GroupWBench

We live out in a semi-rural area and like it that way. That doesn't mean there aren't drawbacks. When we lived in North Carolina and were busy remodeling our house, Lowes and Home Depot were about ten minutes from the house. Here, the nearest one is a bit over 35 miles away. When you need something to do the job, it means at least an hour and a half out.

When I last posted about the bathroom remodel we had removed sinks and cabinet doors.

After some careful demolition we had the rest of the vanity out without bloodshed. The floor under the vanity was raw concrete. The new vanity does not sit down on the floor like the old one, there are legs and a four inch gap from the body to the floor. Fortunately, we had a stack of leftover tile from when they installed the tile a couple of years back. We just needed to match the grout. This meant a trip out to get the right thinset and grout to match the existing floor. That was easy enough. The tile outfit we used for our floors is not too far from us.

We ran out there and got the right stuff from them, then headed to the big box store in New Braunfels to see about new faucets. We found some nice ones that would look good with the hardware on the vanity. We grabbed a pair of them and some big buckets for tiling. We also bought a tile saw at Harbor Freight, which meant going to the other end of town. From there we headed home to get things rolling. Miles so far – 85.

We decided that the mirror had to come down next. This scared us a bit. If they used tons of glue, then we would tear up the wall removing it. That would mean a major drywall repair, which would be a lot of work. It would also be a pain to try to match the wall texture. We decided we would just put a skim coat of drywall compound over all of the bathroom walls and finish them as flat walls so we wouldn't have mismatched textures there. That would be a lot of work.

Ivy taped up the mirror so that we wouldn't be showered with glass when/if the mirror broke as we removed it. We pulled the mounting clips off and gently pulled on the mirror. It just leaned out and let us pull it down. No Glue!

That meant it was time to tile. It took a bit to get set up, but laying the tile was easy enough. Certainly not painless. Being on my hands and knees, leaning over and setting the tile was not kind to my back. The next morning the tile was ready for the grout. My back complained about that, too. Those guys that spend all day doing that have my respect.

Then, we tested out the new faucets to see how they looked on the new vanity. Yeah, not a win. The faucets needed two holes for the water lines. The sinks had but one hole. We needed a different kind of faucet. Back on the road to the big box store, where we found out that they didn't have what we wanted in stock. That meant a trip to Kyle, which is farther up the Austintonio corridor. Fortunately, they had what we wanted there. On the way home, I managed to space out and drive past our exit and add twenty minutes to the whole thing. Miles so far – 195.

Next up…Paint. Ivy went and got the new paint. Miles so far – 265.