Light Townhouse Rehab - Project #6, Week #16
The carpeting was going to be installed in a few days, so our attention turned to finishing the final dirty tasks. I wanted to make sure that there was no chance of us ruining the new carpet by spilling paint, mortar, etc. First up was the basement bathroom. I called it "The Alamo", since for a while, it was the only place of...er...refuge, if you know what I mean. Every other bathroom had been gutted and torn apart during the rehab, and we left this one alone until at least one other bathroom came back online. The first things we did were to yank the toliet and carefully remove the base trim. Once that was done, we scraped up the self-stick vinyl tiles.
Once the flooring was up, we washed the walls and repainted the bathroom. We also spent time repainting the stair railings using the white "Cabinet Coat" paint from Insl-X Coating Systems.
In the master bathroom, I worked on fixing the damaged wallboard found during Week Six. I removed all the water-damaged wallboard and another 6 inces above it. Hopefully going up higher will prevent the damage from happening again. Then I nailed up small pieces of concrete backer board in place of the wallboard. These pieces were then "buttered" with thinset mortar.
Tiles were then place on the thinset, and allowed to set. Instead of using grout between the tiles, I used mildew-resistant bathroom caulk. I hoping that this does a better job of keeping the moisture from getting behind the tiles.
With all the dirty work complete, the carpet guys came and did their thing. Here's a few pictures of how things looked right after the carpet install:
Master Bedroom:
Entrance:
Finished Basement:
After the carpet was installed, I added new vinyl flooring to the basement bathroom. I did not want ceramic tile in the basement bathroom, since during the winter the tile would feel cold on the feet. This is glueless "loose fit" vinyl, and the white strips below are double-sided tape. After the vinyl was trimmed and secure, the base trim and toilet were re-installed.
The vinyl and carpet met at the doorway, which required the installation of a transition strip. Since the floor was concrete, I used TapCon screws to secure the strip.
The carpet was then trimmed to length and inserted into the transition strip. A scrap 2x4 and a hammer was used to bend down the lip of the transition strip and lock the carpet into place. Don't ever use a hammer directly on the strip - it will cause small dents that look terrible!
Here's a look at the completed bathroom.
The carpet and padding was a bit thicker than the original stuff that was in the house, so I had to trim a little bit from all the interior doors with a circular saw. To keep the wood from splintering or marring the door as the saw slid across it, the bottom was wrapped in masking tape while being cut.
One of the last things to do before putting the house on the market was to install a new front door. The old one was somewhat beat up, and I found a full glass one on clearance at Home Depot. Here's how it looked with the new door installed. With the new flowers, shrubs and grass the front is looking much better than at the start of the project!
It took about 3 weeks of advertising and showing, and we found a really nice tenant to move in. She asked to have the countertops replaced, and we agreed to do this in the Spring of 2007. So look for another update in April or May!