For the "before" pictures, take a look at the, "Marcia, Where have you been?" post from July 12th.
We had a few bumps in the road on the way to getting it done but we're VERY impressed with the ReBath folks (Oxnard Store). They gave the phrase "Above and Beyond" new meaning! If you have a while, here's the saga...
Monday morning: Shawn, our wonderful guy who was in charge of our installation, showed up at 8am, just as we'd discussed. He laid (layed? lay?) out drop cloths, discussed the project with me, and hauled in the implements of destruction. He was a bit concerned about the little built-out area (about 6 inches) at the end of the shower enclosure. He demolished our bathroom with minimal mess and hauled everything outside. He was super patient with The Curious Ones (yes, Aaron AND me too...) popping in to watch and ask questions. Shawn was surprised that the built-out area caused no problems and said so. I should have warned him then and there!
Our house BITES! What I mean by that is, every time we do a home improvement project we find that the people who built the house were insane and did things in every screwy way possible. At LEAST once during every home improvement project we do, it bites someone in some manner by confounding their best efforts and requiring 3 or 4 extra trips to Home Depot as we, little by little, figure out what's going on. Please note that the home improvement projects have, until now, been done by us, not by professionals, but I still had a LOT of confidence that the house was going to bite Shawn somewhere along the line.
He got everything torn out by about 4 pm and decided he'd go ahead and move the drain that night to be that much farther ahead on Tuesday. The drain needed to be moved as we were converting from a shower to a bathtub. Figuring it would be a 45 minute project, he dove right in.
CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP!
Off went the water. On went the jackhammer and Shawn soon discovered that there were two pipes directly in the way of where he needed to put the drain. Naturally... Okay, no problem, thought Shawn in his naivete. Poor Shawn! He started by cutting the pipes in preparation for putting in elbows to go around the hole. First problem: our pipes aren't the standard gauge. He made a trip to Home Depot (I knew THAT was coming...) and got fittings which would fit. Then the wrestling match began. He welded in one piece after another and, every time he turned the water back on he found that something was leaking. It wasn't his welds. It was coming from somewhere else. Over and over, he tried. around 8 pm he made a phone call asking someone to go back to Home Depot and bring more parts. I later found out that it was his wife, Kirsten, who went and got the parts, brought them to our house, and hauled all the pieces of our old bathroom out to the truck in the dark!
Shawn continued to try to get all the pipes together so we'd have water for the night. He was getting more and more frustrated. I could almost hear the house giggling at him... At almost 10 pm, Shawn got everything together and confidently turned our water back on. Oops! It was STILL leaking. He was SO upset (and trying hard no to show it)! He obviously did NOT want to leave us in the lurch but, as every hardware store in the area was closed at that point, he' didn't have a lot of choice. He jury-rigged it as best he could with towels and (you guessed it!) duct tape so we could get a shower. I told him to relax and go home. What are you gonna do? There's no point in getting all upset about it. Apparently, a LOT of people do...
END Day 1.
Tuesday: Shawn had told me he had a staff meeting so he'd be a little later. He showed up at 9 and got right to work, apologizing all the way for the problem of the night before. It took him more jackhammering and an additional 3 hours to finally find the darn leak and fix it. Smooth sailing from here on, right? Not at OUR house.
Okay, so the rest of what happened really wasn't our house's fault but ours became the project they'll curse for years to come.
Shawn put in the new wall boards to prepare to put in the tub and, around 1 pm, headed out to lunch, saying he'd be back in about an hour and a half with the tub. 3 pm rolls around. No Shawn. Hmmm... This does not bode well. Though I was unaware, the good folks at ReBath were, at that moment, having a fit and trying to figure out how to finish our project in a timely manner because the supplier sent them a 66" tub to fit in our 60" hole!
I've really gotta hand it to them. Every time something came up, they SOLVED the problem before calling me about it. At 3:30 Shawn called and said there was a little problem. Since the 66" tub was NOT going to fit in our bathroom, they'd spent an hour and a half shuffling around projects so they could get a tub installed in our house. We had ordered a nice 19" deep soaking tub. Shawn called me a told me they could install a 21" deep JETTED tub for us since they didn't have ours. In addition, since it was a slightly different color, they'd change out the toilet to match and we'd have several thousand dollars worth of upgrades for free if the new color was okay with us. Shawn hauled the tub to the house, we broke out the color samples of all the parts, I swapped out the trim color of paint and we were good to go. WHOO HOO! Free jets!!!!!!!!
We even ended up with an upgraded toilet with a seat and lid that refuse to slam. See, here it is letting itself down gently... :>) It even looks like it's smiling.
Before the day was out, the tub was in, the walls were starting to go up, the electrician had pulled wires for the new dedicated circuit for the tub and installed the lights and fan. From potential disaster to serious progress in one day!
END Day 2.
I never have to scrub grout again!!!
The painter came to start the resurfacing of the walls and I went to go pick up Aaron at his Lego Green Engineering Class. Then came the phone call...
It was Blair, calling from a ReBath truck rolling through Fresno on her way up to the Bay Area. Another small little problem... ANOTHER distributor had scheduled delivery of our counter for Tuesday (the day befor). Blair had called them when it didn't show up and they blithely informed her they weren't carrying that stone anymore. Lovely... Apparently, Shawn was being a bit quiet because he knew things were going to pot again.
Once again, the ReBath Folks had SOLVED the problem BEFORE calling me. Blair was on her way to pick up a raw slab of the stone she'd spent all morning hunting down on the phone. The plan was to pick it up, return to Oxnard and deliver it to their fabricator, and get it cut and polished for us to have installed. The bugaboo? It was going to take about a week for the fabricator to get it done. What NOW?!? They already had planned and prepared to install another slab, sink, and faucet for us to use in the meantime.
When Blair called she was obviously prepared for me to go ballistic. I burst out laughing! I just don't see a point to getting all upset and yelling at people. All of them were so obviously doing everything they could in the situation. How could I get mad? I mentioned that Shawn had seemed weird that morning. She told me he'd told her SHE had to call this time! :>)
I went home and stuck my head around the corner into the bathroom, asking Shawn, "So, you weren't gonna tell me, huh?" He just smiled and said, " Nope, I told Blair she had to." I called him a chicken and he just smiled again. :>)
By the end of the day the room was painted and the medicine cabinet and linen cabinet had gone in.
That night I went to get hardware for them and was SO looking forward to a bath!! Had to wait for the sealant to cure. Darn!
End Day 3
Thursday was uneventful as far as disasters go. The counter and towel bars, hooks, etc. all went in and the paint was touched up. I came home from getting Aaron to find the place clean, Shawn gone, and a new little friend on the edge of my brand new tub. I think I'll call him Shawn. :>)
The following Friday, Mike came to swap out the counter we'd been using for our own. Here are a few shots of our beautiful bathroom:
We had the linen cabinet recessed into the wall. It's 9 inches deep but only about 3 of them stick out.
Here's the new sink and our dispensers of various items. Our Medicine cabinet has two sections. We share the larger one and the smaller one, on the left, is all mine.
The obligatory candle holders
And the important stuff in the medicine cabinet -- Bubble Bath!!!
Our thanks to all the wonderful people at ReBath who SOLVED all the problems, NEVER left us in the lurch (though it would have been so easy to do...), were friendly and generally lovely people at all times, and left us with a BEAUTIFUL new bathroom!
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