The Reynoldz

Just thought I would bring you up-to-date on our bathroom remodel progress so far... (if you are counting, this would be considered day 8 =)

1) Eric has been really busy and the bathroom is pretty much gutted. No turning back now!! He removed tons of rotten black moldy drywall called jib board here. (yep we found Black mold hidden in the drywall.. glad to get rid of that stuff!!)
2) We won a brand new Kohler shower tub on the NZ "Trademe" auction site. It was never used/still in the box! We got it for over half the price it would cost us Retail! Woo hoo! Plus the guy selling it also gave us the bath spout ($199 retail), shower mixer ($289 retail) and shower door ($789 retail) Deal! (ha ha ha)
3) We bought the new toilet. (a spindly $589)
4) We have picked our tile for the floor and Eric has purchased plywood to lay on the floor so he can remove the beautiful hardwoods that are there now to use in another place in the house. (A sheet of plywood is 150 bucks, tile are 21 bucks each.. we had to buy $500 worth.. )

3) The electrician came yesterday and installed bathroom safe electrical sockets that you can test/reset (called RCD here, can't remember what they are called in the states but you know the ones they are in every bathroom/kitchen where you have water). The socket piece alone costs $200 each and we needed one for by our washing machine, one by the bathroom sink and he replaced the non RCD one in our kitchen that sits directly by the sink. (that is 3x 200 bucks just for the sockets plus the price of the electrician..) (yep, you are doing the math correctly.. things are getting pretty expensive)

Things are moving along..

Now for our Saturday HICCUPS/Problems/ @&$@(#$*@(*#

1) THE BIG ONE!!! Well the old tub is gone, which is great because our new one is getting installed Wednesday! We can shower at the pool during swim lessons on Monday, Tuesday so we are set. Eric cleaned out the area to get the place ready for the plumber. We went out to get the new tub to make sure it would fit in the area. We took it out of the box and revealed our beautiful new tub..

Only the picture below is what we thought we were buying on Trademe. The guy selling it said, "it was exactly like the picture posted".. Notice the difference in the photos?? They are not the same.. the one we actually have now is a "Lefty" and we need a "righty", like the one in the photo that was posted on Trademe. We contacted the guy who sold it and he is going to give us our money back but now we do not have a tub/bath spout/shower door/shower mixer.. AND we will have to pay RETAIL prices plus wait for a new tub to get ordered and delivered..

2) The beautiful hardwood floors.
After being deflated by the tub incident. Eric went to remove the old hardwoods floors so he could salvage them. He found it was literally impossible to get them out without breaking the wood. The nails that have been holding the wood in place are like super cement and they are not budging. So the wood floors will not be salvaged after all and we have some floor patching to do.


That is not all, throw in...
1) A stinky neighborhood tom cat that has decided to spray under our house now that the crawl space has been exposed. (P... U....),

2) The huge amount of demolition debree that is piling up in our backyard. Eric told me to call the Got Junk guys he heard about to come in to remove it. I had to remind him that that service is one that Kevin and Kate used and he heard about it from their blog in LA. It is a service that is not offered here in Wellington.

3) Finally, the fact that things are REALLY expensive here and that the hardware stores just do not always have all the same things available. (ie insulation for keeping hot water pipes warm, recessed wall laundry hook-up kits etc..).

This is turning out to be a big, big, big, and expensive project.

Being optimistic....

1) We do not have mold in the walls (because we do not have any).

2) I do not have to do laundry because we do not have hookups any more.

3) Our electrical sockets in the kitchen and bathroom are up to code and safe.. No chance of getting 240V of electricity shock if I drop the toaster in the tub. (oh yeah no tub and the wires all all exposeds.. no dry wall installed yet...)

4) Haidyn said, "we should have a Halloween party because our bathroom looks like a scary dungeon". =) I like her thinking.. =)

There is no turning back. =)