The tub was finally to be delivered. I waited around the house last week on Wednesday or Thursday. The tub arrived, there was a slight imperfection on the side…I couldn’t tell if it was damaged or just an imperfection, but it was really no big deal. I signed for the tub, took a few pictures and scampered back to the children.
But there was this sinking feeling in my stomach; that I somehow did something wrong and just completely messed up.
I showed Matt the pictures, told him about the scuff, and that was that.
I called my FIL the next morning and started talking about electrical stuff… “wait…you didn’t get my text, did you?” “Uhh, no.” “Go read my text and call me back”…..”Jess tub drain is on the wrong side”. There it was, my screw up.
I called my FIL and said, “You told me to order a left drain tub: I did what you told me to.”
Long story short: We had to flip flop the shower and the washer/dryer in the upstairs bathroom, but no one told me that in flip flopping the places that I needed to flip flop the drain. At least it wasn’t my fault.
I called the company, told them about the potential damage, and that I ordered the wrong tub: Congratulations! We are now the proud owners of a tub that we can’t use*, and can only pray that we can get rid of without eating the whole thing. I can eat a lot, but somehow I think a 5’ cast iron tub is beyond even my abilities.
And now we were in a dilemma: My FIL is waiting on this tub to finish running the plumbing and drain-work, so that they can close up the walls and start sheet-rocking. There’s no way I can order a tub online and have it here in a few days. Off to Home Depot and Lowes we went, the entire time of which, I was sick at the thought of $500 down the drain {pun intended}.
We went to HD first, since they had quite a few more tubs in stock than Lowes had: Checked them out, then headed to Lowes, then back to HD. We ended up going with Bootz Maui for the tub, $179 for a steel-porcelain enameled tub. The very tub that I had originally chosen online and had decided against, because I was not at all familiar with Bootz and could only find a few reviews {all favorable} online.
Is it my dream tub? No, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a bigger tub than the Kohler Bellwether that we had purchased; which is a plus, especially since we’re planning on making it a 2 person shower {we debated having just a pan shower, but Matt felt strongly about having a tub in the bathroom}. Hopefully it’s a good tub and lasts us a good long while, because I don’t want to deal with a bathtub any time soon.
I keep trying to tell myself that if the tub is our only major mess-up in the house, we’re doing good. Yes it was $500, but hopefully we can sell it and get some of the money back…the whole thing just makes me sick though, and probably will until we’ve sold it.
*We would have to pay shipping back to the company, $200-300, plus a 15% restocking fee.
They did get the walls around the stairway framed in.
And some of the plumbing run.
Where the kitchen table will be going.
Where the woodstove will be {in the far right corner}.
The got the master “suite” framed in the week before.
The rainy days this week they worked on framing out the kitchen areas. The room with the red pipe in it, is where the mudroom/laundry room will going.
The kitchen wall between the living room. You can see the big opening that will be the “pass through” to the kitchen. I gotta be able to keep an eye on the kids somehow.
The basement steps were installed. We got a great deal on these since there was a small dent on one of the steps. The original buyer didn’t want it with the ding, so we got the deal.
The new sliding glass door in the kitchen. We went with the brand Neuma and I’m really pleased with it. It’s a nice, solid heavy feeling door.
And the roofing! We went with Charcoal, but it looks like a darker slate blue. Whatever. I don’t know how anyone can pick a roof color based off of a 2cm x 2cm swatch. I wanted black, but we thought it might be a bit too stark.
Picture from the neighbors’ so that you can see the roof.
Continuing around the room. Where my FIL is standing will be our “sitting area”. This is one of those dream things…I’ve always wanted a little sitting area in our bedroom, a place just to relax and chill without having to walk downstairs and inevitable wake the kids as soon as our feet are in the hall. I can’t even tell you how much I look forward to looking out my windows and enjoying the sunrise.
The second story floor trusses in place…they weren’t nailed down. Of course the delivery truck arrived with the plywood decking 10 minutes after everyone left, otherwise they could’ve worked for the day and got them down and started the walls.
This is the crazy access to our original basement that I mentioned before. We will have to build a flip down staircase to access this part from this room. We’ve decided to not lose the stairwell from the kitchen {we were going to make it a pantry}, because this is just ridiculous. I am not going to climb into this thing every time I need to get something from the freezer.
On Monday, my father in law and our contractor started the upstairs walls.
Avie got to come down with us to check it out and took advantage of the wide open spaces to practice her dance routine.
This wall here is the kitchen. You can see on the floor the sheet of plywood higher than the rest, those are the stairs into the basement. There will be a pony wall {meaning it will only be about 4’ high and 3’ wide} on the narrow end {opposite the windows}, then our range will be there, and the kitchen cabinets.
Looking through the doorway and windows to the backyard.
The fridge is going to go between the green post in the middle and the red post, then the rest of it will be cabinets, with our pass through to the living room.
Upstairs….let me just say how weird this was….to stand in what I remember our attic being {damp, dark, and just nasty} and see this… it’s just incredible!
My Mountain….with our White Tree of Gondor
This is the view we will have from our bed, add in a few windows and walls though.
Tuesday and Wednesday were miserable…absolutely miserable. It was cold and rainy and just not nice. I felt terrible that they were down there working in the rain. But they did get a few more walls up!
These are the windows that will be in our bedroom, all but the one on the far right, that will be in the center of the bathroom wall.
The two windows toward the left will actually be in the closet/storage/studio area.
It looks massive from the outside. I keep thinking to myself, “oh my what did we do?! This is huge and unbalanced, and oh my.” I know it will be more balanced once it’s finished, but boy are there a lot of moments of self doubt in a house.
Despite the rain they did manage to get the tile floor ripped out of the breakfast nook {soon to be mudroom}. My FIL said it was miserable, it took 2 hours to break up all the tile and get it out, but the original wood floors {which I’m thinking were the original pine subfloors- Thank you Rehab Addict} were still intact.
You can just see how much water damage there was. There was a hole in the floor and it was all spongy. I don’t know if there was a bathroom here at one point or what. From what we can tell the bathroom was at least in 2 previous places before existing where it is now.
The kitchen has an entirely different feel once there are walls. It went from feel big, but not really that big, to feeling like you have a room that’s a good size for what we needed and wanted.
The Kitchen….
