Home Remodel - Guest Bathroom

 The final project I worked on before we moved from Utah was getting the guest bathroom set for selling the house. It took a little less than 4 months from start to finish, which was just slightly longer than my 1 month estimate, but I think it came out pretty good.

Before shots of the bathroom. 

Before shot from the other side standing in the tub.

First job, strip everything out. This involved removing the plastic shower wall.

Then removing the tub and all the fixtures. Turns out the air intake for the furnace ran under the tub, so I will have to be careful with that when installing the new tub. 

Also removed the sink and toilet. The bathroom is a cube now.

A look at the floor with the vinyl flooring torn out. 

First step to putting everything back together was install the tub. This was a giant pain in the ass because of the size and placement of the tub in relation to the door. The tub was just slightly bigger than the door frame so I had to angle it in, and also remove the drywall on the far wall so it could lay flat to slide in. Eventually it was done.

Then I had to run the plumbing up from the basement. 

Before tiling, I laid down concrete floor boards so that the tiles would stick better than to the wood subflooring. I also extended the toilet drain up so it wouldn't get filled with tile mortar.

Testing out the placement of the tiles. It seems they will actually fit really well with minimal weird cut tiles. 

Installation of the tiles. Came out pretty good. I'm starting to like these larger floor tiles. 

And floor grouted and pipe cut down. 

Back to the shower. I ran all of the plumbing lines and installed the fixtures to get exact placements right. They will need to be removed to put up the concrete board and tiles but I want to make sure placement is perfect and there are no leaks before doing that. 

Removed the fittings and added concrete boards to the shower. The wife requested a shelf in the shower so I built one in. Fittings readded to make sure everything still fits and works right.

The wife wanted to add tile behind the toilet and around the sink, so the drywall was removed there and concrete board added for those. Also had to redo the plumbing for the sink. 

Finished up the concrete board around the sink.

Once the concrete board was "plastered", the vanity we purchased had a hole in the back where the plumbing attached. In order for it to not seem weird, I figured I'd paint the back of the vanity black to tie in. Seems weird of of place.

But once the vanity is installed it works well. 

Add the vanity top/ 

Start to tile around the back of the toilet and backsplash of the vanity. I don't have my tile edger yet so I'm waiting on here and will move on to the shower.

Jumping over to the tub, tiling starts off going fairly straightforward. Just getting up to the shelf level where lots more tile cutting will be needed. 

Tiles around the opening. 

And starting to tile on the side walls. At this point I needed to wait until I have the edger to finish off the side by the door frame. 

With the edger I can finish off the sink area, including tiling the right wall next to the sink.

As well as finishing off the left and back walls of the shower. 

Finished off the last wall on the right as well as put in the shelf accent tiles. 

Now is the time for the grout. The wife wanted black grout, which I've never used before. It is a pain to wash off completely. This is after the grout application. 

And after 1 complete wash.

And after the second wash.

Shower area also grouted with 2 washes.

And after the 3rd wash, it finally appears clean. The grout is also sealed to prevent the black from running in the future. 

Once tiling is done we can paint.

Tub tiles washed for the final time, sealed, and the walls painted.

And the fixtures readded back in.

Once painting is done we can start to add the main bathroom features like the toilet and sink.

Sink faucet added and plumbing hooked up.

Starting to piece the last bit of things together.

Water finally hooked back up to the sink.

A tie in from the carpet to the tile. This was eventually stained grey but I don't have a picture of the final version.

And the final shower.

And the final bath with new lights, mirror and towel bars. 

Hovercraft Update

When the pandemic hit I had some time to be able to work on my own projects. One of those projects was my hovercraft, which has been in the works since 2005. Here are the updates for last year through this year. Almost all of the updates are from last year, since we moved across country this year and I haven't found any time to work on it.

July 18th, 2020: Back to work after a several years break. Here I returned to adding the skirt tack strip along the outer edge of the hull. The tack strip is used to attach the upper edge of the skirt, which is what helps a hovercraft hover. 

August 11th, 2020: Finished the skirt attach strips. Getting ready to move on to skinning the top. The strips needed to be added before the top was skinned since access to the inside of the wall would be limited once skinned.

August 14th, 2020: Before I can skin the sides, the front section needs to be filled in with sturdy foam. These blocks are custom cut and then inserted one at a time. Eventually they will be sanded smooth. Starting at the center of the craft and working outwards.

August 16th, 2020: Continuing outwards. Using spray foam to fill in gaps turned out to not work so well since the spray foam wasn't anywhere near as dense as the pink foam. But after some trimming and sanding it made do.

August 23rd, 2020: Finished the foam infill on the front. The pink foam is only used to fill in between the ribs in front of the duct, which is what I have here. I can now start skinning the sides.

September 2nd, 2020: Left and right wing skins are attached. 

September 30th, 2020: Now the interior wing skins are attached. Once the pieces are cut, which does take some fine tuning since they are flexed around, the attachment itself is fairly straightforward. Unfortunately there was a supply chain issue getting the epoxy I needed so I lost all of September to work and epoxy doesn't set in the cold. 

October 30th, 2020: Both skins on the other wing attached and the foam front has been partially sanded down.

November 4th, 2020: Following the wing skins, the foam was sanded down with any imperfections filled in by epoxy since the spray foam didn't work too well. Then the skin between the duct and the cockpit was installed. Lots of clamps to make sure it stayed in place while flexing it around. 

November 16th, 2020: After the central skin I was able to do the last thing for the season and that was to install the lift fan brackets. This involved cutting into the lift duct and the skin I just put on to drop them into place. Hopefully I measure them out accurately but it seems like they should be solid. I then epoxied them into place. I also then fiberglassed over the pink foam, so although it appears to be just foam, it is actually protected.

March 17th, 2021: Unfortunately, after all that work we decided to move back to New York, so the hovercraft needed to make another cross country trip. This involved purchasing another trailer that better fit it and strapping it down.

March 19th, 2021: Once the hovercraft was fully strapped down and covered with tarps, it was set to go.

April 8th, 2021: All packed up and ready to go on a cross country trip.

November 16th, 2021: And all comfy in her new home. She now has her own wood shop that she can sit in and contemplate life.