Starting the downstairs bathroom

Things have been supper busy. I have been spending all daylight hours and into the night cleaning and painting. Then painting and cleaning.

This one coat paint stuff still needs more than one coat which is super disappointing. The guys at the paint section of the hardware store didn’t believe me so I had to bring them photos. He took one look at them and gave me a big discount and future contractor pricing on the rest of the paint. Which was a bit of relief for the budget.

Am almost done with the downstairs bathroom and have the first coat of primer on that downstairs red and silver bedroom. 

Thank goodness the downstairs bathroom was painted BEFORE they put in the wallpaper. Since the builder never put in an exhaust vent to the outside, some of the wallpaper toward the top of the walls was peeling making the removal that much easier. And thank goodness again for that wallpaper steamer. It really was worth every penny. 

The bathtub faucet was dripping pretty steadily and appears to have been dripping for some time. Over the years the drip had warn a rust spot into the bathtub that is now no longer repairable and is on the verge of leaking into the sub floor. I found a really great handyman who is both supper nice and honest by asking around at the local hardware store. 

Since I can’t move or replace the tub on my own, he not only replaced the tub, but patched the tile as well. It looks good, not super beautiful as we could not match the tile exactly, but not bad. Now with the white subway tile around the base of the new tub, kids can use it as a drawing spot for soap crayons.

To fix the faucet so the new tub would not get destroyed the way the last one had been, I took photos of it with the smart phone and brought them to the hardware store to find the part needed to stop the leak. 

The guys in the plumbing department where great. They told me exactly what part to get and the special tool to use. Since the gaskets are in there by compression, that tool was worth it. When the old part came out, it just fell apart in my hands. No wonder it was leaking so badly. Cleaned out the bits of the old part and put the new one in. Worked like a charm.  Now the faucet in the shower works great and won’t destroy the old tub.

The thing is, for 60$ (which includes the special tool), this could have been repaired years ago and the tub would be able to be saved. Now I have to spend about 800$ to replace the tub, re-tile, and fix the faucet.