Spatially challenged

Spatially challenged is what I am. Paul (aka The Superhero) came over last Friday to help with the thresholds. After finishing up one in record time he left the task of completing the second one to what I considered capable hands. We watched him do the first one, it made sense, and we learned. Then he left. Ugh. We must have stared at that threshold for a good hour trying to figure it out. Mostly it came down to the fact that when they added the bathroom in the hallway, they had to knock out a section in the kitchen. This resulted in two different sets of baseboards and trim in the kitchen. One on one side of the door and one on the other. The cork floor we laid was also not exactly straight so all of these complex issues and angles threw us into a full blown argument (we really are not allowed to do home improvement together anymore...remind me if I forget). We threw in the towel for the weekend and so, quite nicely, Paul came back over last night and finished it up. He admitted it was a bit more complex than the first one but he still managed it - something I could not have done on my own. So the realization is that I am spatially challenged - especially with things like this. I get it in theory but in practice I fail. I figure it is good to know one's limitations in life.

So the plan is to get these puppies sanded and then a few coats of polyurethane this weekend. Perhaps by Sunday we will have a completed kitchen! Believe it or not!

We got them but now what?

The new thresholds are here but now what we do? I went over to Owen Gray and Sons in Brewer to get the new thresholds milled (a nice maple) and so they cut in a little room underneath to account for the half inch of the cork floor. Now we need to figure out how to cut them. For some reason, I thought this would be easy (which I should know better by now). But I realize we asked them to make them 1.5 inches wider - so where does the 1.5 inches fall now? I think I'm going to get some cardboard and make a template. Any other ideas?

Thresholds in the making

I finally was able to get over to the place in Brewer before they closed and so they say it will be about a week until the new thresholds are done. The guy looked at me like I was crazy so I wasn't sure if I wasn't make sense or if I'm crazy. I guess we'll see how they turn out. I'm excited!

Off to San Diego for a week - hopefully by the time I return they'll be done and our kitchen will be just about done!

The world's tiniest bathroom

Since my threshold-fixing dreams were dashed today I decided to do a little bit more in-depth research on our bathroom renovation plans for this summer. We're going to update the fixtures in the downstairs bathroom and redo the floor and do a pretty major reno on the upstairs (full) bathroom.

As you can see from the photo above, this may very well be the world's smallest half-bath. In fact, it's probably more like a quarter-bath. It measures, literally, 67"x 23" at its widest point. Yes, really. We figure this was once the coat closet that they bumped out into the kitchen to fit the toilet in. Well, given its smaller than small dimensions, finding new fixtures to fit this space has been anything but easy. While the toilet should be relatively easy to find a new sink that will fit is not. Everything I seem to find is just too wide (front to back). It looks like we may need to just the use the one that is there with an updated faucet but, as you can see below, the plumbing runs on the inside of the room. As there doesn't appear much hope in bringing in the wall to hide the plumbing (!) we're pretty much stuck with it as it is. My hope was to get a nice mini pedestal but seeing as that is not doable I was wondering about getting the plumbing re-chromed. Does anyone know if this is possible? Perhaps I wouldn't loathe it as much if it was prettier to look at. As it is now, it's kind of rusted and ugly (and a bit convoluted - while I don't know much about plumbing I wonder about the overly complicated piping under there...).

My pain threshold(s)

I know, cheesy, but definitely at my limit with the threshold ridiculousness. I'm off to deal with it today, following up on a tip from our good friends at Bangor Bungalow. There's supposedly a great place in neighboring Brewer that does wood work of all kinds so I'm going to schlep the thresholds over and see what they can do for us. As I mentioned earlier, we have a gap issue between our new cork floor and the existing thresholds from the kitchen to the the three entryways that exit the kitchen. I'm hoping they'll be able to fabricate new ones for us, probably using the router or table saw that I don't have to make up for the gap. I look forward to seeing what can be done and crossing off the second to the last item on our kitchen list (the last is the molding).

Well, as a follow-up, it appears that the woodworking place is not open on the weekends so I'm on hold until next week. To pass the time this morning, I turned on DIY network and am watching a show called Renovation Realities, featuring people doing actual renovation projects that are nightmarish in scope. I feel my blood pressure going up just by watching this mess. Yikes. I wonder if this is what we look like when we're trying to do this stuff!