merry tiler, more!

Most of the bathroom tile is in place. We ran into a minor detail of miscalculation (embarrassingly obvious) and so had to order more (which explains why the amount we paid initially was so much lower than our estimated budget...), but fortunately, there's no real delay, since it's arriving Tuesday evening.

So here's a shot of the area behind the bathtub:



Here's what's been done so far in the shower:



And here's the bathroom floor, so far:



On another note, my sister and brother-in-law have just started their own remodeling (theirs motivated by needing room for their two boys), and she's doing a blog of her own, called This Year's (re)Model (opting for the Elvis Costello rather than Roxy Music reference).

floors and tiles and paint and things

Lots of work getting done the last couple of days. On the exterior: the back window's rough frame-out is nearly done:



Inside: the first coat of paint is on the walls and ceiling:



The tile installer has put down the gypsum-board underlayment. In this shot you can also see a swatch of the accent color that will fill this wall below the ledge at the very top of this image, as well as the alcove in the bedroom. The actual color has more red to it - it's hard to get accurate color given the reliance in this photo on late-afternoon natural light or flash, which tends to wash out darker colors). You can also barely make out the tile we'll be using in the bathroom (more visible at the larger size):



And the flooring has begun to be put in place:

concretely

The tile installer has begun his work. He's put in the concrete-like sheets that serve as base for the substrate and grout into which he'll place the tiles. Here's a shot of the shower area:



Here's the shower base which, as you can see, looks a lot like poured concrete. It isn't, quite, but it's similar:



And here's Rose's tub (she's the bath-taker here), with its surround in place:

inside and out

Inside: most of the subflooring has been installed. Here's a picture:



Outside: most of the exterior trim on the old dormer (with the new window) has been installed:



The only exterior that hasn't been initially finished is the rear of the house, which I imagine will get done sometime next week. Tomorrow (oops - later today) the drywallers return to sand and finish the drywall.

panefully

I'd mentioned before that the large window space in our bedroom, in the previously existing dormer, had been left as a big hole covered with plastic sheeting, in order to allow large objects like drywall and the plywood subflooring to be lofted up through that window. Well, the last of those large objects is up (that subflooring), and as the drywallers continue their mudding (slowed down some by the weather: damp but cool, so no A/C but no heat either - our contractor brought over an electric heater to speed the drying process), the last window was finally put in place. Here's what it looks like, before its framing is put in place, from inside and out:

walls

The drywallers have partially completed mudding the walls. They'll do more mudding, and then sanding to fine-tune the texture of the walls. Here's a shot of the top of the stairs, showing the initial blend of the new walls into the existing walls:



Here's one angle along the ceiling in the bedroom to give an idea of the way that will look:



Probably the most detail-intensive aspect of their work is here, framing the eyebrow dormer window:



Finally, here's that corner alcove next to the tub (for future guests' reference: taken from nearly the exact position one would occupy while sitting on the yet-to-be-installed throne...):

summer's almost gone

One side effect of this remodeling project: this has been the summer that never was, in some ways. Several factors combine to have made this the case, including some that have nothing to do with the project. Obviously, the energy and attention we've had to pay to the project have preoccupied us; and for the early part of the project, one of our main summer activities - hanging out in the back patio, cooking out or just sitting around - was impossible due to construction materials taking up the space. (And it occurs to me that in most summers, we have a couple of regular traveling visitors, neither of whom made their annual trip here for reasons mostly unrelated to the remodeling. Our friends Janet and Andy and their children were in town for a couple of days just as the project was beginning, and I saw them on my Grand Rapids trip as well; while our friends Bob and Susan skipped their usual Milwaukee visit in lieu of foreign travel this year - they're visiting in late October instead.)

So it's kind of weird that it's September already, feeling as if many typical summer activities never quite happened. (As a teacher, my seasonal calendar is in arrested development: the school year still delineates the end of summer at one end and summer's beginning at the other...although now that I think of it, something similar is probably true for parents of school-age kids, too.) But ultimately, it will be worth it: Rose and I are both in the habit of just wandering upstairs and sort of looking around, for no other reason than to imagine and enjoy the space. We were both up there this afternoon, talking about a couple of details and clarifying window treatments and the like, and it was just a wonderful moment: this is a project we'd been pipedreaming since we bought the house, eleven years ago (in some ways, before that: the idea of buying a house and remodeling it was in her mind at least well before we could buy a house in the first place). And to see it in real life is gratifying...despite its costs (including the monetary ones), minor setbacks, and its tendency to take priority over most aspects of our lives. All that's temporary. The fabulous new space we'll have - and the more it becomes real, the more I really love Rose's design - is permanent.

ein, zwei, drywall

The rest of the drywall has been roughed into place. Here's a shot from the landing on the stairway, looking up toward the door into the bathroom, and to the left there's the door to the closet, just beyond the door to the bedroom:



Here's a view from the back of the hallway looking toward the doorway to the bedroom:



From inside the bedroom, a view looking out the "eyebrow dormer" window at the front of the house:



A shot looking into the corner of this part of the "T" that forms the bedroom, where the east-facing window will be (most of the morning sun will be blocked or diffused by our neighbor's house):



And this is pretty much the reverse angle of the second shot, above, now looking from just in front of the eyebrow window out the doorway, into the hall, and out the back window:

but no Stanard Ridgway

About half the drywall is roughed-in now. It's a bit hard to show photographically, both because I haven't figured out how to stick the camera back through the wall to get a longer field of view (don't own a wide-angle lens) and there's still lots of yet-to-be-put-up drywall blocking both views and places to stand and shoot photos. So here's a selection.

The first shot looks out over the stairway. I'm standing roughly in front of where our closet door will be.



The second shot shows the bathroom wall where our sinks will be.



This shot (which I had to take by sticking my camera into the bathroom past a pile of drywall) shows the little alcove that'll be behind the bathtub, created by the setback of the new dormer and the old roofline.



Finally, this is a sense of what the hallway space will look like. I'm standing in front of the window at the top of the stairs, looking toward the front of the house: the doorway you see will be the entry to the bedroom.



The crew has just begun to put up the drywall in the bedroom itself. Tomorrow I imagine they'll finish nailing the drywall in place, and then they'll fill and finish the surface over the next day or so following.