Pulp Bath Reno 2

Pulp Deck

And then the elusive last bag of grout arrived….and we were off to the races. Shower wall tile grout applied, fixtures installed and, drum roll please…the Pulp Bath Reno 2 was open for business!

That’s right, we are now fully able to use the newly renovated bathroom, nothing but final touch ups and minor adjustments to be made. It’s been a good 6 months since we were last able to make use of it, don’t forget, we opened up the ceiling in the shower so we could access the plumbing below that shower in the original Pulp Bath Reno 1, so let’s just say, it’s been a while.

As mentioned, this past week we were able to complete the shower wall tile grout, which allowed us to install the fixtures, aka, the shower valve, shower head, diverter valve and adjacent shower sprayer plus the shower curtain rod (and curtain). Full disclosure, we left a towel in the floor drain to prevent debris from going down it, subsequently grouted the drain cover in so it was not easily removable and then noticed it all when we turned the water on and watched it fill up like a tub! The towel thing certainly worked for both debris….and now water! Anyway, had to do a little grout loosening but eventually were able to pull the drain grate off and remove said towel, a win win!

In addition, we added a homemade door threshold (had to account for the level changes from approach hall to the shower tile floor), rehung the door (which had to be cut down to account for the new threshold) and then got the thermostat installed for the new heated floor system, which works great and will be a pleasure come next winter.

As mentioned last week, we also have been dallying with the Pulp Deck project, as the weather has certainly changed to the spring/summer mode thing for good (fingers crossed). This week we putt the finish touches on the granite paver patio that is part of the deck project and will house the soon to be relocated hot tub and BBQ smoker. Part of completing the patio was having to make cuts to a few slabs of granite so they fit into our layout plan. We’ve cut sandstone pavers before but this was the first foray into granite paver slab cutting so not exactly sure what to expect, but a few on-line searches indicted it was doable, just needed a diamond edge circular saw blade and some water to keep it cool. Figured to start with a real small cut just to see if it truly was going to work and lo and behold, it sure did! So made a total of 4 cuts, each increasing by a quarter inch or so (slabs were and inch and a quarter thick) and then turned it sideways and used the work table as an edge. With a little lift and drop, the cut slab snapped off, nice and clean. With our cuts made, set those pavers, did a little leveling and then filled the seams with paver grout (it’s like sand with a little adhesive in it). Wet that down and pavers were locked in, looking great!

Some progress pics adjacent and below. See you next week!