The Hunt for RedGard-tober

Alternate post titles include:
Little RedGarding Hood
RedGard Dawn
The Redygard


Catching up may be hard to do (or is that something else...), but we're going to give it our best! The good news is that we now have a bathtub -- AND it fills with water. The better news is that we have a toilet -- that flushes! No more will you hear this in our house, "Jesse, could you go outside and get me a bucket of water please!!?!?" Oh no.

Life is good.

Things were getting dicey around here after a month of showering at other peoples' houses. It's difficult to adjust every day from living in the "third world" to a professional office setting. But we made it! Thanks, in large part, to Tanner and Jesse. Also thanks to our wonderful home inspector. Ever since meeting my dad she seems to have softened up toward us -- must be that western NY charm.

Anywho, on to the pictures!

The photo below is the mess of wires that we pulled in the garage. Somehow these would all need to fit nicely into that big box over there to the left...

Who better for that job than Tanner? That's what we thought, too.

Here's a view inside the box (the panel opens from the outside. SO...if a scary person wants to cut power to my house on a dark and rainy night, they just have to go lift up the door on the panel???????? That's how it's done here in California. Thank goodness we don't have many rainy nights.) By the way, yes, these are wired backwards -- as Jesse found out after receiving a shocking message. Tanner came back and fixed them :)

And the finished product! Pretty amazing, right?
PS: If you want to know about the line of junction boxes, as Jesse.

Speaking of Jesse, here he is! Properly installed, the bathtub sits in a bed of mortar. (Our old bathtub was affixed with two ratty looking screws -- no mortar in sight.) Jesse is shoveling the mortar into the bathtub bed.

Our tub is a deep-soak tub -- it has this special drain to make it so. It's pretty amazing, as I can now attest, having taken several baths in it.

And here is the intalled tub. I actually took a bath in it that very night -- bare studs and insulation and all!

A few days later, we installed the backerboard (we'll be tiling the enclosure.) Instead of a hanging shower caddy, we'll have a little alcove with shelves for our bath products.

Here's a close-up of the alcove -- where Jesse put fiberglass tape to strengthen the corners.

And here it is after a layer of thinset mortar.

This is a wide view of the thinsetted backerboard.

Jesse had to remove the backs of some screws with his Dremel, which he had fun taking pictures of.

Our house doesn't have insulation in the walls, so everywhere we're opening up a wall, we're stuffing it with insulation. Jesse was surprised by the picture-taker and shot first.

And here is what our Blog Post is named for: RedGard. It's a paint-on waterproof membrane that goes over backerboard and under the tile. It's pretty amazing stuff -- better than the plastic membranes people use under the backerboard. Jesse likes it so much, he took a series of photos of the application. Can you guess how he applied it? (answer below)

Were you able to guess how he applied it? He tried first with a notched trowel, but didn't like it, then he tried a paintbrush, but didn't like that either. He ended up using a technique the my nephews are very familiar with -- fingerpainting!


Our second bedroom closet now extends into the uninsulated garage -- so it is essentially an exterior wall. Here are some photos of the insulation.



A lot of other things have happened:
We passed our electrical meter inspection (after a few minor fixes)
We passed our rough framing, electrical and plumbing inspection (my dad was very relieved -- though we did have a few fixes to make)
Corinne ripped out the four inch piece of wood at the bottom of the wall in the living room (with a circular saw!), drilled all the holes for new wire, and pulled all the new wires! Tanner helped me with cut-in boxes, though. This was done all over the house, but I'm excited because I did the majority of the work for this part...
We passed our insulation inspection (today!)
We decided to go in a different direction with the shower tile -- and ordered all of that from Home Depot (I'll post pictures when it comes in -- we should be tiling in less than a week)
We ordered our veneer for the bathroom vanity and tall cabinet. We went up to Frost Hardwoods and spent a little while perusing their samples and settled on Santos Rosewood. We'll go pick up our pressed panels tomorrow and we might even build the vanity this weekend!

Here's a look at what Santos Rosewood looks like:

We've still got a LOT to do, but we're really making progress. We leave for the wedding in three and a half weeks -- we'll see how far we get!!!