More Renovation Fixes

The renovation of the 2 bathrooms downstairs has so stressed me out that I've lost 5 pounds in 1 and a half months. My glucose levels have also spiked from all the tension.

However, it's slowly, slowly coming to a close with Art and me doing touch-ups here and there on our own.

Friends of ours had stopped by and noticed imperfections in the wall that our contractor had tried to work on. I was worried that these problems would be overlooked and painted over like he did on the stair handholds. 

I plastered over the nail because we didn't want to pound it in for fear it would pop out on the other side of the single wall redwood panel. Art showed me how to shine a light from the side to make sure the edges were smooth. I covered up the other dents as well.

As it turned out, when we told the contractor that we wanted the stair handholds to be smoothed out, an actual painter came and did a wonderful job. He worked very hard to smooth out the rough surface. He also painted the above wall and fixed all the other problems. That was a relief.

Remember that crack that the demolition crew made on the single wall redwood?  At first the contractor told us we’d have to get someone else to fix it. So I asked my cousin (who works for a big time contractor who does jobs for corporations for a quote) and another contractor who did our friend’s house. I passed on the expensive quotes to our contractor.

Our contractor said he would do the drywall over the crack his crew made. We used to have a magnetic photo board there. The wall looks so different now, and it's kind of startling every time we pass by. It's OK though. We did also ask that it be trimmed, because it didn't look good with the raw edges. Art stained the trim to match before it was installed.

But now there's a problem with the vanity in mom's bathroom which we hope he will fix. I've already written about the side of the vanity being damaged. 

We also noticed that there were two cracks on the Staron backsplash.

The contractor said it was just paint. 

We said it wasn't.

I hope he will fix it.

So aside from all this, the bathrooms are getting close to being done.

Here's mom's tub area.

It will be a lot easier for her to step in and out of the shower now.

The vanity area still has work to be done on those backsplash cracks and the side of the cabinet, but we're almost there.

And we were only a day away from leaving for Illinois to see our son and his family who were returning to the U.S. for a short stay so they could visit with my daughter-in-law's family in Michigan and us.

I want you to know that along with losing that weight, I must now have a lot more gray hairs.

Sigh...

This is the 3rd renovation (in Illinois and here) we've done, but we were a lot younger when we did the other 2 and we did more of the work ourselves. It's very hard to watch someone else do it and know you could do better.