Thursday, November 9, 2017

The OTHER Bathroom

Our house is a 2 bathroom house, though currently
the downstairs bathroom is under going
a complete tear out and renovation.
So that left us with the ugly upstairs bathroom.
You'll recall I painted it last year.
If you can't recall, you can read about it here.
Anyway, here is what it looked like prior to painting the walls a peach color.
Here is a photo from just the other night.
Yes the walls look lovely, 
(and so does the brand new window behind the blind)
but I want you to focus on the flooring.
The yellowish flooring with the creases that held
decades of dirt and grime
that no matter how much, long or hard I scrubbed 
on my hands and knees
would never look like it was completely clean.
Plus, it just didn't match.
But I don't think yellowish grimey floors match anything, really.
So, I was walking the aisles of Ollie's Bargain Outlet at lunch,
looking for cheap good stuff
when I came across some flooring.
Long story short, I ended up finding 6x8ft sheets of vinyl flooring.
I measured the bathroom and sure enough, with the exception of a small strip
behind the toilet, 6x8 ft would work.
So I talked Big E into putting in vinyl flooring.
Oh, I forgot to mention it was only $20!
I was expecting to just slap that puppy on top of the existing floor, but Big E said the old floor had to come up.
This is where it gets a little hairy, 
and I'm not talking about Big E's chest hair.
I, in my "I found $20 easy to install flooring" high,
assumed that I'd cut the caulk that ringed the flooring
and that old floor would pop right out.
I've been involved with several projects in this house, 
and not one has gone completely as planned
so I can't really tell you why I thought this was going to be a piece of cake.
Other than the $20 piece of floor euphoria.
There were 3 distinct layers of flooring in the main floor areas.
The yellowish one, another one that was whitish with flowers or something and a blue/green
old linoleum tile with the tar backing.
And under that, 
original hardwood floors.
Even stranger was the cement or plaster I found 
in the floor.
At first I thought it was the part of the original wall
before the house was added on to.
Turns out it was a chunk of plaster.
It was used to fill a hole in the floor.
I'm not sure what someone does
to cause a hole in hardwood floor 2 inches or so deep.
It added more work because we now needed to fill the hole properly.
It took about 6 hours, 
but I managed to get all the floor up.
Over by the toilet I found 2 other types of floor that were 
nailed in place.
The toilet was also raised up for some reason.
Seriously, even the tar covered wood floor looks better
than that yellowish floor.
It took a little longer to get the floor clean enough for adhesive, 
but it finally got done.
Definitely an improvement,
and worth the hours of labor.
Just a couple of decorative touches and it'll be good for a long time.