Behind The Wall

Time to see what's behind wall #1.  All the tiles and backing came off today to give access to the wooden framing members below.  Time to see what the bones look like.

As it turns out, the framing is actually in good shape and there would be no reason to get into major structural work.  That's definitely a lucky break for us.  There is some evidence of the water intrusion from the deck above onto the top plates, but there is no rot or other structural issues:

This is going to make the repair work a lot easier.  In the meantime, the beautiful, and very expensive, blue marble tiles from the shower walls have been turned into exquisite debris sitting in bags ready to be hauled off.

Can't wait to see what the new version of the bathroom will look like. 

Break. Out.

Just a couple of days into the new project and the house is starting to resemble the set of a Michael Creighton medical thriller complete with a zippered plastic drape blocking access to the bathroom.

 

 I can imagine the workers walking around the house looking like this:

In addition to laminating the house, the workers have started removing the bathroom fixtures and moving them into the bedroom next door.

 And some of the stuff looks more out of place in a bedroom than others.

In addition to all of the protecting, some demolition work has also started, consisting mostly of removing trim tiles, moldings, and cabinet doors, and of course, protecting what is left behind.

So we are officially in the demolition phase of the project.  Let's hope the construction phase, when it begins, goes as smoothly and as cleanly.  

A New Beginning -- or sliding back

I had hoped, about 2.5 years ago, that I had written the last entry on the construction of our house. Turns out that the hope was in vain and the house is not ready to be done. Since then, we have rebuilt the front deck to finally waterproof it.  The process was very similar to making a 7-layer dip (without the Nacho goodness, of course).  The deck was stripped down to plywood and multiple layers of material were added, one on top of the one before, until the deck was more watertight than a submarine (well, not this submarine, we hope):

We had the exact opposite problem with the master bathroom and waterproofing was added to keep the  water from getting out,

And we also had to fix the consequences of the problems that necessitated the repairs:

And once again, I foolishly believed that the "teething problems" had been addressed and we had finally gotten out of construction and into the bliss part of the program; alas, not so much:



It turns out that we need to address water-related issues in the second bathroom now.  Seems that there is an unexplained water source BEHIND the wall of the Blue Bathroom.  Since we are too far away to be receiving any part of a Divine Spring, we figured it was a good idea to at least take a look to see what the heck was going on back there.  Here's what non-divine water looks like, in case you have not seen it:

The parallel blue tapes show cracks in the tiles and the below the single tape, the tile color has actually gotten darker from (we think) water.  Starting on Monday, bliss is going to take a short holiday and a group of workers are going to do their best to confine the mayhem to the bathroom and the immediate area.

We also had to empty out and drape off one of the bedrooms as a staging area for this project:

The plan is that after we are done, the only thing springing eternally, is the hope that we don't have to do this again for a long, long time.  Yeah, right!.