I’m finally back with Part 4 of my renovation journey. If you’ve missed any of this, here is everything to get you up to date:

• Renovating My House – The Beginning Exterior
• Renovating My House – The Beginning Interior
• Renovating the Exterior – Part 1
• My Renovation Journey – Part 2
• My Renovation Journey – Part 3

When I left off last time, I was talking about the fact that my little reno bubble was soon to pop. The misogyny was sneaking in little by little. I was trying to save money, like I usually do and I spoke to the Project Manager about re-glazing the tub instead of buying a new one because it really wasn’t in bad shape. He didn’t really approve of it but it was my house and he was the one that was complaining about the overruns. I told him I was going to handle it myself and he wouldn’t have to worry about it.

There are people that do this for a living so I sourced a vendor and spoke to him and was just waiting to set up an appointment. The savings was only $500 but that was worth it to me. The contractors had been working in other parts of the house that were badly damaged, so imagine my surprise when I walked in the house and saw this below. No tub!

Completely gone and they messed up the tile too.

As you can see, I took plenty of pictures because I couldn’t believe it and wanted to get it from all angles.

They even messed up the tile on the floor. Can you see that old pink floor tile from back in the 1950’s I’m assuming. The house was built in 1950 so this reveal was like a little time capsule.

Of course I lit into the Project Manager. The General Contractor was never there and that’s a whole notha story. He never gave me a satisfactory answer as to why they took the tub out. He just kept saying that they’ll fix it and I’ll get a brand new tub. I asked if he would do all of the work for the same price as the re-glazing and he looked shocked and said no but he would make it up in the budget.

There was nothing I could do at that point because it was gone so I sucked it up and looked for other ways to save money. Here is the dry fit of the new tub. I wish I could say that it was fabulous but it didn’t look any different than the old tub and we still had to find the tile to match the existing tile.

Here’s a closer look at the old pink tile. I don’t know why I was so fascinated by this but I was.

The tile that the previous owners had installed was below the shower head for some reason. You can just see the capped off shower head to the right. I knew I wanted to get extra tile to rectify that also.

While we waited for the plumber to show up and do his rough-in, I moved to the guest room. I told them not to step a foot into this room as I was taking care of it. They looked at me skeptically, but they could tell by my eyes that I meant business. I started off by trying to scrape the texture off the ceiling because I thought it was popcorn, but a friend of mine told me it was texture in the plaster so it would not come off.

I then decided to get these ceiling tiles from Home Depot. You can use tile adhesive to put them up and they can be painted too. It was pretty easy to install and I spent a couple of weekends doing it.

Here’s another angle of them being installed.

I ran out of tiles and had to order some more, so in the meantime I started another project in the closet. The plumber had cut a hole in the wall to reach the pipes in the guest bathroom and I said I would take of fixing it. Still trying to save money.

Here’s another view. I bought tape and drywall paste. Sorry I don’t have pictures of the finished product, but it came out pretty good if I do say so myself.

The ceiling tiles still hadn’t come in, so I primed the walls in the guest bedroom.

It made such a difference just priming. That old olive green color made the room so dark although now, dark colors are trending. Go figure.

Another shot of the primed room.

I finished priming and the ceiling tiles still hadn’t shown up but I felt like I had accomplished something because in the other areas of the house, everything was moving at a snail’s pace.  

This was the beginning of my bubble being burst. You have to stay tuned for Part 5 to see how it all came to a head and what I had to do to get it back on track. The trials and tribulations of renovations are no joke, seriously. I’m about to get into the thick of it and I don’t want you to miss any of it so stay tuned.

Let me know if you’ve ever done a renovation and what your pain points were.

Until next time.