Bathroom Chronicles, Vol. 3

We just came off of another fabulous weekend. Beth's Mom, JoAnn, and Nancy left today to head back to GA. We had so much fun, no matter what we were doing. After entertaining a house full of people all weekend, it's rather quiet now.

I took this week off of work to focus on the bathroom. It's the last push to get it functional before Sheep & Wool. I've managed to make a little progress over the weekend and today. Sunday was spent getting the new shower panels installed. The install went as expected, but as always, a few hiccups here and there getting them trimmed and notched. Thankfully, no catastrophes to report.

There is a funny story associated with the installation, however. The swanstone panels get attached to the wall using double-stick tape and construction adhesive. You put gobs of adhesive on the backside and use wood braces to apply pressure while the adhesive sets up. There's even a nice diagram with the suggested bracing layout. Sounds simple, right? Well, for the two opposing walls, it was. I was able to get the braces in nice and tight. The back wall, on the other hand, was another story. Since there's no opposing wall to provide resistance, I had a hard time applying enough pressure to keep the panels adhered on my rather wavy walls. The cute diagram I mentioned previously just wasn't cutting it, so I had to get creative...

Scary, huh? and yes, those are bags of pellets for my stove. I rigged up some diagonal 2x4 braces that got wedged against the lip of the shower pan and nailed a few pieces of wood to the brace to make shelves for the pellet bags to sit on. Trust me, this worked much better than standing there pushing against the wall for 24-hours! Each bag weighs 40-lbs, so I figure I've got approximately 100 lbs of lateral force being applied to the wall. I checked for pull-away and haven't see any. So far, so good. We'll see what happens when I take this contraption apart!

Today's fun was trimming out the new window. I re-created the colonial style trim on my other upstairs windows using stock 1x4's and some off the shelf moulding from my local lumberyard. Here's what it looks like.

Tomorrow's starts the hardwood floor refinishing adventure. I'm renting a sander in the morning and hope it get the floor ready for polyurethane by the end of the day. We'll see if I actually get that far.