Master Bathroom Work

It's been a crazy and work-filled week, both on the house and outside it. My good friend, Rene, had emergency surgery about 1.5 weeks ago and while recouperating, I filled in teaching her preschool and beginner gymnastics classes in addition to the team girls I help with three nights a week. And as for the house, the worst part of the work is still to come.

I began working on the MBa in the closet, by finishing pulling off the wallpaper that was already detaching itself, only to find that the north wall needed a serious patch job. The other two walls are newer and didn't need repairs, given they were built when we first moved into the house to make a closet (the bedroom had to adjoining closet). But after seeing just how much needed to be patched, I decided it was easier simply to take off the floor trim board and put a new piece of sheetrock directly over the wall and make a new wall. So that was a three day project (by the time you mud and sand and mug and sand a few times) but I'm glad to say it's done, the closet is painted, and we can move on to more pressing things.

As for the bathroom itself, several challenges await, the biggest and most questioning is the ceiling, as you can tell from the pictures below. Something, though I'm still not sure what, will need to be done for the ceiling but I'm perfectly content right now with leaving that until last and moving on to the floor.

After finishing some basic trimming that needed to be done on the 2x4 walls, Saturday I began the no so much fun job of putting down the backerboard in preparation for the tiling that I hope to get done in the next few days. It was my first time with backerboard, and while it wasn't too bad in comparisons with other things I've done, my fingers did hurt after screwing it down every six inches. I also discovered that cutting 1/2" backerboard isn't as easy as my Dad made it out to be. Apparently he'd never work with 1/2" before, only the 1/4" inch, which I plan on working with for a few of the small wall jobs that also need to be done in the bathroom. Let's just say that a couple of scores with the cutting knife doesn't quite get the job done when it comes to the 1/2" (unlike the 1/4" I'm assuming since he told me '2 or 3 times with the knife and it breaks like sheetrock').

Needless to say, today begins the long process of getting the tile cut to put down and then hopefully mudding will begin by Wednesday.