Category: On the Home Front

I’ve been asked by several folks now how to get in touch with Tommy and Larry.

Turner General Contracting is the name of Tommy’s company, he and Larry work together and they did most of the renovation work that you saw for the “Master Bathroom/Laundry Room / Guest Bathroom updates”.

Contact information from the business card is:

Turner General Contracting (Since 1950)

Specialized Painting

Renovations – Repairs

Room Additions

Decks – Pressure Wash

Complete One Stop Maintenance

Tommy Turner – 770-654-4551

Things are definitely tapering off. For the past few work days there hasn’t been much to see, prep work doesn’t show too well. Plus we’ve had Tommy and Larry do a bunch of smaller things that have been on my “to do” list for ages. But it’s hard to show you the great improvement that shoring up (and properly sealing) the window air conditioner on the gym makes. Or how much nicer the outside of the house looks now that it’s been powerwashed and that scuff on the garage door frame and the fading chimney cap have been painted.

But today there were some more dramatic updates. The wallpaper is now up in the guest bathroom

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and over the bathtub tiles

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and the lighting has been installed for over the mirror

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and the cabinets have been painted and new drawer pulls and cabinet door knobs installed

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We’re waiting on the counter, we’re told it should be ready for next Wednesday (6/20).

Below is the next day – I guess I’m getting lazy but the only very visible thing to see is that the medicine cabinet is now installed and the shower doors are back up (and CLEAN too!)

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Scope creep hits every project… 🙂

We were so pleased with the new toilet (Gerber EF-21-312) in the master bathroom that, on impulse I decided to replace ALL of our toilets with the same model. Apparently slabs are known for their less-than-enthusiastic sewer drainage. These new ones I swear push whatever’s in them all the way to the waste water treatment plant in one go!

Also, the 1/2 bathroom next to the garage has a small window and no ventilation fan so we decided to update that too. We don’t really need one for the usual reason of removing moisture but rather to aid in guest’s vanity to try to remove any evidence of what was going on in there. Hopefully this will end that odd practice of lighting matches and other bizarre behavior folks do to hide being human… Mich pointed out (after I had ordered a new Panasonic (FV-08VF2) WhisperFitfan from Ira Wood & Sons) that we probably wanted a noisier fan just to mask any noises coming from that room 🙂
Anyway here is how the updated 1/2 bath looks

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With the fan.

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This morning we also worked with Tommy to figure out where the mirror and the new lighting for the guest bathroom should go

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The electrician came back today and wired up both the fan in the 1/2 bath and replaced our old 3 gang with a 4 gang switch in the guest bath

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The can lights were installed

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and the pancake box for the lighting fixture was installed.

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Mich still needs to find the right medicine cabinet – she had found it at Lowes earlier but had decided to get a smaller one and now they are sold out of the one she wants. Tommy has one at home that he thought she might like so we’ll check that out tomorrow.

This was largely a grunt day. Larry was head down in the bathroom with no windows on a high eighty-degree day priming and prepping the walls, door and vanity.

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Finally the wallpaper is gone

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A quick view above the shower head

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and another view into the attic (never ceases to amaze me).

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Tommy was meanwhile doing finishing touches on the master bathroom and loads of finicky finishing things (Thanks for mounting the radio in the shower!).

Arrrgh! I can’t *believe* that I forgot to take a “before” picture of the guest bathroom before we started work on it today!!!

We are not going to be nearly so bold with this aspect of our renovations as with the other bathroom. But we are removing the false ceiling, replacing the flourescent lights with can lights, updating to a better bathroom fan and replacing the counter, sink, faucets and medicine chest.

Add a little new wallpaper and paint and the project is nearly done 🙂

Here is the project just after Larry pulled out the ceiling and medicine cabinet

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Larry is sporting his camera-inspired “The Shining” look… 🙂

You can see the framework for the fan and light support over the counter here.

By the end of the day, much of the wallpaper was gone

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Here’s a nice view into the attic (above where the mirror used to be)

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A slightly more oblique view

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And here is the ceiling over the back of the bathtub (soon to receive a can light)

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and finally a view back toward the door (before it gets painted)

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Also, Sue from Atlanta Kitchen called and asked if we wouldn’t mind taking some pictures of our new master bathroom counter for them to keep in an album so I obliged and sent Hi res versions of the four shots below.

This one shows off the newly installed medicine cabinet cover that Tommy put in today. It needs a bit more work to protect the back of the mirror but it looks very attractive already.

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Pretty much all that’s left to do in the master vanity area is those medicine cabinets and to putty and stain a few nail holes in the mirror frame. Of course there are ALWAYS some other little touch-ups that need to be done but the end of the road is near.

It turns out that the mirror company ended up charging nearly 3 times what they quoted for the mirrors. Tommy will be contacting them to get that sorted out. I’ll need to get their name anyway just for my own records. I’ll let you know how that works out.

Here are the remaining pictures of the counter

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and

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and

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In my update from May 18th I mentioned that one of the Acrylic handles for the shower doors had arrived slightly mal-formed. I’m pleased to report that they (the company Maax) had a new pair of handles out to us within a week and the doors look great. Interestingly they sent us two handles which is good since one of them was slightly scratched. The other one was pristine.

Got a bunch of little things done. Also, since we’re now waiting on the new mirror Tommy and Larry took some mirror pieces that they had and fashioned a make-shift one that would serve until June.

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We’re also waiting on the mirrors for the medicine cabinet doors, but here is a pic showing my toothbrush charger as I try to sort out its new home. Mich is happy ’cause these things no longer need to reside on the counter to be near an outlet.

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Also, ‘though we haven’t yet cleaned out all the sawdust from construction, here is the hair dryer in its drawer with a power strip. So you can open the drawer to use it plus any other electrical appliances that you may need. Then rest them in the drawer and push them out of sight. And no, there are no curling irons or anything similar to that that we use that could stay on without us knowing about it.

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In the water closet, the towel racks and the toilet paper dispenser were mounted. The original toilet paper roll holder that we’d purchased we quickly discovered would not be able to hold the double-sized roll that is so common nowadays without having it press against the wall. We were pretty disappointed. But then we noticed that one of the hand-towel holders which we were not going to be using since we’d purchased the smaller towel racks now mounted in the vanity areay, hold the roll very nicely. So that’s what we’re using now.

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Here’s another gratuitous picture of the window with the bed in place. New end table design is in process so we’ll be using the old bureaus until that’s complete.

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Finally, here is a cool door stop that I found at Woodworker’s Hardware and purchased through Amazon (to use some of the Amazon gift certificate money that I’ve accumulated from my Amazon Visa card). I had ordered some grommets from them to finish the holes in our cabinet (to allow wires to pass out the back and between the two main sections of the cupboard) and they sent their great catalog full of very niche solutions to problems you encounter every day when trying to finish renovations or new construction.

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The head contains a very powerful magnet that mates with this piece on the door

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and will not only prevent the door from bumping the wall (primary purpose) but will also prevent the door from swinging shut when you have a window open.

The counter arrived today with the sinks attached. I’m kind of glad I was busy at the time (I’m working at home so I can be available for issues but *do* actually need to get my day job done..) ’cause there are a couple of places where door trim got scratched/scraped enough to need repair.

The new counter looks very nice

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The mirror still needs to be ordered and will hopefully be ready soon. We had the old mirror cut and mounted in the gym so I could do manly poses between reps 🙂

Note the handles on the drawers /doors of the vanity.

The fixtures are called Pegasus and I find them pretty attractive.

One side-effect of raising the height of the vanity is that the plumbing was still low for the original faucets/drain. So we needed slightly longer connecting pipes than expected to hook up the new faucets.

Here are the new towel bars. Man, these cost a small fortune but they look very attractive. They’re from the Baldwin Cecina collection and we picked them up from Home Depot Expo

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Above is Mich’s side, and below is mine

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I didn’t note yesterday that the safety bars had been installed in the bath area. Mich was against this at first. But a few trials of stepping into and out of the much deeper tub convinced her that, esthetics aside, this is a good idea.

We elected to have a 24″ side-bar for those times when your eyes are full of soap and you may need to steady yourself. It can also be used to help haul yourself out of the bath when you’re seated in it. Also, this configuration keeps it out of your elbow’s way when standing in the shower. I didn’t want to make things feel too narrow.

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and then one at the back to help getting in and out. Originally we were going to have it either up and down or on an angle like the one above but we did let some esthetics creep in and went with it running across like you see below. Having it on an angle was a little weird looking and up and down just seemed to be in the way when you tried to enter the tub.

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Here is the new shower head and faucet. Both made by Grohe. The faucet is thermo-balanced so it’s supposed to maintain a set temperature no matter what happens with your water pressure / hot water supply.

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It’s heinously expensive (compared to what *I* think such things should cost) but I was sold by the intelligent design. Turn the handle counterclockwise and water comes out the faucet. The further you turn, the more water pressure. Turn it clockwise and the water comes out the shower head. Most of the single handle designs I saw seem to have only one flow setting: FULL. To control the temprature there is a knob in the middle. You turn it counter-clockwise until it stops and your water will be 100 degrees. Push it in and keep turning it to go as hot as you like. Turn it clockwise to make the water colder. Wherever you leave it the temperature will be maintained for you.

Here is a picture showing the faucet in relation to the tub. Note that we deliberately offset it so that a) it wouldn’t make as much noise and b) someone can sit there comfortably without having a faucet poking them in the back of the head.

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By the way, that little white thing to the right of the faucet? *That’s* the overflow. You can actually use ALL of the tub for soaking.

Tomorrow Tommy and Larry will address a number of smaller items in addition to completing the plumbing for the vanity faucets (they came with plastic connectors to the drain actuators and they would like to replace those with steel ones). Then there will be a bit of a hiatus as we wait for the new counter for the guest bathroom and Mich has decided that she likes the cabinets so much that she wants to order our bed tables from Cherokee Cabinet as well. We’ve got a little planning to do to sort out the design for both of these.

Work on the guest bathroom will likely not commence until the week of June 4th (holidays and all for some of the suppliers involved making it hard to get supplies this coming week).

The cabinet and vanity now have handles. I forgot to take a picture of the vanity but here is one of the cabinet

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A closer look at our casement window with the brushed nickel accents

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And our new Gerber toilet. Wow! It sure packs a wallop! When you flush it NOTHING will be left behind (pardon any puns that may come from that sentence..).

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I like it enough that I’m thinking of replacing our other two toilets with it. But I do have reservations about how enthusiastic Mich will be with flushing it in the wee hours of the morning. It is low flow and well engineered but there is no missing that flushing noise.

Much of the wallpaper is now up, trim has been painted and we’re quickly moving toward finishing touches.

Here shows the wallpaper, trim and sconce in the vanity area

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Here is a close-up of one of the sconce lights

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The water closet is now partially wallpapered

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