Workarounds Are Great Fun!

About halfway through the bathroom remodel, I went to start the truck one morning. I put the key in the ignition and turned it when I felt something strange. After one or two clicks during the rotation of the key in the ignition, it felt like it just gave out and the key was turning freely. Something had obviously broken, and I couldn't start the truck. I immediately thought, "Uh oh, FATAL failure!" How can I drive it if I can't start the engine?

The key will turn into the "On" position, but the "Start" position is never engaged, thus the truck doesn't start. I put the truck in neutral so I could push it out of the garage because I needed something on the wall the truck was parked really close to when I realized, "Wait! If I pull it out, I won't be able to push it back in the garage." (Our driveway is sloped.) Luckily, I hit the brakes early enough that I could still close the garage door. So, for the the past two months, we were forced to deal with only having the Rav4. It really wasn't that bad on us, it was just annoying to have a 5,000lb hunk of steel in our garage that I couldn't move.

A few weeks ago, my brother and his family came out to stay at our house for a few days and my Mom and Dad came over as well. My brother and my Dad went outside with me as Rob was showing us his truck and I later showed Dad the problem my truck had developed. My Dad in his infinite automotive wisdom figured that if I put the key in the ignition and turn it to "On", open the relay/fuse box under the hood, pull out the relay for the starter motor and jam a piece of wire into the two leads for the starter motor, it'd start the truck. Lo and behold, it did! Thus, starting my truck became a process where I did just that. Every time I started the truck, I had to pop the hood. The few times I went to the gas station and had to start my truck this way, I wondered how many people thought I was driving a stolen truck. I used this method for about 2 weeks when today after church, I decided "Enough of this nonsense."

Actually getting it fixed properly would cost too much, but Dad had mentioned it'd be pretty easy to wire up a push button to start the truck instead of using this method all the time, so today I went to the auto parts store and bought the stuff I needed to do just that. Some 12 gauge wire, connectors, and a marine push button for a boat's outboard motor. After about an hour of sweating, here's what I ended up with.



After I got that installed, I figured, hey if I'm going to Mickey Mouse this thing, I may as well own that I'm Mickey Mousin' it right? So I convinced Cass to cut me out a stencil with her paper cutter machine and spray painted a label for it.

Finished! Enough...Part 2

So, one "Grrr" moment I have to tell you about before the rest of the story. On Friday, before installing the door, I started installing the trim for the showerhead faucet and handle. The showerhead was fine. The controls? Not so much.

This shower handle actually has two controls, one for volume control, the other for temperature control. There's one small screw that Delta gives you to install the temperature handle. The screw that came in our kit was the wrong screw. It doesn't fit the universal valve that Delta's website said I should use for the shower trim kit we wanted! Unbelievable. So we had to call Delta and tell them we needed the right screw. I just have a feeling that they're going to send us the same screw.

Sunday

To be honest, we had aspirations of grandeur for Sunday, but we did nothing. I wanted to completely finish the bathroom. All there was left to do was install the new overhead light and hang the new door. We did neither of those things. We went to Lowes to get the right door for the bathroom after church, but after that I just had no energy. I took an 1.5 hour nap and the only reason I woke up was because Cass came and woke me up.

So, on to the good stuff! I love before and after shots! They show you just how much difference all those dollars, sweat drops, and wasted weekends afforded you! In this case, I'd say it was worth it all. Some of the before pictures now that we see them with fresh eyes are actually a little embarrassing.

Before	After
And just for fun...

Yeah, we love our new bathroom!

Finished! Enough...Part 1

Well as the title suggests, the bathroom is finally, FINALLY finished enough that I feel like I'm done. The only things left to do are to put the new overhead light in and paint and hang the new bathroom door. I would've gotten everything done over my three day weekend had I not caught a weird bug on Thursday. It didn't really affect me much in terms of feeling sick. I felt like I was over it by mid day on Friday, but for some reason on Sunday I had absolutely zero energy to do anything after church. This will be a pretty long post, so I've made it a two parter. At the end, there will be before and after shots! :-)

Friday

The first order on business on Friday was to finish painting the ceiling. Both coats only took about 90 minutes to finish with an hour wait in between coats, so that was a quick win. Next up was the shower door! This was my first time installing a shower door. It was hard work getting the holes drilled for the wall jambs but it was a very straight forward installation otherwise. The bottom track just gets glued to the shower curb with silicone, then there's 3 screws per wall jamb. Since we used porcelain tile which is super hard, it meant I had to buy a special bit to drill the holes. Similar to the hole we had to drill for the shower head pipe in Tiling the Walls, Part 2, this diamond grit bit had to be water cooled while you drill the hole. So, it comes with this really silly looking box that slowly drips water onto the bit while you're drilling. It work well, right up until the bit broke while I was drilling the 5th of 6 holes I had to drill...of course. So we had to spend another $10 on another bit, but I got the last hole drilled and got the wall jambs screwed in place. Once those were in place, all I had to do was cut the top railing to length and put it in place. This part went so well, I could scarcely believe it. The railing was level and I had cut it to about as perfect a length and one can get it. I just had to do a touch of filing to make it fit the contour of the tiling, but after I got it in place, even though it just floats above the wall jambs, it doesn't move at all. Perfect fit. Everything was going really well up until I put the glass doors on. Cass caught a rather telling and hilarious photo of me when I realized some of the not-so-square square angles I had to deal with. After I got annoyed, I then realized I had the ability to adjust the doors to accommodate. What joy! So I did that and now I won't say it's perfect but it's pretty darn good.

Saturday

My next order of business became caulking all the seams in the room. The shower door and where the tile met the drywall and the ceiling all needed to be caulked so it would be water tight and so that it'd look nicer. That was a rather uneventful job, but I can definitely tell you that the As Seen on TV "Pro Caulk" tool works pretty darn well. I picked one up because I already knew I'm absolutely horrible at getting a clean caulk bead and figured what could it hurt?

Next up was the toilet! So exciting right? This wasn't the first time I'd been involved with a toilet installation, however much like most of this remodel it was my first solo attempt at it. This was actually the easiest and fastest thing I did all weekend. The soil pipe's flange was in near perfect condition and I'd already cleaned it off literally months ago. I gave it one last cleaning and inspection and got to work on the bowl. I already knew the floor was not perfectly flat. That's nearly impossible to accomplish on a tile floor. So, I picked up some toilet shims to make sure it wouldn't rock after I'd installed it. I put the hardware in place and installed the wax ring and just plopped that sucker down. Once the wax ring was seated and I got the shims in place I tightened the thing down and voilà. After caulking around the base of the bowl, I set to work on installing the tank. The innards of the tank came pre-installed, so all I had to do was put the o-ring in place and bolt it to the bowl. Finally, the water line. >.< D'OH! This toilet is a couple inches taller than our old one, so the water line was too short. So, that warranted another trip to the hardware store. Once we go that, the toilet was done.

See Part 2 for the rest of the story and the before and after pictures!