Guest Bathroom Redo - Wall repair

In my last post, I talked about putting in a new vanity and mirror in my guest bathroom, but you may have also noticed the horrible mess the previous mirror left behind. What you didn't see was the other problems with the wall. The previous owners had a towel rack on the opposite wall from the toilet. It was a two-bar rack and stuck out pretty far. When the door would swing open it would hit the rack. I put in a doorstop but that wasn't big enough to stop the door from hitting the rack. I decided to take the rack off and move it over the toilet. When I took it off I discovered this:



The right image, you can really see the indented circle from the mount of the towel rack and the door hitting it and pushing it into the drywall. You can also see that the previous owner only mounted it half right. When you are mounting something into drywall, you need those little plastic anchors to hold the screw in place and not make a giant hole in the wall. You can find them at Home Depot, and they even sell kits so you can have different sizes for different jobs, here is a link to a 160 Piece Anchor Kit. I've discovered all over the house giant holes because things were not mounted into the drywall properly.

Now, I have these giant holes and rips in the drywall from the mirror coming off. My first step was to try and get rid of as much of the glue from the mirror as I could. I ended up using a box cutter to help get the really stuck on stuff off. I managed to make a lot more rips in the drywall as I did this too. With the holes in the wall from the screws, I sanded down any of the loose drywall that would make patching the holes more difficult and bumpy. I also was able to get out the two plastic anchors with a screwdriver and pliers. I used the screwdriver to get under the lip of the outside and raise the anchor out of the hole as best I could, then with the pliers, I was able to grab the small exposed part of the anchor and pull it out. For one of the anchors for the mirror, I could not get it out, I ended up just hammering it further into the wall. so that part could be flush with the wall. I'm not sure if having a textured wall is more forgiving or if it's a bigger pain. I don't really know how to make the texture so I came up with my own way.

For drywall patching, I used DryDex Wall Repair Patch Kit. It is available at Home Depot (shocker!). Seriously, I don't get paid by Home Depot, I just had a few projects in college and my school had a Lowe's card. I could literally never find what I needed at Lowe's and I found the employees to be incompetent. Menard's was always my first choice, then Home Depot. Sadly, the southwest doesn't have Menard's. :(
Anyway, the Dry Wall repair stuff I use is really easy to work with. It's nice because it goes on pink and as it dries it turns white. I usually give it a couple hours but it dries pretty quickly, at least in the desert southwest it doesn't take long.

Here is my patchwork from the mirror, notice the pink color. I left some of the glue on because I figured no one would see it and it was pretty thin in those parts.

Here is the drywall patch as it has dried. I also did some sanding down of the drywall to give it a little smoother look.

The screw holes were a little bit bigger and went all the way through the drywall. I wasn't totally sure I would be able to fill them without the mesh that comes with the patch kit. I didn't want to use the patch for two reasons. First, it was in a different room and I would have to read the directions, so laziness was the main reason. Second, the previous owners used the mesh in one of the rooms, I know this because I can still see the grid from the mesh. So I didn't want to risk doing a bad job with a new technique. I put a lot of the spackle onto my putty knife and started with the big hole. I moved the knife flat along the good part of the drywall at about a 45* angle. I mostly filled the whole but when I went to go over it again, I started to pull out the putty that already made it into the hole. I got some more spackle on my knife and tried again. This worked a lot better and filled the hole nicely. Once everything was nicely covered, I wanted to make sure I didn't have a ton of spackle on the wall. I took a damp rag and took up some of the spackle where I knew there were no holes in the wall. Once I did that I had kind of a sharp edge to the spackle that remained on the wall. I just used my finger to dab it back down onto the wall. This seemed to work really well since I didn't want to have one large section where the wall was smooth while the rest of it was textured. For one of the other holes, I had a harder time filling it. I ended up filling the hole as best as I could, letting it dry and then trying again after it was nicely dried. I didn't use the sand paper too much in this part since I did a pretty good job smoothing things out with the putty knife and my finger. I actually think its easier to make things smooth when it's still wet.

Once all the holes and dents in the wall were filled (there were a lot more than I showed) I got a primer and covered up the patches.

   

It kind of looks like clouds!

Obviously, we need to paint the bathroom. I'll explain why there is a border of white primer all along the top of the bathroom in my next post. The horror!

Guest Bathroom Redo - Vanity

This is what our guest bathroom looked like when we moved in, minus the storage between the sink and the toilet. It's cute if you have little kids but we don't, so we wanted to make it nicer for when we have guests visit. We live in Tucson but originally from the Chicago area so we usually have a handful of family members visit every year. Now that we have a house, they can actually stay with us! (We're still not sure if that's a good thing. Just kidding...maybe.)

We decided to get rid of the rubber ducky theme and I also wanted to toss the pedestal sink for a vanity with storage and counter space! I'm a horrible hostess because I had my husband's stepdad and his grandfather help me with this project while they were in town for 'vacation'. I told them they needed to earn their room at night. (They both worked and work at Home Depot, so they like doing projects...I'm not THAT horrible.)

First, the water needs to get turned off at the two valves under the sink. Then it's a good idea to cut the grout holding the sink in place. The previous owners painted over the grout so we had a weird line on the wall where paint and grout stuck out but that's easy enough to get rid of. Once the water was shut off, they started up the water to get rid of any residual water that might still be in the line. I also had a bucket ready for when they unhooked the lines so water wouldn't get all over the floor. I missed the part where they actually took the sink off, it happened pretty quick but I do know that the sink and the stand did come apart.

Next, they unscrewed the old mirror and very carefully pulled it off the wall. This looked a little difficult since there was a lot of glue holding the mirror in place, but they managed to take it off without breaking it! No bad luck for us! The vanity that I got came with a mirror, so that's why we took down the mirror.

One discovery we made was the water stopper was being held in place by ZIP TIES! 

One very important thing that I learned was to assemble everything before putting the vanity in the bathroom. That way you can come in at any angle to work on something. We also made a few painful discoveries. The most painful was also a result of us being stupid. I got the vanity at Home Depot and I also got the faucet. I really liked the faucet a lot but I couldn't find the price for it anywhere! I ended up going to customer service and they said it was 99 cents. Apparently, according to my grandfather in law, someone screwed up and didn't pull the old model. He was upset for Home Depot's loss and upset about my awesome gain because he loves Home Depot. Anyway, the woman got a manager and they just gave it to me for free. It was AWESOME!

Now, the stupid mistake that I learned was with this very awesome, very free, chrome faucet. We opened it up out of the package and discovered that the drain stopper was a very ugly gray plastic. I was like, at least it was free, I would have been so mad it I bought such an ugly stopper. So, we went back to home depot and ended up buying a new stopper mechanism. The new stopper did not work with the faucet's mechanics and my father-in-law and I both had a few rage blackouts because of it. Turns out, the free faucet stopper was just wrapped up really well in a plastic casing and it was in fact chrome! We felt so stupid but my husband's grandfather insisted that he knew and just wanted us to learn for ourselves...I'm pretty sure he's full of it.

Once we were ready to install the vanity, we took the countertop/sink off and just put in the wood base. Apparently, I didn't take a picture of it without the top.

Before the top goes on, it's a good idea to check that the vanity actually fits into the space. We discovered that the water valves, when closed allowed for the vanity to sit perfectly flush against the wall. But when the valves get opened they twist out forcing the bottom drawers to never close when the water valve is open, which is always. We ended up having to pull the vanity out from the wall a little bit and guess where it would be the best fit and still close to the wall. Once we figured that out, we put the vanity top on to see how we could rest it, so the gap between it and the wall wasn't horrible. We ended up pushing the counter top back so it could be flush with the front of the vanity and overhang more of the back part so it wouldn't look so awkward. Then we got the faucet and got that into the holes while we could still lift the counter to make it a little easier to maneuver.

Once we had everything where we wanted, we lifted up the counter and caulked it down. Then we checked the hook-ups with the faucet and the water supply. It turned out our hoses were just a little too short, so back to Home Depot to get longer attachment hoses. We then caulked down the faucet and made the attachment. Since we had so many problems as a result of our own stupidity, the order of things when it came to setting up the faucet stopper mechanism is a little fuzzy to me. All I know is, at some point, we secured the faucet stopper casing with plumber's putty...which we originally purchased something for soldering. The whole faucet stopper part was horrible but otherwise, it really was not that difficult to do overall.

Looking back, I think the reason we had so many problems was because we actually had too many people involved and one person would buy one thing that wasn't right and it was a whole mess. If I could do it again, I would just try to do it by myself and call my father-in-law for help, since most of it was common sense and following directions.
Here is the final product:

First Things First: The Shower Head

When we had our home inspection, we got to the master bathroom and the inspector said, 'I can say this because I am one, 'but that is Mexican'.' He was referring to the set up of the showerhead(s) in the master bathroom. You can kind of see the one showerhead in the picture, it looks like one of those rainfall showerheads. What you can't see and I'm upset I didn't get a picture of it before the incident was that there was another showerhead that you can lift off and can be used as a handheld sprayer. I actually had one just like it in my parent's house and think it's probably the standard. The reason it looked so bad was because the previous owner came up with an interesting way to combine the two showerheads. Let's just say, that this was one of the first things I noticed was zip tied in place. Yes, plumbing held together by zip tie.

We let it go for about a month or so after we moved it. It was something that wasn't totally a priority and 'how should I know how to change a shower head?' I figured we would wait until my father-in-law came to town to show me how to do it. Plans changed one night when my husband went up to take a shower. We had actually just had a small argument and he had gone upstairs. I knew he wasn't in a great mood but all of the sudden I heard a huge bang. Then he started yelling. I thought, why is he being crazy? He wasn't that mad when he went to take a shower. After about 30 seconds he started laughing. Apparently, what had happened was, one of those zip ties that was apparently holding up the showerheads failed, the two showerheads came crashing down. That was the loud bang. The yelling was because he was getting hit with all the force of the water from the remaining part of the shower. As seen below:

I had no choice but to change out the old showerhead for the new

...ok I guess I can show you what was left of the old showerheads. 

REMOVAL OF OLD SHOWERHEAD(S)
On the plus side of the incident, I didn't need to worry about safely removing the old shower head. There was a random bolt that was on it and I had to get that off. Just as you would for a normal showerhead still attached, the trick was to put a towel over the bold then put the wrench on it and clamp down. When using the wrench, you can't squeeze too hard or you can bend the pipe. I carefully loosened the bolt (It was really on there so I had to get some assistance from my husband.) Once the bolt was off there was some plumbers tape that got left behind and I was able to strip that off. I think I needed a razor blade for that but it came off pretty easily.

ATTACHING A NEW SHOWERHEAD
I then put my new Plumber's Tape on. I ordered mine off of Amazon but pretty much any home improvement store has it. When putting on the Plumber's Tape make sure to go clockwise.  When you put your new showerhead on, you'll have to spin it on clockwise. Just think righty tighty, lefty loosey. If you put your tape on counter clockwise the tape will peel off as you put on the showerhead. Once you get the tape around 2 or 3 times you can take it off. I squeezed the tape on a little bit to give it the groves of the threading, but not so much so that the tape broke from the threading.

I got my new showerhead out and started rotating it clockwise onto the taped pipe. At first, I had a little difficulty with it catching the thread but it just took a couple of tries before getting it on. I rotated it until it was tight by hand. The I got out my wrench and rag. I put the rag over the part I wanted to tighten and then tightened it up a little bit more with the wrench. The rag is important because it helps prevent any scuffing or scratching to the new and old hardware.You don't want to over-tighten because that can cause problems. I have a Moen showerhead and once the 'Moen' logo was looking level I decided that was probably tight enough.

Once you think your showerhead is on nicely, start up the water. Check for any kinds of leaks. If you see any water coming from where it shouldn't be, you should turn off the water and start re-tightening.

This is the final product after the water test. It's no rainfall showerhead but it fits the small shower much better than the old mess. Does it bother me that some of the tape is showing, yes it does. Did you notice before I pointed it out, probably not.

Hello World

My husband and I recently bought our first house! YAY! Before we bought it I knew we would have a few projects to do even though the house was move-in ready. Once we moved in, we started finding more and more projects. I'm a bit of a perfectionist so I've noticed most of the projects. I figured since I've learned so much from other blogs I would start my own since I'm tackling my own projects now! Let me start by telling you a little bit about myself. I work at an observatory as a telescope operator, so I work 4pm to about 7 or 8am (it all depends on the time of year). I do my job for a week at a time and then I get two weeks off. It's kind of awesome but let me tell you, I earn my weeks off after 112 hour work week. I also stay pretty close to a night schedule during my weeks off (I try to go to bed at 4am and wake up around noon but in the winter it's not realistic). During my time off I try to make updates and improvements to the house. It usually goes at a snail's pace since I can't exactly hammer things into the wall while my husband sleeps...well I can but I prefer to not have an angry man squinting at me asking me what I'm doing in the middle of the night.

Before we moved into our house, we found out that the previous owner was an engineer. I thought, well that is great. If there were ever any problems then I'm sure he was able to fix it using his brain. But I've discovered that he was more like a theoretical engineer or maybe a regular engineer and he needed a physicist's help. Enter me. I work at an observatory because I have a BA in Physics and concentration in Astrophysics. I sound hard-core but let me assure you, I'm not. I've always been a hard working person and never considered myself to be all that smart. When I went to college I took an astronomy class and loved it. I talked to my professor and asked if I was stupid to think I could do physics because I loved astronomy. He said I would do great, so that pushed me into it but I always struggled in school and figured why should I do something easy that I didn't like when I could do something I liked even though it was hard. (You know the whole, 'We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other thing, not because they are easy but because they are hard') So, I thought of Physics as just another challenge.

Let me start by telling you a little bit about myself. I work at an observatory as a telescope operator, so I work 4pm to about 7 or 8am (it all depends on the time of year). I do my job for a week at a time and then I get two weeks off. It's kind of awesome but let me tell you, I earn my weeks off after 112 hour work week. I also stay pretty close to a night schedule during my weeks off (I try to go to bed at 4am and wake up around noon but in the winter it's not realistic). During my time off I try to make updates and improvements to the house. It usually goes at a snail's pace since I can't exactly hammer things into the wall while my husband sleeps...well I can but I prefer to not have an angry man squinting at me asking me what I'm doing in the middle of the night.

Before we moved into our house, we found out that the previous owner was an engineer. I thought, well that is great. If there were ever any problems then I'm sure he was able to fix it using his brain. But I've discovered that he was more like a theoretical engineer or maybe a regular engineer and he needed a physicist's help. Enter me. I work at an observatory because I have a BA in Physics and concentration in Astrophysics. I sound hard-core but let me assure you, I'm not. I've always been a hard working person and never considered myself to be all that smart. When I went to college I took an astronomy class and loved it. I talked to my professor and asked if I was stupid to think I could do physics because I loved astronomy. He said I would do great, so that pushed me into it but I always struggled in school and figured why should I do something easy that I didn't like when I could do something I liked even though it was hard. (You know the whole, 'We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other thing, not because they are easy but because they are hard') So, I thought of Physics as just another challenge.

As I was saying, we bought a house from an engineer but I'd really like to know where he got his degree from so no one I know ever goes there...he was also heavily invested in zip ties. By that I mean, if something broke and could be zip tied together that is how it was 'fixed'. So, now I'm fixing (notice the lack of quotes around fixing) the house and making it ours! You should also know, I have been Jon Snow when it comes to home improvement (I know nothing). Hopefully,someone will be able to learn from what little I have grown to know! Let's hope this blog has more than one post.