Toilets and Baths, Oh My!

In my past house renovation, we had just replaced all of our toilets from American Standard to Kohler after 16 years.  We were having problems with them almost overflowing, one at a time, because the parts were getting filled with sediment.  The reason for Kohler, was that when we renovated, we planned to use Kohler Sinks and Tubs and wanted the whites to match.

We moved in here and found we had these toilets called Pro-flo.  They were not white but a cheap gray-white glaze.  They didn't go with anything.  They were not comfort height and for the life of me - except saving a few dollars - why they would install anything but comfort height is beyond me, again this is a custom builder.  The sinks are no name and the tubs, Bootz, to be the bottom tier in terms of  size and you can get them at Home Depot for under $200 each retail.  They do not have non-slip surface on the floor of the tub and they are actually dangerous in that way.  Of course, they didn't caulk any of the tubs.  

To make matters worse, in my downstairs guest bathroom, the toilet plumbing was not 12" on center but rather 10".   This is a normal size bathroom with no space contraints but if you are a custom builder, wouldn't you ask your plumber to move the plumbing?  I know I would.  Nope this guy shoves a tiny, Pro-flo 10" on center toilet, against a wall with the tiniest tank I have ever seen.  It barely fit a small square box of tissues. 

So I get on Build.com and find a replacement toilet.  The Kohler Highline actually comes in a 10" on center, comfort height, in a normal size everything and once installed has a normal sized tank and lid and doesn't even hit the wall!  Wow, what a concept.  

So I get the toilets in (and pay extra for quiet close seats) and prior to installation, I tried to sell the Pro-flo toilets for $20 each cause maybe someone needs 5 toilets.  Couldn't get rid of them.  I quickly changed the price to free just so I wouldn't have to pay $20 each to have them carried off.  No one wanted them at free either.  I paid $20 each to have them carried off.  Do you see a trend here?  Put in some cheap stuff, that no one wants, in order to say, it has a toilet, it has lights, etc.  If someone want to make the house nice, everything goes in the landfill unless someone at the Habitat Restore happens to want it.     

Though I can't change all of this, the builder should've installed 32" tubs cause that's what was framed out.  My 2 guest room tubs will remain as is but we are upgrading venting, lighting, counter, faucet and possibly cabinet.  To save some money, the builder opted to install undersized tubs, 30" wide and 16" tall and then proceeded to spend the money on tiling to the floor where the tub would've been had it been 32".  

Picking Paint colors and Finishes and a little more

When we first moved in we knew immediately, that we had to repaint this home.  It actually was similar in color to what we left but much of our furniture was damaged and we knew were going with a different color scheme and style.  When our decorator arrived the first time, we began talking about the trim color and I asked her what was wrong with it.  She immediately pointed out that the builder used white, which really had a dingy appearance and a mattte finish (that honestly appeared and felt more like Primer) which comes in direct contact with the creamy white kitchen cabinets.  First thing the next morning, off to the paint store we go to get a series of "white" samples to color match the cabinets. After looking at colors in all lighting and at all times of the day, SW Natural Choice was it.

With that, around that same time, I had recently read an article titled, Painting Like the French and like the concept so we talked about it.  She thought the idea would work well here.  It's where you pick one color and paint the ceiling, trim and walls using it but in the appropriate finishes.  Satin walls, flat ceiling and semi gloss on trim.  The builder had opted to paint the entire house in flat paint.  It was awful and like I said, I really don't think he ever painted the trim at all.

Going back to my last house, I had experience with using different shades of the same color.  My bedroom had a sleeping area and a sitting room with a large bay window and vaulted ceiling.  The way the rooms intersected, the bedroom shared the width into the sitting area so the room felt very large.  When I painted those 2 rooms, I painted a lighter color in the bedroom knowing when I used the next shade darker with the vault and the bay window, that the colors would look different from each other.  The result after all that work was they looked exactly the same.  I realized at that moment, never to do that again that light and reflections will make the paint look different on their own. 

I really wanted, in addition to the calm creamy white, a nice pleasant blue.  She choose SW Samovar Silver to compliment and it's beautiful!  I used that color in the diningroom, the office across the hall, the powder room and the downstairs guest room.  At some point, when I correct the disaster of a laundry room layout, I plan to paint those walls the same pleasant blue color or possibly repaint the cabinets in a steel blue gray and use the Natural Choice for the walls, ceilings, trim.  That's on our list to discuss.  

So as we rid the house of the flat gold walls and ceilings and the brown walls in the bonus room, the house reflected a lot more light.  The trim going from matte to semi-gloss further made the space more pleasant.  I painted my dining room and when I got to the coffers it's because of that that I say it was never painted, only primed, because I was painting over caulk.  Normally you caulk and then paint.  In any event, it took a week but the room is gorgeous now!  

The upstairs 3 bedrooms and 2 baths had a light beige ceiling with pink for the girls rooms and a royal blue for the boy room.  Having one cohesive color made the space very pleasant and calm.  So that was step one on making this house ours.  That was just under 2 years ago.  

After that was done the carpet had to go.  It was the cheapest carpet I ever walked on.  The fibers were too spread apart and you could feel the backing under foot.  The builder, and his only excuse of "it's not required", didn't bother to insulate between floors nor did he insulate bathrooms.  I DO NOT recommend doing the bare minimum in order to save a few hundred dollars, especially soming from someone calling himself a "custom" builder.  He is NOT a custom builder but merely making the claim.  If your builder wants to charge you an unreasonable amount for simple upgrades that should be SOP, do not hire him or her. 

Anyway, about $10,000 later we threw away his cheap, lowest quality on the planet, 4lb padding and went with an 8lb pad.  We got rid of his $1 a SF carpet and went with $5SF with a soft pile in order to reduce the gaps under every bedroom entrance door to add privacy.  

Another benefit of me doing this, is as the rooms were gutted, it was clear that the floor, and in particular, the space under the baseboard behind the nail strips was NEVER cleaned before the carpet went down.  They just laid it down over the sawdust and sheet rock dust.  It's a crying shame that "clean up" isn't required".  I worked like a dog to stay ahead of the carpet guys.  As they gutted, I wouldn't let them install carpeting until the foor was completely vaccumed.  It took all day and at one point they caught up to me and I had to tell them to take a break.  I would't let them lay carpet while 4 year old construction debris remained.  

So between the paint and the flooring, we were on to a new looking home.

Bedroom Changes

We are using the Jack and Jill bedrooms for our child.  He's very tall and needed a King bed.  The rooms in the house are tiny so we opted to put the king bed in the smaller of the 2 rooms and turned the larger room into the sitting area.  

This summer we will gut the bathroom and rid it of all of the mismatched materials and dumb things the builder did.  I'll have a field day with that one and in the end that bathroom will be transformed to a spa-like retreat, thoughfully planned out and very functional.

In the meantime, we corrected several nuisances to make life functional.  First, the cable was placed in the only location that absolutely wouldn't work, so it was rerun.  The jack was located behind the right hand closet door on 2' of wall space.  That wall runs perpendicular to the front wall with windows that provided 1' of space.  No one would EVER put a tv there!  In order to reach a likely tv location, the cable wire ran across the closet entrance and was taped to the floor in front of the bedroom entrance.   Now it's runs from a wall location that can reach the tv and is hidden behind a dresser.  Problem solved, you are welcome Mr. "Builder".

The closets themselves have double doors and previously when opened them, it was like staring at caves on the right and lefthand sides.  In the pitch black you couldn't see a thing.  Our "Fix It" guy was able to add canned lights in the ceilings on both sides of the closet so everything in the closet can be seen.  He used a contact sensor so when you open the doors, the light comes on automatically.  Next, he patched all the mess the tearing out of the old made and I painted the closets, SW Pussywillow is the color - a sort of Gray with a little Taupe thrown in.  It's really a pleasant shade for the backdrop.

Once that was complete we were ready for the install. We used a professional closet company and redesigned the width of the shelves as well as the depth.  The previous fixed-shelves were 11" deep and of equal distance, the long hang was way too high and the bar was not only too close to the shelf but the clothes hung too far off the wall.  The brackets were just plain stupidity and you couldn't slide anything along the length of the bar.  All of those issues have been corrected with 14" deep shelves on the right and left, 26" wide and 16" deep center unit with six movable shelves.  Pictured is the wider of the two closets so we added the 6" deep drawers for a nice touch.  The closets look like a boutique now!  It cost around a bit but wow, the storage and the organization, not to mention how you feel when getting ready, is like day and night!

Office Light Renovation

Here is the old versus the new light in my office. The old light didn't light the room properly.  It was way too small, for the large space in which is was hung.  It was hung too close to the ceiling and with shades, it barely illuminated the room at night.  No one wanted it for $15, so on the Habitat Restore it went.

This light fixture broadcasts light throughout the entire room.  Of course, being on a dimmer switch, I can set the level to my liking.  The scale matches the room size and the spread of the bulbs illuminates the entire room.  I used this same fixture in my living room in my last renovation and since we moved so quickly, I hardly had the chance to enjoy it.  I'm glad I was able to use it again here.

Lighting Matters

If you are working with a builder, make sure the "allowances" allow you to buy something more than something online and on sale.  For the purpose of building, banks allow certain amounts of money for each part of the construction.  If a $500,000 home is built they should've spent around $10,000 on lighting fixture or 2% of the cost to build the home.  I live in a area where they are trying to make so much profit for themsleves, that they are not putting into the home what you are paying for.  In other words, people are over paying for shotty workmanship.  

We are in the process of changing out every fan and every light in this house. We are about 3/4 of the way through.  The previous lighting had unrelated finishes to anything.  It's as if they went to home depot and bought out their sale rack.  In my previous post, you saw the master bathroom changes.  It makes an enormous difference when you can see. 

These are some of the examples.  On the left is the old foyer fixture.  It cast a funky green light.  I tried to sell it and ended up giving it away to the Habitat Restore.  

On the right is what we now have.  It takes 8 40 walt bulbs and is much larger so the spread of light is amazing.  It's hung just over 7' from the floor.

Guest Room Closet

 And here is another example of pure stupidity.  This closet is cheaply built and under-utilized space.  This closet measures 5' x 5' with 10' ceilings.  Look at the lack of use it provides!!  I have 1 storage closet in the house in an upstairs hall and in my last home I had 4!  A few months back, I was staring at the games and puzzles that I had stacked up on the lower shelf and realized we rarely have guests and when we do it's been 4-5 days at best.  That long hanging rod is above my head which is completely the wrong height!  The shelves are 11" deep and the rod construction is so poor that the clothes are way off the wall and out in front of the shelf.  The rod is too close to the shelf and the brackets are so often, I have to constantly pick up the hangers and move clothes from one side to the other side of the bracket.   But what I realized is that I need is shelving to organize my things while still providing extra blankets and pillowsand the empty rods for guests.  


I have to point this out because this should've failed inspection.  There was no electrical recepticle in this ceiling.  The flourescent light was toggle bolted to the sheetrock.  I had to run out and buy the recepticle so it could be added in order to install a low profile LED light.  Now there are 2 50-cent piece sized holes that require a huge and messy patch job as a result of imporper installation.

I contacted a few closet companies and decided for this and my son's closets, we would redo them right away.  Another issue is that these shelves are 11" deep and all through the house are the same!  My master closet is HUGE and this builder used this same BS "closet" system in there, too.  No clothes when folded fit on an 11" shelf.  Shoes of under Men's size 10 fit, otherwise they have to be placed on a diagonal.  Here is the design I came up with.  We are gutting and patching 3 closets tomorrow.  Hopefully these are not shot up with nails, another problem, because closets are supposed to be screwed into the studs but this builder had added all of these wood strips and then attached everything to them.  The guy doing the work told me all the closets he has demo-ed were all shot up with nails and will need sheet rock repair.  More mess!


OK, big reveal, this is a closet!!  Thank you Closet Factory of Apex!!

A Pantry Should be The Workhorse of Your Kitchen

This pantry in my last house is roughly 5' X 5'.  Because when I designed and built my house, I centered the door on the entrance wall and it allowed full door casings in and out and left 2 narrow spaces - left and right - as you entered.  I loved the tablecloth storage that I did in that space small space and it removed them from my front hall coat closet, the only other place I had to store them.  That space may have been around 6" deep but look at the usefulness of it.  
These ceilings are 10' tall so I was able to get 2 shelves 6" deep that were perfect for things to be arranged for easy access.  Sometimes there is an opportunity to build a narrow shelf like this above the entrance door.  The key is, it you have narrow spaces use them and if you have a small pantry, think "up".  

One thing I failed to do was space the shelves unevenly for specific items.  You can clearly see I spaced them evenly and I probably lost 2 shelves.  

On the left where you see the cans, we (me and my trim carpenter) were always going to add another narrow shelf above the shelf with the cans, along the left side, splitting that space and doubling shelf space.  

So here is the house I am now in.  Not only is it a terrible design, the materials they used and the imagination put into this is about 40 years old.  (And this same cheap crappy design was used all through the house for all of the closets!!)  Do you see the strips of wood and brackets?  No one does that anymore!  They screw the brace into the stud using no brackets and attached the shelf to the brace from above.  Then they face the shelves to prevent warping.  And they do not allign the seams.  They use good quality strong wood not this stuff, whatever it is.  

I am going to be redoing this entire pantry.  It's smaller than my last one and sorely less efficient.  And to cap it off, the builder put in an old school flourescent light - like from the 70's!  That has already been repaced and an LED can that gives better light and isn't as bright.  I still have to paint the ceiling though, ugh!  This builder installed fluorescent lights in my laundry room, 1 of the guest closets, and the master closet!  It's disgusting that in a new  house, the builder was that cheap and that it even passes mustard.  The guy who is working with me on replacements said they were "old" when he intalled them.  We never noticed them until we moved in because we had a day to find a house since we sold ours so quickly and were forced to be out within 5 weeks with Christmas in there.

Pictured on the right is the "dumby" wall they built under the stairs, and btw, not a place to put a pantry!  They just "picked a spot" to end the pantry.  Instead, they should have gone back as far as they could've.  They placed the pantry dumby wall at the 68" mark, yes 5'8"!  Turns out there is a air return further down in my diningroom, but still this pantry could extended under the stairs much further.  I am going to attempt to go to 52".  What that will do, is starting on the lowest shelf, I will add appox 18" of shelf. They will shorten as we build up.  In addition, I am adding a toe kick since I would have wood flooring on the found space.  My design is a built-in effect and I'll end up with 8 shelves instead of 5 and the floor where I have things stored.  Each shelf has a specific purpose and one shelf will even clear my counter and cabinets of all of my small appliances and make them handy for use.  The current shelves are 16" deep and the bracing and bracket all get in the way of putting things on the shelves, effectively making them 15" deep.  Mine will be 17" or only slightly deeper because stupidly, they  builder installed the house water shut off valve in the center of the pantry wall.  You can see it behind the open door.  

The key is to have a good trim carpenter on board and I was very lucky to have one when I redid my last pantry.  I would sketch out what I wanted and he would pick up the wood and cut it for me.  I would prime, sand, and get the 1st coat of paint on it.  Then he would return to install it.  I had to caulk, fill nail holes and add the final coat of paint.  But in the end it was custom and worth it!

Master Bath Lighting and then some

The home we bought was a pretty penny and when you spend that type of money you really don't expect a 4 year old home to be a fixer upper, but it's turning into one.  The bad news is the expense, the good news is making this house what it could've and should've been had the builder been good at his job.   This guy has NO DESIGN experience and shouldn't make ANY design choices, I mean none, nada.  He's awful.  

We've painted the whole place, recarpeted the whole place, replaced every appliance we could except for the microwave and the cooktop - though the cooktop does not work properly.  We replaced all the toilets.  Now we are working on closets, improving storage and lighting.  So far 20 fixtures have been removed with round 2 coming soon.  Do you think I can sell the old stuff?  Nope, no one wants them!!  I had to take them all to Habitat Restore.  I almost asked the builder if he wanted them back.  When done, every light and fan in this house will be replaced.  And a cohesive design will be seen and felt.  

Here is what the builder put in the Master Bathroom!!  And he paried it with cheap faucets in a different finish and oil rubbed bronze knobs and hinges.  Now what's funny is when we got rid of the mini version of the "chandalier" you see pictured that hung in my back stairwell, the decorative piece wasn't ever installed on the bottom.  When you looked up, you saw bolts, not to mention the stariwell walls were painted in flat either brown or gold paint, I can't even remember but it was like a cave because of lack of light. 

Does anyone know what this stuff might have cost him?  To me the quality is "what was on sale" since nothing relates to any anything to create a design.  In the master bath, the sinks are on separate vanities, raise your hand if you think he added 2 light switches.  One at each sink - for each adult.  Yup, you guessed it, to save money he added just one switch.  If you want to turn on the switch, you have to walk all the way back to the door to turn it on.  To further save money when he installed the towel bars, there is 1 bar that we have to share and 1 ring at 1 sink.  

Additionally, we replace the "noisemaker" whcih is the term we coined for the world's tiniest , noisiest and most inefficient vent on the planet that draws out no humidity.  It rattled like no one's business and does nothing more than that.  

To further support my zig and zag theory, I would think when you look at a vaulted ceiling, you would place the vent on the vault closest to the SHOWER.  Nope, this fool put the vent on the side closest to the door.  I couldn't wait to have it removed and we added a Panosonic super quiet super CFM (actually duel speed) and we installed it set to the higher speed.  But in all fairness, the master bath in any new home should have a HV minimum on a double switch or HVL on a triple switch.  To add to the misery, not only did he not do that, it's a vent only and the vault on the attic side is completely closed in and un-acessible, so we can't change it if we wanted to.

See the cave of a master shower, he opted not to add a light, probably because it costs too much!  Like a whopping $30 for the can and $8 for a bulb plus labor when all there was was framing.  I am adding one when we got the master bath but for now the height of this chandilier and the spread of the light accutually illuminates the shower, so I can wait on that.  

The chandalier is Gabby (pictured with fully lit) and the 4-bulb lights, Capital (dimmed some.)  We used this combination in my last master bath and it's amazing!

We are completely gutting the master and resuing eveything we have bought so far, but we have a few other project ahead of it.  For now, the new lighting, on dimmers, oh my gosh!  The ambiance is beautiful.  So it's an improvement when coupled with a working vent.  

Garage Storage Sheet Rocked Over

After staring at a blank wall for almost 2 years and tripping over cases of beverages as I exit my car, curiousity got me.  It finally occured to me that it was possible that my builder just sheet rocked over valuable useable space underneath the back stairs just inside the house.  I don't know why I always thought part of the space may have been used for a bath on the otherside of the back hallway, but it wasn't.   So I had my fix it guy cut a small hole to peek inside only to find out the ENTIRE space is hollow.  Sadly in addition, we found the space vaguely insulated, one piece even laying on the floor for lack of stapling.  As you can see, construction on the far side has been compromised in more than one way, the hanging stud, the spliced stud and the crappy wood this guy chose to work with.  The hole cut on the backside of the tub is as troubling as it is baffling.  It was never sheet rocked over and then worse, was never insulated.  Pictured is the moment we opened the space. 


So there are more than one unfortunate issues we ran into.  If this guy could ever zig, he zagged.  So fortunately for us (or me) the studs we choose to open DID NOT contain the water lines but the section directly to the right of our opening does.  They are not together either.  One is tacked to the left stud and the other to the right stud.  There was no way to rerun this stuff so my opening is smaller than I had hoped.  Originally we planned to open the entire wall up but with the water lines feeding my wet bar above, I had to punt and opt for a 30" or so opening.  Still, what I will gain is (4) 16" deep shelves 2 of which will be the full length of 4' 10" and then gradually shortening as the underside of the stairs impedes my length.  But this will add some VERY much needed out of the way storage and I am excited to have it.  

But here is the bigger issue.  In examining the big picture, pictured you can see a refrigerator on a 19" raised platform and I'm sure you are thinking what the heck?  See this particular builder has built this model before.  And he's lazy or cheap (or both) and decided not to change his blueprint to express that since hot water heaters are tankless and there isn't a need for a rasied hot water heater on grade with the floor height, he rightfully and in a hurry, should've removed that space from the crawl space and it should've been part of the garage floor.  Additionally, he should've done the same for the space under the stairs.  This way, the cubbies and hooks AKA "mudroom" could've been located here allowing for a secondary refrigerator to be in my house and not in a space meant, eons ago, for a hot water heater.  


Here we moved the refrigerator outlet around to the right side of the refrigerator and opened up the left side of the opening a few more inches.  We added a double 2"X6" header above the opening.  The few pieces of insulation they used was added to the tub wall.  There was basically another wall added in front of that so we added a total of about 40' of R15 insulation on all walls and the underside of the staircase.  My fix it guy added an LED light.  Pictured, it's painted SW Natural Choice. 

If you are building, constantly look at the space as it's framed and snag unused space for practical uses and don't let builders sheet rock over them.  It's your house.