leave. I am so excited for all of this work to happen. It's going to feel like we can move in, even though we can't :(.

We had originally scheduled for them to come up this weekend to do all of the work but then our laminate was delayed. Originally we were told that our laminate would be in on the 13th. We double checked this date before confirming everything with The Brother in-law and we were told that it would be delayed until the 19th. Boo. So we re-booked the finishers for next weekend.

And then, all of the sudden, out of the blue, we get a call from our local hardware store rep. Our laminate is in early, or on time? I don't know anymore. But it's in!! 

It's too last minute for the finishers to come this weekend as planned but I am so relieved that our flooring is in. I was kind of worried that it wouldn't even be here on time for the 19th. 

I can't wait to see our floors look like this:

source

Tiling: Part I - The Ditra

The husband and I never planned on doing our tile ourselves so we were a bit nervous about tackling this project but the time came and we couldn't put it off any longer. Due to our inexperience we had one of the local tile setters come over and give us some tricks of the trade. He gave us some awesome tips as well as some that we didn't find overly helpful. Overall though I think just having him come and run through everything with us reassured us enough that we felt like we had a fairly good grasp on what to do.

**I don't want to turn this into a DIY tutorial because I don't feel like we really know what we are talking about here so I 'll just give you a brief run down of what we did.**

Our first step was to prepare the subfloor for the tile. To do this we laid down Ditra. Ditra is an uncoupling membrane that absorbs any movement in the subfloor so that the movement won't transfer to the tile and cause cracking. (Please note that Ditra is not used in all tile applications, this is just what worked for us in our situation.) You want the Ditra to bond with the floor so that it will move when the floor moves. To attach it to the subfloor you lay a thinset like you would when laying tile. One thing we learned the hard way was that you should mix the thinset a bit runnier than what the instructions call for. You want it to hold a notch when troweling but it should be pourable. We mixed our thinset a bit too thick at first and it dried a bit bumpy. We were worried that we were going to have to rip up the Ditra, chisel the thinset off, and start over again but it wasn't as bad as it looked and we were okay.

The instructions on the Ditra state that you can start laying your tile immediately after you have laid the Ditra. We chose to let it set overnight before working on it.

Here's the Ditra in the Laundry Room/Mudroom. This is the area where we mixed the thinset too thick and things weren't as smooth as we would have liked them to be.  

We laid Ditra in two of the bathrooms as well (our lower bath doesn't have a tile floor, so no Ditra in there) and we were careful to mix our thinset properly and we got a much better finished result. You can't really tell from the pictures but it's a lot smoother in the bathrooms. 

Now that we have the Ditra all laid I'll be back soon with a tile update! 

How about you? Have you ever tiled? Do you have any tiling tips for us? 

Painting Woes

Last week the painter started and finished the first coat of paint throughout the house. We were loving the color and thought everything looked awesome. That is until the painter told us that the drywall mudder had screwed up his horizontal seams. If you looked at the seams with a light (to simulate what it would look like when we have the lights installed) you could see that part of the wall was kind of grooved and wavy. Not the look we are going for. The mudder had to come back and sand down the seams, refill them, and then sand them again. 

This is what our beautiful paint looks like now.  Whomp whomp. 

The painter has to come back this week to re-prime and re-paint those sections. 

In other good painting news, our interior doors and trim have all been sprayed and are ready to be installed by our finisher. 

Welcome to our hall of mirrors doors.
This is a horrible picture, our doors aren't really blue, they are white. There is a blue tarp hanging over the garage door openings to keep debris out of the wet paint though.

All of our trim! Do you think we have enough?!