Bathroom–Ready for Drywall

There was so so much behind-the-scenes/walls work that went into the bathroom over the last 2 weeks. Brian and his various helpers installed all the new plumbing – that is plumbing for 1 toilet, 2 vanities, and 2 showers, as well as the appropriate venting to go with all of it.  They also ended up installing new electric as well as fixing and rerouting some existing. Whew!
So I don’t have a lot of that to show you, (although we are running all our new plumbing in PEX and it’s all controlled by this cool manifold which is like a breaker box but for your water. I should get Brian to help me post about that sometime) but I’ve got a few pictures of what the room looks like now.

These are the frame-outs for the future medicine cabinets. You can see the blue and red PEX plumbing as well as the white drains and vent pipe.  And all those lovely blue electrical boxes! I love DIY-ing this stuff because really, I need lots of outlets in a bathroom and I don’t want to argue with anyone about it. :)

Here’s where the toilet will go (like our chalk outline of it?). We had to build that little wall that will go behind it because it’s above the electrical breaker boxes in the basement, and you need so much clearance between the toilet drain and the breakers. Water + electricity don’t mix.

Here’s everything with new insulation, ready to be drywalled!
And just a side note – Brian took out this ceiling light box when he was re-doing the electric and I made him save it so I could take a picture.

Those white wires coming out of the box are burnt, not dirty.  This is what happens when, for instance, you put 100 watt light bulbs in fixtures that are rated for 60 watts (or some other similar situation).  Of course, sometimes it’s hard to know because old fixtures didn’t necessarily have those safety stickers that new fixtures do, but those things aren’t jokes! If you want light brighter than the fixture is rated for, either use lower-wattage CFLs or LEDs or get a new fixture. You don’t want to risk burning things up in your ceiling!
Tomorrow morning, we are going to start working on the ceiling drywall. Brian is definitely renting a lift for that, so I’m excited to see how it goes.
Have a great weekend!

Baby on Board

Well, I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but with Young House Love’s announcement today, it seems as good a time as any!

Yup, I’ve got a little baby on board! :)

Baby on Board–by the Be Sharps on the Simpsons

This little guy or gal is supposed to be joining our family on March 1st, which conveniently (or inconveniently) is right around the time when all his or her cousins were born as well…I want to hold out for a March 7th birthday to even things out a little :) (Oops, did I just say that on the internet? I’m pretty sure I fully jinxed it now.)

I found out I was pregnant just about a week after the big storm that started our summer of nuttiness.  So there’s a little more context to the craziness – I was also pregnant.  During the heat and the traveling and the lack of readily available water :) But all is good, and now we’re vigorously working on the master bathroom, so that we can in turn work on the existing bathroom as well as making way for an upstairs laundry nook and cleaning out the spare room (again!) for the baby. Think we can do it? :)

And for fun, here’s a baby bump pic:

That picture was actually taken about a month ago, so the bump is probably mostly the cheeseburgers I was eating for a while, but you get the idea! :)

So, there is our big news :)