Day Seven: Bathroom Renovation Project 14 - Let there be light

Today needs no explanation.

Day Six: Bathroom Renovation Project 13 - Saving the Plaster Walls

Day Six. Dan is up before me for once. And has put a hole in the ceiling for the fan. I hear him mutter something like "Rats!" under his breath. "What?" I ask. "Oh, there's just a beam right over the hole," he says, in that delusively nonchalant way. I look up and sure enough, there's a hole in the plaster and a big ole totally solid beam filling up the whole hole.

Right about then, the plasterer arrived. He's a nice guy. "Take your time, Danny," he says. He's Irish as in from Ireland and seems to like my brother's name--probably the only person in the whole, wide world other than mom who can still call Dan Danny. It has a nice ring when he says it, a lilt and a hollow tin can feeling sound. He's got a cup of coffee and he goes back out to his van for his next load of stuff.

Dan gets up on a stool, measuring furiously.

Down off the stool and up in the attic, measuring beams. Back up on the stool, measuring twice, this time. I hear him mutter something to the effect that it better be right this time.

I decamp up the ladder, to poke my head in the attic. Here is the bay where the other hole was, up against the beam. It's a big beam alright:

I look right, to the area where we'd sketched out our Plan B spot last night before collapsing into bed. Looks promising, I think.

A moment later, payday. We're in business.

Soon, the plasterer is hard at work and works all day. So here, without further ado, the shots of the finished work. 

What a difference a day makes. Dan is happy. So am I. So is Capel.

Finally, the time seems right to bring up a square of the tile. 

It suits. Relief. What a day.

Day Five: Bathroom Renovation Project 12 - Forced march to plasterer

We've scheduled the plasterer. He can only come on Thursday. Today is Wednesday. This is a crazy day. When I get home from work, like 7 or 8 in the evening, it's only just beginning, and I can see Dan is exhausted from all the late nights, so I pitch in.

A lot of what happened during the day is relatively invisible. The hole for the new medicine cabinet has been cut and the old hole drywalled in. The electrical in the floor and wall is in, and the boxes for the sconces and outlets are in. Also, Dan very ingeniously ran 2x6's up the wall from the floor to the bottom of the medicine cabinet hole (you can just see the bottoms in this photo, on either side of the sink drain.) That will provide the anchor for the console sink.

Solves a huge problem, because we thought we'd have to cut a hole in the wall from 32" down, to attach a 2x12 support to the studs to anchor the sink.

Hey, I think, he's really getting into it! He's figuring out how to save the plaster walls.

I really wanted to save the plaster walls. I grew up in a house with plaster. Thank you mom and dad.

There's really nothing like the solidity of plaster. It holds the heat in the winter and the cool in the summer. It damps sound from the outside, and prevents drafts. And it has such an interesting texture. To me, it makes a home home.

We interviewed five contractors. The ones that got pitched immediately were the ones who had no interest or ability to preserve the plaster. And ultimately, we probably wound up with Dan because, even to the very best contractors who routinely work in older homes, saving the plaster just seems like an unnecessary headache. "Demo bathroom" the first estimate started with. No, I thought. Not demo. More like surgically remove as little as possible. People just don't get it.

So anyway. It does make for long days, working around the plaster. And now we're up against it. It's eight on Wednesday evening. The plasterer comes at seven on Thursday morning, and everything from shoulder height up has to be in place, more or less.

Nine p.m., there we were, Dan boxing in the stacks in the SE and SW corners.

And we haven't even figured out the ceiling. There's a fan. A ceiling light. Three supports for the curtain ring. And an incredibly small amount of flat ceiling in the room to fit it all in. And what about the beams and joists up there?

Back I go to the graph paper. Then I tape together the curtain ring and Capel gets pressed into service to hold it up, while I put little blue tape pieces where the supports should go.

Then its up on the ladder in the hall, head and shoulders in the attic crawlspace, trying to figure out if the beams and joists in the ceiling will let us put the ceiling fan where we want it.

Everyone else is ready for bed. Me, I'm excited. This is the real thing. When what's on paper gets translated into reality.

"I'll cut the holes in the morning," Dan says. "Wake me up at 5:30."