Remodeling Week: Already Finished

It's time to report back to real life, for the Castle5000 Home Improvement Week has reached an end. Did we spend a week of arduous labor, plus time off from work and a modest but significant sum of American Dollars, to good effect? You make the call.

I: The Shower

The shower tile has been sealed and, although you can't tell from the picture, a lot of work has gone into solving a series of problems with the plumbing fixtures (they'll go on when the caulk has cured). Lots of other details with edges between the tub and the walls have been dealt with too.

II: The SE Corner

Here you can see that we've added a strip of moulding at about the 7-foot point. We also did some minor retexturing of the walls and, not incidentally, have been doing some painting. We call the main wall color "Morocan Ice Cave Blue."

III: The Sink

You might feel that we overdid it with the purple, and admittedly it's a little dark in there at night for the time being. We think that once we have our large white towel shelves hanging again, as well as some wall art, that the effect will be considerably softened. Also, the new floor and baseboard trim (which we didn't get to) should lighten things a bit.

IV: The Door

We may have to take a little off the bottom of the door once the new floor is installed, so it hasn't been painted yet. It's waiting in the basement, scraped and sanded. The attic hatch is also down in the basement, with a fresh coat of paint drying on it.

V: Built-In Shelves

The shelves are almost ready to move into, but the cabinet door is also waiting for a fresh coat of paint to dry.

VI: The Floor

We didn't get to the floor.

VII: The Light Fixture

The pictures don't really make the improvement here clear. The new light is probably three times as bright as the old once, and its fan is whisper-quiet, whereas the old one roared like a helicoptor at lift-off. But nor do the photos indicate what a arduous process the replacement was. It required cutting not one but two large holes in the ceiling, and then of course repairing them. Just installing the new light took a full day that ended at 9 p.m. On the up side, it gave me the opportunity to correct an egregious venting error and a downright spooky wiring job committed by whomever the last person was to poke around in that ceiling.

In Conclusion

We're kind of tired now.