Sunday

 

Lunch: turkey on whole wheat with strawberries and sunflower seeds.

We met with our designer, general contractor, and the tile installer today to review the project again. We discussed the entry. The tiler wants to tile over the top of the current tile. It will be cheaper and less likely to damage the stucco. He says the lip to the sidewalk is still very low and there's plenty of room for another layer of tile at the door threshold.

He will break up the raised portion and redo it. He asked me to order bullnose tile for this threshold and for the lip to the sidewalk. 

We discussed the second bathroom even though that project will come later. We need to discuss it now because we'll need to order the floor and wall tile when we order the rest of the tile for the house. Our designer wants to remove the soffit above the tub and raise the ceiling to match the ceiling in the rest of the bathroom. She said it would dramatically increase the visual size of the bathroom. I never would have thought of that, but once she pointed it out, I could see it. The shower will feel much larger. The three walls above the tub will be tiled in the same tile as we're using for the floor. We'll order it with the rest of the order and store it until we are ready.

Measurements for the tile

We also talked about the decorative tile in the shower for the primary bath, where it would go and how it would be installed. He wants to use the floor tile for the four inches of the wall that turns back to the window. He will use schluter (the metal trim at the end of a run of tile) on the corner where the decorative wall tile joins the floor tile on the window sides, top, and even bottom. The tiler and designer want to replace the marble ledge with floor tile to keep from having three different materials around the window. We also talked about the linear drain and where it should go. I think he's leaning on putting it against the west wall, under the shower controls, which makes sense rather than the south wall. If it's on the west wall, then the floor will slope gently forward as you face the shower instead of sloping gently to the left. He took a look at all of our hair products and said he'd install an insert in the wall with two shelves. So many details. Some can't be dealt with until after demolition. I think we'll be glad we thought it through so many times before we got started.

We decided, reluctantly, to leave the laminate flooring in the two back bedrooms to save costs. This was a difficult decision for me because it's easier to add these two rooms now than it will be to do them later, even cheaper. But I understand we can't do everything at once. These moldings are my least favorite. We decided to replace them with the same 5 1/4 modern molding we're using throughout the house to make it look more cohesive. 

Because the laminate has a gap between the flooring and the baseboard as you can see above, there will need to be a strip of additional molding to cover the gap. Our designer said we don't have to use quarter round; we can use a rectangular strip instead to go with the modern look of the new baseboard. That made me feel better about leaving these floors. Leaving the floors as they are will also allow us to use these two rooms for furniture storage and for sleeping during the floor demolition and tiling. The logistics will be much easier.

Again, as with the kitchen project, we'll be doing our own caulking and painting of walls and baseboards. We'll also be responsible for dismantling our bedroom closet and reassembling it. I think we can do it, and it will save money.

We fixed this one pan garlic, tomato, and basil chicken recipe tonight. 

We served it over a bed of quinoa.

We didn't walk the causeway this morning because of our meeting with the renovation team, but we walked in the neighborhood several times. 

After lunch, I rode my bike down to Weaver Park and did some stretching and weight lifting. John rode down at the end, and together we rode downtown and turned around to come home.