The bathroom remodel did get done

It’s all done except for pictures on the wall! We want to buy a picture by a local artist for behind the toilet. Maybe we’ll do that as our Christmas gift to each other this year.

When I last mentioned the bathroom remodel, we were having trouble with the pencil tile, (the edging tile on the wall). I left off saying, “We’ll find out next week!”. That was towards the end of September and it is now December. So you didn’t find out the next week. But rest assured, the pencil tile issue was solved – by me going to several tile stores until I could find something vaguely off-white, at a store with enough in stock right there on hand, no hopes or promises, just me walking out the door with the tile in my cart and the receipt fluttering in the breeze.

Various other issues too tedious to mention also happened. Like they installed the toilet crooked, and the contractor had a little grumpy-fit when we asked him to fix it, and then he charged us $200 extra to fix it, when he should have done right to start with. Remodels are maddening.

Here’s a photo of it mid-process.

This is the elusive floor tile grout. The company abruptly discontinued our color after we had used it for most of the house. I had to pay twice the regular price to get it from Amazon because it was suddenly no longer available in the local tile or hardware stores.

Looking better. The tile guy, Oscar, was good. After the project was over, we tried to hire Oscar directly for other tile work elsewhere, but he only works for the contractor, whom we don’t plan to hire again.

In this picture you can see that we accidentally mixed in some floor tile from the wrong dye lot. And we had so carefully bought our tile all at once to avoid that issue! John thinks the mistake occurred when our first contractor had two jobs with the same floor tile and he was using ours for them and theirs for ours. Very annoying, but we don’t notice with the throw rugs down.

Construction is so dusty. Here’s my bedroom floor AFTER they supposedly cleaned. Plus they had a plastic dust curtain up, but a lot of good that did.

This next picture is the interior of the built-in linen closet that we had made by our friends in Taos, Blanca and Gonzalos, who own Antiqua Home Furnishing. They build furniture, and will do custom work for reasonable prices. https://antiguahomefurnishings.com/

Here’s the exterior. It matches our bedroom furniture, which they made for us five or more years ago when we lived in Placitas, NM.

The bathroom door isn’t stained yet. The contractor doesn’t offer door staining as part of his services. So we have to find someone else to do it.

Overall, it’s a huge improvement and has a much more open feel. Here’s the “before” picture from the real estate listing when we bought the house in 2020:

Here’s how it looks now. Ta-da!

To send me a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

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