I wanted to remodel for a few reasons:

• I wanted a bigger bathtub. Mainly, I wanted one that was deeper. Wider wasn’t as much of an issue. I ended up finding the American Standard Cambridge tub, which is made out of a proprietary blend that emulates cast iron for heat retention and durability without the weight. It’s also fitted with a Deep Soak drain, and so without increasing the wall height very much, it gives a good 4-5 inches of water depth over other tubs.
• For some godawful reason, the previous owner (or maybe the home designer) had put carpet in the bathroom. Who does that? It would get wet and mildewy and gross. We had one corner where the wall was going soft because of the moisture. Note for others: do not put carpet in a bathroom. I wanted good tile everywhere and waterproofing, similar to what we did with the laundry room and downstairs bathroom after the flooding incident back in ’09.
• The vanity was out of date and somewhat annoyingly designed. There were only two tiny drawers, the whole thing was annoyingly low, and there was a whole section that was set up to be a sit-at vanity, but that’s just an area that gathered clutter for us.
• We briefly considered having a separate shower instead of the shower/tub combo, but our space really isn’t designed for that, and neither of us really wanted it. Instead, we installed a cool handheld/rainshower shower head and went with a tub (discussed earlier) that worked in our space.

I decided to use the same company I used for the bathroom/laundry work before. The company is Handymen & Mrs. Helper. They’re a husband and wife team, Rod and Faith, though they have a lot of great people who work with them, too (like Steve, who did most of the work for me here). They do work directly and also do contracting for larger projects like this one. Rod is terrific because he doesn’t try to oversell me on things I don’t need, but he points out practical things that I wouldn’t think to do but which makes tons of sense. For example, he pointed out that we could add a fan to the shower area with a timer to alleviate some of the humidity issues we have in there (which were causing the paint to bubble and peel along the tape edges). I’m very happy with working with them, so if you have a similar need and live in our area, give them a try.

Without further ado, here’s the pictures:

Bathroom Remodel - Before

Remodel of our master bathroom with "before" pictures

11 Photos

Bathroom Remodel - After

Remodel of our master bathroom with "after" pictures

17 Photos

None of these new fancy pants solutions will work for me. I really wish they would, but they don’t. To me, they screw it up fundamentally.

First, no one needs to understand degrees. I shouldn’t need to know or appreciate the difference between 70 degrees and 71 degrees. Chances are, I can’t tell the difference. When I approach my thermostat, I’m not looking to know a fine level of temperature detail. I go to the thermostat because I want it to be warmer or colder, period. So, first, the main thing it needs to have is a quick way to adjust warmer or cooler.

Second, ideally, I shouldn’t need to tell it whether I want heat or AC or even just fan functions. It should be able to, using my home’s internet connection, figure out where it is and get the local weather. That should be enough to tell it whether it should be on heat or AC, or perhaps whether it should suggest to me that I leave a window open and turn the fan on.

Third, there does need to be programming and automation but these thermostats are all doing it wrong. It doesn’t need to be based on time; it needs to be based on who is home. Ideally, you create a means of knowing who is home (an NFC check-in at the doorways would work, but there’s other ways) and automatically respond to it. Less ideally, you give me a quick way to tell the thermostat whether I’m “home” or “away”. Some people will be able to set home vs. away on a schedule, and that can be an option, but several times a year at least (and almost all the time for us), that schedule will be *wrong*, so no matter what, you need to give a quick way to set home or away. And even more so, if you provide a remote access app for smartphones or PCs, I need to be able to tell it that I’ll be home at X time and to prep the house accordingly. That is the most frequent thing I will do, so it should be up front and easy. Really, once you figure out “home” and “away”, everything else is advanced settings for scheduling and automation. I can envision conditions like “If living room lights are on, I am home” or “If fridge is opened, I am home” that would help automate the system. With smartphones thrown into the mix, you could add checks like “if I’m in my car and in motion on a weekday, I’m on my way home” or “if I have a calendar notice where location is not home, I’m not home”. The point being that the thermostats out there today screw it up by assuming that people follow a standard pattern in a week, when people don’t really work that way. They follow a schedule that they’ve set on some calendar somewhere which may or may not cycle weekly, monthly, or at all. So…back to my point, your first step is home or away. Second step is a way to figure out which of those is true, which could be any one of a number of ways.

Finally, there should be a simple setup system at the beginning of use (which can be re-done later somehow if needed) that asks or figures out:

• Do you tend to prefer warmer rooms or colder rooms?
• Would you rather be very energy efficient or very comfortable?
• Do you have a family member (such as a pet) that is in the house most or all of the time, even when you’re away? (and potentially some drill-down based on this answer)

The first item helps it figure out a baseline to start with (that later learns and is tweaked by tapping warmer or cooler). The second item determines how responsive it should be to requests. The last item tells it how inhospitable it can make your environment when you’re away. Someone with pets, particularly amphibians, reptiles, or fish, needs the house to be kept at a certain temperature no matter what. The same is true of someone with a bedridden or house-confined family member.

You can get super-fancy with this, with smartphone integration, sensors, per-user settings, etc., or you can get super-simple with just a warmer/cooler button. Either way, giving more individually programmable days and bigger fancier screens just complicates things. And automatically trying to guess a schedule doesn’t help either. They need to step back and think about what the user does with a thermostat rather than looking at what thermostats do right now.

Photos at this link: Chersnowbyl-2011-02. There’s a smattering of them below, but if you go to the album, the captions are more visible. (They only show up in mouseover on the thumbnails below.)

[zenphotopress album=40 sort=random number=6]

Thankfully, I have a snowblower. So, 30 minutes later, the driveway and walkway were clear. I thought I’d taken a picture of that, too, but I guess it didn’t take. Unfortunately, the streets haven’t been plowed, and I couldn’t easily clear the path to the mailbox without having to do the plow’s job. So, I sunk up to my hips in snow to get the mail. I’m hoping the plows will come before morning, and I’ll be able to clear that area, too.

The snow is light and fluffy. I wish I didn’t have to work. This is perfect ski snow!

So, pictures!

Here’s what it looked like before, with the old TV:

And now here’s what it looks like:

We’ve got a 7.1 surround system and plenty of storage space for components and controllers. And, right now, DH is running in the basement while I’m upstairs, and I can hear the TV as clearly as if it were here. Hmmm…

So, filling the snowblower up with gas, reading the manual for how to turn it on, making sure I knew how to work the controls, and then clearing the driveway, end of the driveway, walkway, and plow accumulation area in front of our mailbox took me about thirty minutes. For comparison, doing that would normally take me and DH, working together, around 1-2 hours, depending on how good of a job we wanted to do…and the snowblower did a MUCH better job than we did. It was also fun to zoom around behind the snowblower (it’s powered, so it drives itself), though turning it is kind of a PITA and requires some muscling. Despite the snowblower, I still got very warm inside my long down coat and ended up shedding my hat and gloves to keep from sweating too much and thus getting colder.

So, I’m buzzing up and down the driveway at midnight, all happily snowblowing. I even took some time to do detail work here and there, but stopped short of really detailing the end of the driveway. I only had one “Ack! Jane, stop this crazy thing!!! Oh yeah, I just let go to stop,” moment, and no damage was done.

I drove it back up into the garage and went to park it…at which point I realized I had no idea how to turn it off. So then I had to fumble for the manual (which I’d put away while the engine was warming up) while it sat there humming away to find out how to turn it off properly. I mean, I could just yank the safety key, but I suspected that there was supposed to be some other things done first. I was right, too…you’re supposed to turn down the choke before you yank the key.

Overall, snowblowing was a fun experience. Normally, on snowy days, DH manages the snowplow end of the driveway, while I manage the light accumulation on the driveway and the walk, and apply salt as needed. I think I’m going to make him change jobs with me.

Oh!! And I’ve decided the snowblower needs a name. Any fun ideas?

MATERIALS AND COST:

• Glass Frosting Spray – $5 at Ace Hardware
• Solar garden lamps – $2 each at Sears (5)
• Ball Mason jars – $5 for group of 5 on eBay, plus $5 shipping
• Duck Clear packaging tape – had on hand
• Optional: Dasani bottle wrapper – had on hand
• NO TOOLS REQUIRED!

TOTAL COST: $25 for 5 sun jars

TIP: You can use glue instead of tape. I used tape because these are prototypes. But, the tape is holding up pretty darn well, even in the heat, so I may just stick with tape until it wears out. (STICK WITH…get it? Ha!!)

STEP 1: Materials and Space

Gather all your materials. Set up a workspace outdoors on a sunny, dry day. Make sure you have a surface that you don’t mind spraying on. Check the wind to make sure you stay upwind of your spray.

STEP 2: Frosting

Frost the jars. This is pretty simple. Open your jars and put them on your surface facing down. Start by shaking the frosting spray for about 2 minutes (as per the instructions on the can). Then, spray the jars. Try to get an even coat. You can see on the one on the far left that I overdid the frosting a little. You just need a light coat. In fact, when it goes on, it won’t necessarily seem like it’s frosted. Make sure to get the neck of the jar, but DO NOT SPRAY THE LIDS. In my case, my jars had removable lids, which made this part MUCH easier. Allow the jars to dry without being touched for at least one hour to be safe.

STEP 3: Lights


If you buy the exact brand of solar lights that I did (or look for one that works the same way), it’s just a twist off cap. They make it easy to twist off because there’s an auto/off switch inside. Look for lights that you can just twist off, and you avoid dealing with screwdrivers. (Lifehacker and Instructables went a step further by actually disassembling the cap. I skipped this step, which is what makes my version faster and easier.) You also want to make sure that the lights you get will fit your jars. I went for the smallest ones, which were also the cheapest. And lastly, make sure that the lights don’t have any large lenses over the solar panel, as this will interfere with getting power once they’re inside the jar lid.

STEP 4: Lids


Put a “crown” of tape around the light fixture as shown. (If you accidentally put it on the wrong way, you can always remove the tape and start over.) Then push the crown back, kind of like how you would push a banana peel or candy bar wrapper back. You’ll end up with half the tape on the fixture and half around the fixture in a ring. Then, put the fixture inside the lid, so that the solar panel will face out once the lid is back on the jar. Push the tape down around the fixture so that it forms a seal with the lid. Make sure that all the tape is inside the boundary of the lid, so that you’ll get a good seal on the jar.

OPTIONAL STEP 4a: Colors

You can use clear plastic wrappers or wrapping paper to add color to your lights. Just tape a piece over the LED bulb. Check the Lifehacker or Instructables guides for more details on this optional step. (I did this with one of them just to check it out. It’s dead simple to add this later and/or change it after you add it.)

STEP 5: Waiting is the hardest part.

Let the lids charge with sunlight, and let the jars dry.

RESULT: Sun jars!

I tested them out in my bathroom, which is completely dark. With moonlight, I imagine this will be plenty of light for our deck. I’ll probably do up a second batch to light our porch and walkway at some point. And, I might use this as a gift idea for this holiday season…

The series of pictures toward the back is a relatively hard-to-find set of prints released by Disney back in 2001. I wanted them for my apartment when they were released, but I couldn’t afford them at the time. I found them on eBay, though, and I even got them far cheaper than the going rate because the seller quite possibly didn’t realize the value of a complete and undamaged set to collectors. Anyways, the set is called The Four Seasons of Pooh and shows the Pooh characters doing an activity for winter, spring, fall, and summer. I arranged them in a pinwheel both to evoke the cyclical nature of the seasons and, more practically, because it doesn’t require any special coordination on my part to make sure that they’re all straight with each other.

On the door, I have a hand-painted Pooh Room sign, also obtained on eBay and customized to my chosen text and coloring. The artist did an excellent job of color-matching to the color of the room. I am incredibly impressed. Click this link to see more items from this artist. I promise, you won’t be disappointed in her product or her customer service.

The other Pooh accent in the room is a set of baskets that are lined with Classic Pooh fabric. I got those from Target. I’m using one to hold the spare toilet paper (on the far side of the toilet). One is being used as a magazine rack. The third is on the sink as a catch-all place for things that I use frequently.

Yay! I’m so proud of this room.

You know our brand new laundry/mud room? The one I spent all or most of Saturday moving everything back into? Well, my dear husband decided to do laundry today, to do me a favor…it was a very sweet gesture. He made sure the machine started up okay and then he then went into the basement to study. Unfortunately, it seems that the workman who reset the washing machine didn’t seat the output tube fully into the output drain. As such, the pipe fell out as soon as pressure got into it and spewed water all over the floor, which then flooded the carpet. If you look in the picture that I took in my last entry, you can actually see that the pipe isn’t in properly, if you know what to look for. But, we didn’t realize this, and because DH was in the basement, he didn’t realize it was a problem until midway through the cycle. I’m guessing 4-6 gallons of soapy water got dumped.

The ceramic tile did its job. The problem was that it spilled out into the carpeted hallway. And, because the rooms just got done, we hadn’t gotten the carpeting re-attached yet (another contractor, hired by the insurance company, was going to handle re-attaching the carpet and subsequently cleaning it). So, the water may have seeped out of the room, into the carpet, and then back into the laundry room between the tile and the subfloor. If that’s the case, we will have to have the floor all ripped up again and re-done.

::cries::

For now, we have the evil and noisy fans going again, 24-7. It sucks so bad because they slip into my mind unnoticed, until some random moment when I startle and realize that they’re there again. Pancake hates it, too. He’s so upset. He had just transitioned to using his regular litter in his regular place, and he was clearly relieved that things were back how they should be. He had explored all the corners and nooks. He liked the new shelving. Now, things are crazy in his house again, and he is not pleased. He keeps meowing piteously. I brought him upstairs with me and gave him pats and cooed at him until he relaxed, but he’s on edge. Poor kitteh. At least I understand the crazy…he doesn’t know what’s going on and why we keep doing this to him.

We’ll find out on Wednesday what the verdict is…cross your fingers and think happy thoughts for us that the water didn’t seep under the tile, or if it did, only a little that has gotten dried out by the dehumidifiers and fans.