Getting There!

This past Sunday saw several developments occur. First and foremost, the faucet situation in the bathtub had to be addressed. The problem was that the cold water would not turn off. In order to turn it off, you had to twist the middle knob to the center so that the water was neither coming out of the spout or the showerhead. While alright for a temporary workaround, this was completely unacceptable as a solution. So on Sunday, we took apart the faucet and discovered that the problem seemed to be (possibly, probably) a missing gasket on the cold water stem. So, our first mission was to Marvin's Building Supply to see if we could locate a gasket to replace the missing one. No such luck. The guy we asked for help there referred us (as so many people at Marvin's tend to do) to Home Depot. Of course, this made sense, since Home Depot is where we bought the faucet, and Marvin's doesn't even carry Glacier Bay, the brand we'd bought.

So, off to Home Depot we went. While there, we spoke with Dennis, our favorite plumbing guy there, who tried to help us locate the gasket we needed, although the three of us put our heads together and decided probably the best thing to do would be just to replace the whole faucet. They actually had more in stock at this time. (I can't remember if I mentioned how I got the one the previous Sunday: It was the last one, it was WAY in the back on the bottom shelf, so I crawled in as far as I could while my friend went to the other side and poked something through to push it to me. I got my head momentarily stuck in that shelf getting this thing lol.) So, we bought a new one, brought it home, installed it, and...it worked! The cold water turned on and off as it should. The hot water turned on and off as it should. So I planned to take the defective faucet back the next day (and did), and to let them know it was defective. Dennis thinks the problem with the one we got the first time was that it was cannibalized by another store employee, which is why it was shoved to the back, instead of having been sent back to the manufacturer as defective.

So, once the new faucet was in place, we went ahead and put the insulation in place so that we could get the paneling back up.

The picture above was taken out of sequence, so you can see the paneling already cut and standing in front of the closet door waiting to be put into place. But, before getting to that, we had to finish installing the vinyl planks on the bedroom floor. That proved a little difficult, at least for the smaller pieces at the bottom of each plank line. We ended up having to waste a few pieces to get small ones with proper lips to fit under the edges of the next plank in line. But, we finally got them down, so my floor was finally finished!

Before putting the desk along the wall, I of course had planned to put the baseboard back in place, but we discovered a very severely rotted section on it, so the whole thing got tossed. I'll take one of the discards from the bathroom this week and paint it up to go in place. Anyway, after the floor was finished, and the rotted baseboard problem noted, we then had to cut out a section for the last remaining paneling in my bedroom for the window. Once it was cut, we then set it up temporarily in place so I could check the next day to ensure the new faucet wasn't leaking. Then, we brought in my "new" desk to put in the room and brainstormed on how to get the cable, which we left in place on the other side of the room, to the desk itself. What we decided on is to get a cable connector and extend the cable under the house so we can bring it through the floor closer to the desk. That would just look so much better than the tacky concept of stretching it across the floor lol.

So, Monday I checked to ensure there was no leakage, and then put up the wall. Of course, doing it myself and without having someone to check, I put it up crooked lol. Oh well, we'll correct it Sunday.

The section of paneling to the left really isn't that much darker. It was just in shadow from the light coming through the window. Anyway, I then took note of how my room was laid out, how my bed in its current position was causing some problems, so I turned the bed around against the other wall, which freed up quite a bit of room!

I like it much better over here. I went ahead and hung up the antique picture I'd gotten at one of the auctions, and later that day (no picture of it yet) I moved my chifferobe against the wall to the right of the bed, along with one of my small antique lamp tables. The room is certainly coming together!

On Tuesday, I finished priming the bathroom walls. Now I just need to select the color that will go in there! I've already decided the trim is just going to be white, to match the vanity and the ceiling. The possible shades have been narrowed down from a couple of hundred to just a few dozen lol.

It was very difficult getting around the toilet, mainly because the toilet fits so snugly against the wall. In any case, once the walls were primed, I then took measurements for the trim, most of which we managed to get today from Hudson's Dirt Cheap Building Supply. Sadly, they didn't have any corner molding at all, but I was able to get the baseboards, the crown molding, and the flat molding (to hide the seams along the walls where two sheets of luaun come together).

The baseboards came in 16 foot sections, while the others came in considerably smaller ones. It was fun driving with those 16 foot baseboards wobbling about out of the back of my truck! Good thing they're flexible and didn't break!

So now I'm all set to put up most of the trim (still have to find the corner moldings) on Sunday (unless something else comes up), and in the meantime I should be able to finish the bedroom (baseboards and a corner molding for in there as well) this week. Fingers crossed!