Laboring During the Labor Day Weekend: This Just Isn't Right!

My upstairs bathroom at the start of the renovation.

I'm not the kind of guy who goes out of his way to labor during Labor Day weekend, but I made an exception this weekend. Any halfway-regular reader of this blog knows I don't go out of my way to labor at any time. I used to say work interfered with my social life. That, of course, was when I had a social life. Now I have to face the fact that I'm just lazy. Even without a social life to speak of, I still don't like working.

Several things are competing for my time. I have several videos for just3things that require editing and uploading. Autotrader assigned a story due the morning after Labor Day. A deadline and a pay check are compelling motivators. I wrote the story on Saturday and submitted it Sunday morning. 

Here it is with most of the demo done and the new water lines in.

Finally, my upstairs-bathroom remodel continues to drag on my bank account and time. As with every undertaking in this 60-year-old house requiring anything more than a screw driver, this project is punctuated with skyrocketing costs and much greater demands on my time than I budgeted. My goal was to have the room functioning – not finished, but functioning – by the Saturday evening before Labor Day. Ha! I crack myself up. Not only is it not functional, the new commode and vanity are resting undisturbed in the upstairs spare bedroom. 

What it looks like now.

I did lay the new flooring last week. This took longer than I anticipated, but I can chalk that up to never having laid a floor before. It's only vinyl tile, but it did require a lot of measuring and cutting. It's done, and I'm fairly pleased with the results, in spite of it being a half a step up the quality ladder from linoleum. Because of the neighborhood in which I live, there's not point in investing big bucks in the flooring. Anyone who buys this joint isn't going to pay a premium for ceramic tile. Since my goal is to sell this place in the next year or so, I measure everything by the return I calculate I will get when I sell it. I'm not going to spend money on which there will be little or no return.

What got me off the dime to begin this project in earnest was visiting the Home Depot down the street from me a couple of weeks ago. It happened to be inventory day. Whenever I'm in a home-improvement store with a little time to kill, I wander around, dreaming. Yes, I know, I used to dream about sex; now, my fantasies revolve around paint colors and power tools. It's hell getting older! I headed down the bathroom-vanity aisle and discovered a 48-inch vanity top no longer on the store's books that the inventory had uncovered like some ancient-Egyptian archaeological find. It had just been marked down from $239 to $57. Dashing back to the front of the store, I grabbed a double-tiered cart and headed back to the vanity aisle. Fortunately, Honda had dropped off a new Ridgeline pickup for my driving pleasure that week.

At this point I had a vanity top in search of a bathroom remodel. The stage was set, the die cast: I had no choice, but to forge ahead. About $1,200, two trips to the dump, 11 trips to assorted home-improvement stores and 30 hours of work later, I still don't see light at the end of the tunnel. I will be gone 18 or so days in September; I don't anticipate making much headway this month. Did I mention that my other bathroom is also under construction. Yep, I'm redoing some of the drywall around the shower. For the time being, I am showering in the upstairs bath and doing everything else in the downstairs one.

The downstairs-bath project is child's play and won't require more than a few hours to complete. I just haven't gotten back to it, well, because I just haven't felt like it. No doubt it will require someone wanting to come visit to get me off my duff to finish that project and then paint the room. Here again, no social life. Who in the hell wants to visit me? I think I'm safe.