OMG you guys, I have been so discombobulated for this entire year so far!
Right at the beginning of the year, it was finally our turn with the construction crew Matt had first contacted back in... oh, March 2020 or so. Turns out that EVERYONE felt like a global pandemic was a great time to get those nagging home renovation issues taken care of!
We desperately needed to have our main shower retiled, and it turned out when they finally demolished the shower that we ALSO desperately needed to have several joists, several walls, and the floor in three different rooms replaced because that shower had also apparently been leaking into our subfloor for years.
Here's what your house will look like if your shower's been leaking for eight years!
The joists look like they've been through a fire, and they were about as structurally stable.
The head guy, showing me those joists rotted through with mold, said, "I'm surprised you're not constantly sick!"
Fun fact: I AM kind of constantly sick? Although lately my nagging cough has been a LOT better, ahem...
So now we get to have not only a new shower, but also a new closet floor, new bathroom floor, new family room floor, and new drywall in all those rooms, too. And if we're going to have new drywall, we might as well paint. And if we're painting and getting new flooring... well, we HAVE been wanting a new giant couch for several years now.
It's definitely a yay, because we've been living with the previous homeowner's 1980's-era tile, carpet, vinyl laminate, and dingy white wall paint since we moved in. And that couch used to live in a dorm lounge. So, you know, it's always fun to upgrade to stuff that's more one's taste, I guess.
Except if you know me, then you know that's not actually fun for me. The presence of the construction crew, the mess, the need to pick out and purchase new stuff, the drop cloths and stacks of tiles and non-functioning amenities are really getting to me, and I fervently look forward to one day being once again in my own put-together home without strangers.
Currently, the family room floor is done, with solid bamboo installed on top of our gross old vinyl:
Yes, that's Syd mopping the walls, because a clean room with new flooring made us suddenly notice that there are cobwebs all over the tops of our walls. Does everyone periodically mop their walls, and this is yet another piece of home training that passed me by?
And for some reason I noticed just last night that the workers who installed the floor also nailed our front door shut? You can actually see the board in that above photo! I need to add this to my list of random crap to ask them about.
Also, the bamboo floor is no longer nearly that clean. I don't know if it's always going to show dirt like crazy, or if it's just because I've got construction workers tromping through all day every day, or if it only feels like it shows dirt like crazy because the one good thing about the gross old vinyl floor is that it NEVER showed dirt so maybe I'm just used to being filthy.
These are the two walls we're going to repaint:
Syd suggested burgundy, and I was all, "Yeah, that sounds cool," because I don't know or care about wall color and just didn't want to have to make a decision myself, but Matt does NOT think burgundy is a good idea and so has promised me that he'll take some photos of the room and Photoshop wall colors onto it so we can see what looks good.
It probably won't be burgundy...
Here's the shower tile coming together:
Thank gawd for Matt, who is interested and detail-oriented and design-savvy so all I had to do was follow him around Menard's and be bored while he picked out beautiful tile for us.
Our tile guy, whom I call Tyler in my head and I'm going to be SO embarrassed when I inevitably call him Tyler to his face one day since that's not his name, leaves his empty Skoal cans lying around his work area:
I stole one the other day, intending to clean it and make a cute craft out of it, but when I opened it the lingering--not even lingering. Overpowering? Noxious? Amber waves?--of Wintergreen Skoal fumes about knocked me on my butt. Seriously, just remembering the smell makes me feel like gagging. I held my breath while submerging the empty can halves in bleach water and then left them there for a day, but I swore I could still smell it when I rinsed them off, and anyway, the can is just plastic, not metal like I'd first thought, so I dumped it.
Tyler is, nevertheless, my favorite construction guy, because unlike the other guys, who are gregarious and pleasant and make small talk, Tyler just minds his business, coming and going without fanfare. I unlock the door for him when I get up in the morning, and he lets himself in without a word when he arrives, then leaves without a word eight or so hours later. I have even almost forgiven him for this:
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