Bathroom wall and window - plus more

So, it's been a whole week since my last update. Not a whole lot has gone on. Most of this past week has seen me outside working in the yard. I bought some plants and potted them:

So that they can add some charm and beauty to the front of the house. Of course, I totally forgot to remove the bag of potting soil from the front of the house before taking this picture!

Other than working in the yard, I also sanded some of the kitchen cabinets Friday. They were a bit of a mess to begin with:

But they became a bit better to look at after some sanding:

I still have more to go on them, and will be doing that this week. My efforts are to save these cabinets so that I don't have to replace them! They appear to be made from birch, which is supposed to be a very good wood for staining, although I don't know at this point if I'll stain 'em or paint 'em.

Today, some breakthroughs (and a problem) occurred. We managed to get the missing bathroom wall up, along with the window in the wall. Talk about a relief! Only bad thing is, now it gets pretty warm in the bathroom without an AC vent or any other type of ventilation. Who knew a missing wall would be so nice to have!? The wall actually went up pretty easily:

The pics above show the first stud in place and the window lightly nailed into place as well. Once the first stud was there, we then added a horizontal stud (which ended up being 2 pieces because of limited on-site material lol) and two more vertical studs to hold the horizontal one in place:

Once that framework was in place, we went ahead and nailed the window in place:

Next, we went into the bathroom itself to put the luaun up. And, of course, ran into a couple of minor problems, the first being that it was pretty tricky getting that sheet into place behind the commode (not a lot of room to maneuver in that 5'x8' space) and then the issue of the toilet water pipe having to go through that luaun sheet at an as-of-that-time-undetermined place. So, it was a trip out to the water meter to turn the water off, then disconnect the toilet water line, then put the luaun in place, then drill the hole for the pipe, then reconnect it all. Whew! Small wonder carpenters and plumbers get paid so much! Anyway, at least the last sheet of luaun is now in place!

Not only that, the window's in place as well! Painting it will be on the agenda before too long. Not sure what color for the bathroom side just yet, but it'll be Peanut Butter on the bedroom wide, to match the rest of the trim.

Now, we didn't want to put the paneling back up on the bedroom side, because I have two small issues with the plumbing in the tub/shower: 1) the cold water leaks, dripping constantly no matter how tight I close off the knob; and 2) the hot water will randomly just turn itself off when turned on, unless turned up extraordinarily high (and therefore scalding me). Not really sure what was going on here, we decided to go ahead and replace the old faucet:

With a new one:

Unfortunately, the new one is slimmer than the old, and doesn't fit into the drilled holes that well. The nipple going from the center of the brassy area to the actual tub spout was too short (I guess because the pipes in the new faucet are slimmer than the ones in the old faucet), so I had to make an emergency run to Marvin's before they closed (it was 5:30, and they close at 6:00), where I purchased 2 nipples of slightly longer length (the original was 2", the new ones were 2.5" and 3"). The 3" one worked - but just barely and may need to be replaced with a 3.5" one. Now, the hot water doesn't just randomly turn off (at least not during the test), but...the cold water wouldn't turn off at all!

While trying to figure out what was going on, we made a weird discovery - the middle knob, which switches from spout to shower head, also is controlling the flow of water into the faucet. Unless the middle knob is turned just right, the cold water won't switch off. It can be increased or decreased, but not closed off altogether. The hot water won't come on or off until the middle knob is turned just right for it to come out. However, it was time for my friend to hit the road and get home, so I'm just gonna have to live with this little problem until Wednesday. Tomorrow, I'm going to pay a visit to Home Depot and ask the plumbing guy (if he's working) that has helped us a lot what he thinks might be the problem. We're thinking now that it might be the stems were just inserted into the wrong places when it was manufactured, and perhaps switching the middle stem with the cold water stem might, uhm, "stem" the problem. ;)

I do like the new knobs that came with the faucet though. At first, I thought they were kind of cheap-looking, but I've since changed my mind:

Nope, you're not seeing things, the cold water knob isn't currently screwed down. It doesn't really do a whole lot right now anyway, so it's no big deal.

So, I'm now several steps closer to having a completed bathroom! And that means several steps closer to having a completed bedroom as well, since once the plumbing issues are resolved, I can put the paneling back up (after cutting out for the window), then finish putting up the trim, and finally get a finished floor in there! I just have to decide if I want to go with carpeting (which I was leaning heavily towards) or laminate (which I can get at Home Depot for 68¢ a square foot, along with the padding for another 25¢ a square foot). The laminate would be so much cheaper! But we shall see!