Painting Day

Today was official 'Painting Day' here at the Russell house. We had lots of things to paint: bathroom walls, bathroom door, door and floor trim, plus vanity drawer/door fronts. Our friends David and Jacqui came over to help us out for a few hours. We had to do all the painting in the house due to it being a rainy day, but it all worked out all right. Here are photos of our progress. By the way, in case you didn't know, you can click on the pictures to see larger views (hopefully you'd already known that, but just in case...).

All of the drawer/cabinet door fronts that Jessica made.

Jessica working on the vanity pieces.

David removing the existing pocket door.

David and David (ha!) painting the primer in the bathroom.

David still rolling on primer. Cover that purple!

Jacqui posing with all the other stuff that needed/received paint.

Wow, look at all those painted vanity pieces!

Don't go chasing waterfalls

We've been making great headway on the shower pan! It's actually finished now and ready for tile. The walls need to go up first though and get tiled. That way the floor tiles don't get damaged in the process. After the first layer of deck mud, a PVC liner goes in. We don't have a good overall pic of it. :/ It had to be done twice though. The first installation got goofed up and would have leaked. Second time is the charm. That material isn't cheap either. It's done though.

This is the drain being plugged for the leak test. Apparently no one has plugs for these drains. They have little weep holes that drain a few inches down in the assembly. Every plug at Lowes/HD just capped off the main hole on top but not the little ones down below. Party balloons work great though!

Filling up the shower pan. What better way than with the new shower head?

The pan got filled with a few inches of water and let sit overnight. There were no waterfalls downstairs and the level didn't drop. It's waterproof! Since it passed the leak test, the final layer of deck mud was able to go in. It's nice and presloped so the water will run towards the drain.

The drywall was cut back a little to far when the old shower got pulled out. It had to be cut back to the next stud for replacement. Not quite done yet but it's all taped and filled in.

This is the new toilet fill valve. The old one needed to be removed to install the new drywall. It refused to come calmly though so got mangled in the process. The new one looks a lot nicer and is a threaded connection to a brass nipple instead of a compression fitting on a copper pipe. Much better. :) A few connections got soldered behind the drywall but nothing too special. The main water had to be shutoff to do them though. No big deal right?

Well, shutting off the water went fine. Turning it back on.... not so much. This is what it looks like when you test those solder connections and forget to shut off the valve itself. doh! it ran full blast for maybe 20-25 seconds. At this point there WAS a waterfall downstairs coming through the recessed lighting; luckily no damage though. Everything has dried out pretty nicely.