Bathroom Renovation - Status Stalled

Before becoming a homeowner, I always wondered why home improvement projects took people so long. You get a complete distortion of reality when you watch all these makeover shows on cable that knock out complete home remodels in what feels like a week. Or an hour for that matter.

In the real world, it seems, most home improvement projects take months and they are almost always riddled with issues. In our case, we were up against added complications. 1) We don't know the first thing about home projects and didn't have a clear sense of what we wanted to do or what we could afford 2) we had trouble finding a contractor 3) we had a huge saga with our shower which scared me away from completing the project 4) Covid delays 5) supply chain issues 6) general contractor scheduling problems 7) money. 

None of these are abnormal...okay, maybe the shower saga, but otherwise home projects take time. Period. Nothing is done quickly.

We are approaching a full year and a half of our main bathroom being in some state of disrepair. Back when I updated last, we had identified a contractor to work with and his team installed our new sinks, counters, and faucets and we were really happy with their work. 

They came back another day the following week (again, this is back in January) and worked on prepping the trim for the new floor. They also patched our drywall and repainted the entire bathroom. Here is the story about that:

Back in the summer, the cruddy shower installers ripped out the existing tub and put a drywall patch in it's place. It was a bad drywall job that Dan tried to tidy but we were left with a notable line in the wall. 

 

Without the skills to fix it, I just figured we'd paint over it and I'd hang some towel bars above it and sort of hide it. In the fall, I picked a paint color and Dan and I spent over a week priming and painting the walls and ceiling. It was a difficult task and took forever because the dark tan paint underneath required us to do multiple coats of the blue. I wanted a really subtle blue but it turned out very nursery baby blue. Ultimately, I didn't love the end result, but from our perspective, it looked good enough for our effort. 

 

 

Well, when our contractor came in to do the sink in January, he noted the crappy drywall job. He was a bit shocked that "professionals" did it. And then told me that Dan and I used the wrong type of paint for the bathroom walls. We used a semi-gloss and apparently you want a flat finish in a bathroom due to the level of condensation. Learn from our mistakes! He said he could fix the drywall and repaint for us. I wasn't too excited about the extra expense but I agreed the drywall looked bad and I wasn't happy with the paint color I picked anyways. Dan and I were not willing to attempt another paint job so we agreed the contractor and his team could do it. 

I Googled "best paint color for a bathroom" and got Benjamin Moore Gray Cashmere. It was a shot in the dark but it is gorgeous. Just the look I wanted and I'm so happy we agreed to have them repaint. They did a clean paint job and the drywall is perfect. The contractor was right, as soon as we put the tub in, there is no chance to fix the drywall so it was best to just take care of it then. So it was a win-some lose-some situation. Good result but we wasted time and money on our initial paint job.

Anyways, after that day in late January, I paid the contractor for the drywall and paint job. He left all the stuff they had prepped for the trim and floor and he left. And no work has happened since then. That's right, two months have passed with no work. 

Frustrated? Yeah, you could say that. 

What happened was I was waiting for the contractor to look at the tub I had picked. He was supposed to tell me if the specs were right before we ordered it. He never got back to me. So that last afternoon he was at the house he assumed I had already bought the tub. Did I drop the ball? Did he? Whatever. Since I had not bought the tub, he couldn't come back until the tub arrived. So I ordered the tub that night, ordered the faucet, ordered the light. It all arrived the second week in February. But by that point, his team was working on a kitchen remodel not nearby and therefore we got pushed to the back of the line. Waiting, waiting, waiting. This contractor is great but he is very laid back. There is no timetable, no schedule, no steps to follow for what to order and what he supplies. That's annoying but I'm willing to stick it out with him because he does a quality job and I'm not going to risk losing that!! I KNOW the flip side. So, we wait. There are three days of work left on our bathroom and this is the state it has been since for the last two months:

 

Tidy enough but not usable. The subfloor has been exposed since July. That toilet has been waiting to be installed since this summer. The rest of the flooring has been sitting in the garage since January. The tub has been sitting in the garage since February. We are beyond ready for this project to be done. And when it is, I'm sure hoping I'll feel like this was all worth it.

Oh, one other tid-bit crazy to add. Back in January I noticed the shower water was getting cold on me really fast. We all assumed the worst and would have to replace our water heater. We called a repair man out and he said our water heater was fine. Dan told him that the showers were getting cold and showed him our new shower. When he turned on the water, the guy told him exactly what the problem was. The new shower head that the cruddy shower people installed uses 5 GALLONS OF WATER PER MINUTE. So much force and water that the water heater was not able to keep up if two people took a shower back to back (which we do). And holy water bill! I knew the shower head was intense and I never liked it but it was brand new and we just got used to the torpedo skin-blasting force of it. We could have kept using the shower but we just stopped and opted to wait until the contractor could install a new adjustable and water efficient shower head. Thus, Dan and I have been using the kids bathroom since January. Thank goodness, we've at least had that.