operation knock-down drag-out: weeks 9&10.

ok. so i obviously didnt post my weekly bathroom renovation update last week. it wasnt because there was nothing to report, but mostly because all of my time and brainspace was being used up worrying about what to do and who to call if a tree fell on our house or our basement filled with water or if we woke up under 4 feet of snow. forgive me? kthanks.

so first off: let's play a little catch-up and take a quick look back at all the un-dones of two weeks ago:

- the tub/shower surround: was tiled but ungrouted. is currently tiled and grouted. waiting on shelves, soap dish, caulk, and fixtures.

- the new exhaust fan: was installed without power. is currently installed, fully wired and operational!

- the to-paint list: was a long list that was mostly unfinished. currently the walls, door, and the ceiling are done-zo. waiting on the shelves which still need a second coat of white.

- the towel hooks: were barely started. are currently painted. waiting on a finalized plan of how to put them all together and get them hung on the wall.

moving on... we've kept busy these past two weeks. the primary project we've been working towards is the beadboard ceiling. Mark spent most of week 9 measuring, re-measuring, calculating, and planning the ceiling.

seriously, there were a lot of calculations involved.

all those mathematical gymnastics proved to be useful and necessary, since everything has so far gone up pretty much on the first try and without any major issues. we are basically following the same method as over at the House of Smiths, which is where the beadboard ceiling idea originally came from. the frame around the perimeter of the room is made of 1x8s that were trimmed to ensure that the beadboard area of the ceiling would be nice and square and centered and easy to cut to size.

we attached the frame boards to the ceiling with a squiggly bead of adhesive and then shot a few nails into the studs. in the event of missing studs, we used screws and anchors in place of the nails.

i didnt just take pictures, i helped too. really.

as of right now, the frame is up on the ceiling and has been painted. the beadboard is almost cut to size, but the circular saw eats through batteries like you wouldnt believe, so we keep having to wait for them to recharge before we can finish trimming it all down to size. but once its ready to go, it should just be a matter of some liquid nails, some actual nails, and some quarter round trim and caulk, and the ceiling will be all finished and awesome.

the secondary project we tackled in the past two weeks, and definitely the more stressful of the two, was picking and procuring a vanity. this was not supposed to be a stressful thing. i picked my favorite vanity on our first trip to the Depot, way back when we were just in the hypothetical planning phase of this project. i liked the color, the style, the shelf on the bottom, the shape of the sink, everything about it. and Mark actually agreed. good. done. easy-peasy.

but it was too good to be true. based on its dimensions, installing this particular vanity would have required some pretty significant plumbing reconfiguration that did not fit into either our schedule or our budget. so it was back to the drawing board to find a vanity that would both look good in the room and be easy to install, without breaking the bank. turns out these criteria were more difficult to fulfill than we expected, especially when looking at in-stock vanities at our local big box stores. (if we were going to order something "custom" we would have had to do that weeks ago)

everything we found had some sort of deal breaker: too skinny, too pricey, too dark, too many installation issues, too fancy... it was like living with Goldilocks over here while we were vanity hunting, except the "just right" one was seemingly nowhere to be found.

just a few of the main contenders 

but finally, Finally, FINALLY we picked one. which one? well, we finally landed on that one on the bottom right. it was the closest in design and color to our original favorite, seemed to be well constructed, and shouldnt have any installation issues since the back of it is wide open without any drawers or shelves to interfere with the plumbing. we liked it so much (and were so happy to have a winner) that we drove an extra half an hour to get it (twice!) because it wasnt carried at our local Depot. 

we're still not sure if the color is 100% right. it's kind of a greige-ey color, (a hybrid of gray and beige) and changes pretty significantly based on the lighting. example: it looked pretty terrible and way too brown on saturday night, but was a perfectly awesome shade of gray on sunday morning when we bought it. (what? you didnt use your extra hour to make an early morning Depot run? lazy time wasters, the lot of you) we'll have to see it in the actual room before we can make the final decision on whether it will stay its original color, or get a coat or two of straight-up gray paint.

we still have to finish the ceiling and put up the vanity light before we move the actual vanity into the room to check the color, but we're quickly moving in that direction, and should hopefully know the fate of the vanity by this weekend. fingers crossed that it turns out to be perfect and awesome and we wont actually have to paint it, so we can just get this whole room done already and my sister will stop pricing port-a-john rentals for thanksgiving weekend...

trips to Home Depot: this week - 3. total - 16.
trips to Ace: this week - 0. total - 2.
trips to Lowes: this week - 1. total - 4.

times Amanda has cried over this project: this week - 1. total - 2.
times Amanda has cried in Home Depot: this week - 0. total - 0.

days until Thanksgiving: 16*.

*ohmigosh you guys... i just realized that the countdown at the end of these posts has been off by an entire week! sorry to mislead you all: turns out i was counting down to the wrong day and the fam is coming sooner than i thought! yay! the other good news is that this mistake was only made in the blog world and not in the real world, so Mark is still on schedule. trust me, he knows exactly how many days he has left to get this all done.