Friday, April 17, 2009

Master Bath Shower Enclosure

Today the master bathroom shower enclosure get's checked off the list. The guys from American Glass came out and installed the $1500+ glass and frame in about 2 hours. It turned out great as the pictures below show.

The finished product:

Getting started. The frame must be plumb on the door side and square to the other.


The glass enclosure starts to take shape.


Almost ready for the door

And here's how it looks from the master bedroom:

Looks pretty fancy with the tile and jacuzzi tub. Time for a beer.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Crown Moulding--Thanks to Pete and Sandy

I am truely lucky to have the caliber of friends that I do. When I started working at Nye on B crew I ended up working with a guy that I had not seen in years. Pete and his wife quickly became friends and drinking buddies. The Old Chicago beer and shot tours will forever stand as evidence of this.

When Pete heard that I had crown moulding to do he loaded up the family and his very fancy saw and made the hours drive to our house. The trim turned out very fancy so thank you Pete and Sandy. There is no way I could have done it without you.





And to further spruce up the place Kelly and I decided to hang up the saw given to us by my folks. It has an oil painting farm scene on it that is really fancy.



A little better detail of the saw.


And to give credit where credit is Due. Thanks Mom. You should have stuck with the painting.

More Trim--Thanks to Butch and Kelly

With rates at an all time low, Kelly and I set a goal of getting the place re-financed at the lowest rate we could get. When we finally locked at 4.875 the clock started ticking. We would have to get another appraisal and not really knowing what the market was doing we figured we had better have the place looking good. My saving grace is the family. My ever vigilant father-in-law Butch, jumped in the truck and came out to help. Over the course of 4 days we managed to knock out a ton of trim work. Kelly probably had the biggest list of all, which involved getting ahead of the mess that 6 people can make in a huge house. Add on top of that, the mess I can make with air tools, beer cans, and 5 helpers, she had her hands full. Thanks Kelly.

Day one we cleaned up all of the outside areas which included raking and shoveling a truckload of bark from the splitter, moving lumber piles, insulated/chinked windows to be trimmed, hung durarock around wood stove, installed smoke detectors, and we started trimming out the upper living room windows.

Day two we trimmed out 13 windows, 2 doorways, and an attic access.

Day three we trimmed out the stairway, installed crown moulding with Pete, and did a bunch of cabinetry trim work such as kick boards and filler pieces.

Day four we cleaned up and started to recover. The appraiser showed up and gave us the two thumbs up.

Here's a shot of the living room from the front door. From here you can see most of the windows out front with the jambs and cedar trim done. You can also see the crown moulding on the far left wall has been done.


As you step into the kitchen you can now see all of the windows and the fireplace.


Another couple of steps and you can now see the door out to the front deck.


And here is a good look at the door to the front deck. It shows off neat the cedar trim is. It's got a ton of character and looks very nice with the logs.


Kelly and Sandy also managed to get our tv mounted with the adjustable wall mount. It looks pretty sweet hanging up there instead of on the little table we had sitting there before.