Black & White

I can't help it. 

Before I go any further, I have to include a "before" photo of the small hallway bathroom, which was the only functioning bathroom with a shower or tub when we bought the house:

Thankfully, most of that hideousness disappeared along with the demolition, and ever since mid-July, that bathroom has looked more or less like this:



But just a couple of weeks ago, it transformed magically into this:

Just a Trim

Back in March, when they demolished the second floor, the contractors salvaged almost all of the original trim.

For a long time, it sat in big piles in our utility room, but eventually they hauled it away, cleaned it up and repainted it all.





Once the floors were done and the walls were painted, they began the painstaking process of putting it everything back together:





(You'll be pleased to know that the piece above did, in fact, end up in the hall.)

Stairmaster

While the floor refinishing was underway, the stairs also got some TLC, in the form of a heavy cleaning and re-varnishing the treads.

Here's the before:





And the after:

More About Floors

Waaaaay back in July, I mentioned that our original, 1894 pine board floors were undergoing a lovely renaissance.

This is a major plus, since the walls had all been built over the floors, and extracting the floorboards in order to replace them was going to be kind of a big deal.

Sanding them down alone was a major operation, but here's what they looked like when smooth and clean:





And here's what they looked like post-varnish:






As it turns out, the loveliest floors are in my blue-gray craft room in the back of the house, which are made of a different, harder wood with narrower boards.

It may just be that it was replaced at some point along the line, but the going theory is that the room was originally a sleeping porch, so it was floored with a more resilient type of wood.

Here's the before:




And the after:

Shower Power Redux

Now that I'm way behind on posting remodeling photos, I have the luxury of posting start-to-finish photos on things like the shower.

On the down side, this method doesn't really convey how incremental this whole business is. But let me assure you: it was incremental.

Back in early July, the tilers started with this giant pile of tile in our basement:



First they built a shower base in the master bathroom:

Followed by tile:



Followed by grout:

Then fast-forward to just a few days ago in mid-October, when the glass door arrived!  All we need is a little more plumbing, and this will actually be a shower...