Renovations...the idea from hell.

We/Sharon..ahem...Sharon, has long hated her bathroom. When she bought this house, she and her son-in-law did a lot of work, opening up the  kitchen and putting down laminate flooring, painting anything that wasn't moving. The one thing that did  not get done was the bathroom and it has been a thorn in her side since. Me? I thought it was just fine, but then..men don't see the same things.







So..we have bought tiles twice for the bathroom...the first ones were not the correct ones for a floor and we returned them, fortunately before we had had them shipped north. We got the right ones. And we planned to remove the tub and have a shower wall. And a skylight installed..and radiant heating under the tiles. 

As it happened, just before, and I do mean JUST before we left for our Gumbo and Blues Tour, Sharon announced that she wanted to have all the floors redone and radiant heating under that, too. Of course.

We are using  www.nuheat.com/home

It so happened that we/I knew a builder that was in serious troubles. He had to get two crews up from Vancouver to do work on two of his houses and could not find anyplace to house them. (if you don't understand that part, see my next Blog post) I talked to the guy and the deal was..he got to use our home for 6 weeks and in return, we got the work all done. There have been some glitches in the program but it is all coming along. Not as quickly as we had hoped for...6 weeks?...but, it is coming. 

Now..there is an order in which to do these things. For instance, you put in the tiles after the ceiling work.... not before. And, you put in the 'bulb' for the the floor thermostat before you lay the floor. 

And you put the shower head at a height that is useful to all. So far...things have been done back-ass wards. Mostly due to no one supervising. Since I got home, that part has changed, although I can't say the guy doing the actual work is happy.

      this is one big skylight

Now we get to the next part...the house flooring.  We are going to be in Vancouver for 6 days, and the deal is....the floors get done. And, as we have moved thru this part, we contracted out to get the electrical done in the bathroom and also for the floor. This is a big deal. There are a couple ways to have radiant heating in your floor..one is pads and the other is laying wires. The problem is always...what if, after laying the pads or wires, it doesn't work. The way to mitigate this is to have the electrical stuff all pre-tested, then tested 2 more times. Once after laying it down and then upon completion of the floors. The electrician doing the work documents all of it. So..if it tests out properly prior to install, then we would know that the wire was 100%. Then, if there is a failure, the finger is pointed at the installer. Without that, everyone just stands around, looking down at their shoes, waiting for the home-owner to decide what they are going to do.

As we have learned, even tho everyone is 100% honest and has great intent, sometimes the execution is lacking.