The Plan: Basement Renovation

We are endeavoring on a major renovation project that is beyond our capabilities, so we have found a contractor to help us renovate our unfinished basement. The plan is to clean out the basement (currently our catch all storage area) so we can add a full bathroom, a few closets, and a new living room. In an attempt to save money on this project we are planning on acting as the project manager and have decided to handle the designs and permit process ourselves. Wish us luck.

We haven’t signed a contract yet with the contractor, we’re waiting for the permits to be finalized so we can them included in the SOW. The hope is next week I can go back into the permit office and pay some exorbitant fees and walk away with a beautiful permit, but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.

Yellow and White Bathroom

After I convinced my better half to paint the kitchen green I conceded to painting the bathroom yellow. In the end I think it turned out great. The walls are bright and they really look great with all the sun from the skylight.



In order to finish the room we decided to paint the matching medicine cabinet, sink cabinet and mirror frame white. The end result is bright and inviting two toned yellow and white bathroom. After we finished the painting we purchased a nice yellow and white shower curtain that I think finishes off the bathroom nicely.


Medicine cabinet and mirror frame drying after the second coat of paint.




Here you can see the shower curtain.

Fixing a Leaky Claw Foot Tub

After moving all of our stuff into the house I was in dire need of a hot shower. I turned on the faucet to my claw foot tub to find two disparaging facts. One there is no hot water and two my tub is leaking. The hot water issue I was able to deal with by getting Washington Gas to turn my gas back on (not sure why they shut it off and neither are they). The leaky tub issue was mitigated with a drip pan until I was able to get over to the hardware store and pick up some plumbers tape. Turns out the plumber that installed the tub didn’t use any tape to secure the connections. Now the water is hot and the bathroom floor is bone dry.

Its a No Go on the Half Bath

So I've been getting central air conditioning estimates from several vendors, but I'm not ready to make a decision on that so I will have a follow up post on that. The downside of this process besides the high cost of the estimates is that it has come to my attention that I wont be able to add a half bath to the main floor. The space I was planning on using is too small to meet code. This means we will have to start thinking about adding a basement bathroom. Possibly using a Saniflo macerating system. I'm still exploring other options, but as far as I can tell from the internets this is one of the best options if I don't want to rip open my concrete floor.