Saturday, April 20, 2013

video blog 6: a preview

We have been working on our made-from-scratch upstairs bathroom for about 2 months now. When people ask about it, we just say, "slow and steady wins the race." Some things we can knock out so fast, but most things take a lot longer than we thought. There have been times when the project seems so big we have to stop altogether, take a deep breath and a break.

When I was younger-- in high school and college--  I used to cut hair for people because I kind of liked it and I was pretty good at it, but one thing I would always make sure I told the person is that "I am not a professional." I could do a good job and I worked for free but it would take three or four times longer than if they had just gone to a salon. Building this bathroom is just like that. It is taking seemingly forever to finish what we started but our labor is free and as we look around at the progress we are making we cannot help but see how beautiful it will become.

Lately we have had to "bite the bullet," as we say around here and spend our money on the fixtures that will make the most impact when it is all said and done. Faucets, lights, tiles, oh my! We have saved so much money doing labor ourselves but when we thought about cutting corners and buying cheap fixtures, we had to draw the line. I have heard it said that "hardware is the jewelry of your home." As cheesy as that sounds, it is kind of true. Our shower faucets were just delivered and I swear I lit up when I saw them. It was almost better than jewelry. Almost.


Thursday, April 18, 2013

video blog 5: a day in the life of green thum, inc.

It is mid-April and we are getting slammed with what I hear is more snow than we've had all winter. But when you live in the ice box of the nation, you don't really take snow days.


Monday, April 8, 2013

video blog 4: custom shower

Building a custom shower can seem really intimidating (it did to me!) but it is actually relatively inexpensive and simple. Our shower will be seven feet (84 in.) by about three-and-a-half feet (40 in.), which is huge, and it will have a heated floor, which is extravagant. We were already heating the entire upstairs so the cost of building that into the shower was almost nothing. With the cost of lumber, the rubber pan liner, pre-pitch (a $30 splurge since we wanted the pitch to be correct and even) and concrete this shower has run approximately $175. I priced ready-made acrylic pans, that only spanned about 5 feet, at anywhere from $175- $600 and in the end they still look cheap.

I would say that my biggest piece of advice for anyone taking on this project would be to watch a ton of YouTube videos. I honestly don't know how people did DIY home projects before YouTube...