October 28, 2008

It's Finished - Finally!

The Bathroom is finally finished!  After almost 2 months, most of which was waiting for ReBath, the bathroom is finally fully decorated and appointed.  Well there is still some calking to be cleaned from the window, but WonderMom is happy.  Here are some photos of the finished product.  They don't show it too well because it is too small to get a decent photo from inside!

This shot shows the new toilet, 
refinished vanity with new lavatory
and the newly installed GFCI outlet, 
small corner shelf on the left,
and vinyl flooring.
Yes, it is a tight fit on the potty since the
 new tub is an inch wider than the old tub.

This shot shows the new shower curtain on the
curved shower rod, and the overhead 
storage doors covered with wallpaper

With the curtain open you can see the new two-headed 
shower, and some of the details in the shower itself.  
Also it shows the wallpaper border.

I forgot to show you WonderMom's 
decorative creation for the new loo!
She has been working on this wall
quilt for almost as long as I have 
been working on the bathroom.
(Yes Cricket, the border is all one piece!)

October 13, 2008

ReBath ReDeux

They did it!  

And they're done!  

ReBath showed up today with all the right stuff and completed their job.  It looks great, but will look a lot better after I get the rest of the bathroom finished.

BEFORE

AFTER

Tomorrow WonderMom goes in for jury duty so I can pull the old toilet, pull up the carpet, prime the walls for wallpapering, and put the beadboard in on two walls. 

 Wednesday is wallpaper, flooring, new toilet, and lavatory install day.  Sounds a little ambitious for me, but we'll see what I can do.  I'll have completion photos when completion happens - including trim, Cricket!

October 10, 2008

High Five Comes Up Short

Last week, our son, Socket, down in the Tarheel state was the star performer in an industrial accident!  He got his right hand caught in the lift mechanism of a forklift truck he was repairing and lost half of his right index finger.  He also damaged a tendon in his middle finger. 

I waited until now to blog about it so I could include news of his condition. Other than losing an important piece of an important finger, he's fine physically.  Mentally he is kicking himself for doing something he knew better than to do.  I think it's a tossup, yeah he put his hand in there, but the actual accident was just that, an accident.  Stuff happens!  You just try to be somewhere else when it does.  Sometimes you aren't!

He was pretty with it and actually assisted the EMTs in retrieving his finger piece from the mechanism.  He also walked to the ambulance and climbed onto the gurney, then walked into the hospital under his own steam.  He is just too big to pick up and carry!

They took him to the hospital Durham to see if they could reattach the finger, but no soap.  The bone was too badly crushed.  He was in surgery for about 2 hours.  His wife, Mistletoe, is miffed at him for getting hurt and scaring the bejesus out of her.  WonderMom is not happy that he didn't take better care of the nice fingers she made for him!  AND HE CAN ONLY GIVE YOU A HIGH 4.5 WITH HIS RIGHT HAND! By the way, he is fairly ambidextrous, but he is mostly left-handed.

Anyhow, here are a couple of photos, taken by him on his cell phone in the Dr.'s office after the surgical bandages were removed and his splint and tension band (for the middle finger) were installed.  If you're squeamish, stop here! 

If you'd like to send him an e-mail to cheer him up or bawl him out, click here->Socket's email

*****************************************************
***** WARNING  DISTURBING PHOTOS FOLLOW *****
*****************************************************
*****************************************************
The splinted hand.  The rubber band is to keep tension on the damaged tendon.


The missing finger before splinting!


You were warned!

October 6, 2008

New Photos Are Up

I finally got the new photos of the quilt up on he previous blog.  The reason it took so long was I had to build a frame outside that we could hang the quilt from.  It is way too big to hang in the house and I wouldn't be able to get far enough away from it to get it all in one frame.

September 29, 2008

A Prairie Gem

Well, this weekend was the long awaited quilt show.  WonderMom entered her serendipitous quilt and showed it off proudly to those who came to see it.  Here's the best shot we could get of the whole thing.  It was hung on the side of a booth and we couldn't get far enough away to get a straight shot at it.  I'll get better shots of it tomorrow and replace/add to this one, so check back.  Sorry it took so long, but here is a full on photo of the quilt.
and as close up of the quilting

No, she didn't win anything, and that came as no surprise after seeing some of her competition.  It was obvious to us that her quilt didn't have enough actual quilting on it, even if the quilting was excellent.  Most of the other quilts were closely quilted over their entire surface.  Her quilt was only quilted in the border and in the black "came" between the pieces of colored fabric.  In any event, it was an enjoyable and educational experience for her, and she doesn't feel badly about not winning anything.



Here are a couple of the quilts that did win something.  Although it is hard to tell from these photos, there is a bunch of quilting on all of them.









These are some of the small quilts WonderMom made for the auctions held during the show.  They brought in some good bids and $ for the 
guild.  













On to AZ next winter to enter in the ASU Quilt show.  Maybe she'll come up with an idea to add quilting to the project and improve her chances.
 

September 21, 2008

Teaser!

WonderMom got her special quilt back from the quilter last Friday.  She's really pleased with the results.   She plans to enter it into a quilt show competition this coming weekend.  Before then she has to trim it to square it up, hand sew 32 feet of binding, attach a quilt hanger, and a label.  I thought I'd post a couple of teaser photos prior to the quilt show.  

Front

Back

I should have some good photos of the completed quilt as it hangs in the show. It is too big to hang anywhere in our house!

September 19, 2008

ReBath Revisited!

I blogged earlier about having ReBath redo our tub/shower area.  They called last week and scheduled the installation for Friday, Sept. 19th.  Tomorrow at 7:30 AM (ouch)!  So today, Thursday, Sept 18,  I tore into the bathroom, stripped old paneling off of the walls, ripped up the carpeting, and removed the lavatory, all of which we are replacing. 


I was working on the paneling, and ReBath called and said they would be late - 9AM.  That's OK.  Better for me.  


So right after I removed the lavatory, and the vanity, essentially making the bathroom unusable except for the toilet, ReBath calls again.  They just inspected the tub insert for my installation and found a manufacturing defect!  


My options are:

a) wait 2 weeks for a replacement insert to be made (in Mesa, AZ!)

b) They will install a replacement tub, which is actually a new tub, not an insert.  They say this is a more expensive option, but they won't charge me any more money.  


OK, no brainer on which way to go there!  It'll be interesting to see how the get a new tub into this bathroom which is only 5 feet by 6 feet!  The tub, which is 5 feet long, fits in the 5 foot dimension, of course, and takes up 28 inches of the 6 foot dimension.  Yes, it is a tiny room, but it works for us - for overnight company, not so much!  We have a half bath in the basement.


Friday morning Bert and Ernie from ReBath show up.  We go through the project together, and they seem like good guys, friendly and accommodating.  I ask to see the replacement tub to make sure it is something we want - it's fine.  


They start tearing off the old shower surround and removing fixtures while I'm working on stuff in the garage, when it happens!

Bert comes out, talking on the phone and asks me if the house is a modular home - it is, mostly factory built in 1956.  The old tub is a non-standard size narrower than normal.  The new tub won't fit.  It's not too long, but too wide - 33 inches!  There won't be room for the vanity if the try to put it in.  Rats!


We discuss it for a while.  They apologize all over themselves for the mistakes (made by the office) and offer to do all kinds of things to make me happy.  We decide that the best thing would be to wait for the replacement for the liner to come from AZ - a minimum of 2 weeks.  They put the fixtures back and calk the open corners of the exposed old shower paneling with all the glue lines on it from the surround plastic I put over it.  It is serviceable, but ugly.  


So we'll be roughing it until the 2nd week of Oct. anyhow.  I told WonderMom I would put the lavatory back for the duration and she says, "Don't bother.  I can brush my teeth in the kitchen!  Just make the shower work."  Isn't she wonderful?


I'll follow up on this when it happens, so check back.