A Lesson Learned
Posted: April 19, 2013 Filed under: Home Improvements | Tags: architecture, Bathroom remodel, construction, heated floor, Home improvements, quality contractor, Remodeling, tile surround, Tile work Leave a commentSo one thing I take pride in, is planning a project thoroughly. So that when it comes time to execute, I have all the pieces of the puzzle ready to go together. Recently I completed a bathroom for a friend in the business; he is an electrician. He provided me with all of the material for the tile floor and tub surround, or so i thought. I went along with my normal routine like usual.
Hardibacker the walls and floors. There was an extra step for this one, as we installed a in floor electric heating system.
Tape and seal seams.
Install waterproof membrane.
Set ledger board layout tile and start tiling.
This was all going off without a hitch; no problems whatsoever, not a cloud in the sky. Or so I thought.
Here is were my lesson was learned. I got about 85% finished and realized that the border they supplied me was short by 4 pieces!
DOAH!
Okay remain calm, call customer to inquire about the tile. He told me, “Oh call mohawk tile, that is were we got it.” Well sure enough they can’t identify the tile, can’t tell me who can, and don’t know what to do, double DOAH!
So what am I left to do but chip out what I already installed and replace it with something new. Now, the finished project turned out great, maybe better than it would have with the tiles originally supplied by the customer, depending on your taste.
Bottom line is always make sure you have enough material to finish a job prior to starting. Or at least know you can get more of it if you run short.
Here you see version 1.0 of the shower surround.
Take note of the border looks okay right well if i only had enough to finish
This is as far as i got when i realized my dilemma.
Floor almost done just some intricate cuts left to do.
Here you see the new border installed.
An Array of photos of the finished product. The customer wanted to continue the bullnose on the edge of the shower surround to the floor as baseboard. I was skeptical but it turned out great. Even got to do some mitered corners for the tile baseboard, a first for me.
Closet Rehab: Expanding Storage Space in an Older Home
Posted: April 18, 2013 Filed under: Home Improvements | Tags: construction, contractor, Home improvement, quality, Remodeling, rennovations Leave a commentThe surrounding suburbs of Philadelphia contain many beautiful homes, especially along the main line. Areas like Bryn mawr, Villanova, Radnor have homes that were built in the 1940’s and 1950’s that sit on lots of land, have gorgeous views and a lot of custom touches. Problem is, many of these older homes do not contain much storage to speak of. This last project I finished consisted of some custom construction and renovations in a Main Line home built in the 1950’s. Here is some before pictures of the first closet.
There were some built-in’s in the closet, however they were not very helpful.
There was some duct work that needed a custom plywood enclosure.
Here are the after pictures. As you can see the small door was removed and the wall was
re-framed to accept a modern bi-fold door 48″ is much more useful of the space given.
Here you can see the custom plywood enclosure for the duct work.
Now they have a nice clean usable space to create a new closet in.
Here is the second closet remodel. There were two rooms that shared a wall.
The room pictured below had the closet a 30″x90″ space.
The adjoined room had no closet.
You can see some of the “built-in’s” There was a large portion of this closet that was occupied by a “cedar chest” type closet in a closet situation. There was no lighting in this closet. Finished product. A new door was cut in and framed in the unfortunate room with no prior closet. Lighting was added to both closets. The closet was divided in half by a plywood partition wall. 
