What is the opposite from progress?

It has been a few days since my last posting. Most of you are wondering what the tile looks like because it is probably almost finished. Unfortunately I feel as if we are not any farther than we were a week ago. Once all of the walls, floor and ceilings were closed in, some problems came up. Since then I have had to call Jason in to act as a sort of Construction Manager... for a small 5' x 7' renovation project. Unfortunately I'm headed to Chicago tomorrow for work and then off to NY for thanksgiving. Pile a deadline on top of that for work and I have had little to no time to keep an eye on the project. Jason helped point out a few significant problems and we had to make Nelson redo a decent amount of work. I finally had a chance to clean up and they were done with the lower level mess, but its now back to a dusty construction site.

First lets start with the status of the trash pile... Hard to tell from this night photo from my deck, but it is taller than me. Not kidding.

Saturday I cleaned the crap out of my house since they had completely closed in the walls and sanded and painted. It was finally call coming back together. Now... It basically looks like a freakin mess again...

Brad and Jenn slept here the other night. I promise it was MUCH cleaner when they were here. How quickly things can turn around.

Now to the problems:

First the cement board was not installed properly around the tub. This could lead to two problems. First would be the tile will eventually crack along that gap where the tile would only have thinset behind it. Second is water will eventually get behind and find its way in the gap. 

You can see the white tub flange in the photo above. Cement board should  sit on the tub.

Here is the corrected cement board right down to the tub. No chance for water to get behind it. What we had Nelson do was simply add a layer of 1/2" cement board on top of the previous board... I'm looking forward to the conversation I have to have with him when he gives me the receipt to pay for the extra materials.

He also needed to do a better job taping the joints and using the correct screws in the cement board.

The next problem was the floor was not built strong enough. There was one big area of weakness in the middle. This would lead to the tiles cracking eventually as it gets walked on. I thought the floor was going to stiffen once he put the cement board on, but it did not. Today he had to take the flooring out down to the joists... again...

On a side note. Check out the radiator. New much smaller one going in. Wait till you see what it looks like now that I cleaned it and coated it.

While I was at work Nelson was removing the floor and Jason was there. He discovered Nelson has run the plumbing lines incorrectly. It looked odd when I saw it, but I just didn't know any better. Which means Nelson now had to cut open more walls and ceilings below (yes the ones he just closed in) to correct. It also lead to having to route trough a kitchen cabinet below... yeah...crazy...

I'm OK with this because I will eventually redo my kitchen and can modify this once I remove that wall. At least that's the goal...

Now that the wall has to grow out 1/2" the radiator pipes are set too tight. Here are my marks for Nelson to adjust.

This is the second time they have had to patch the wall / ceiling. Also the second time they will have to put the trim back on.

They also patched some of the damage done to the surrounding areas, closet, walls, ceiling in the corridor from the damage.

Now I'm off to Chicago and wont be back until Sunday night. Fortunately or Unfortunately Jason is going to help me (paid of course) and keep an eye on things. It is good to have someone I can trust that knows exactly what to do, but unfortunate that I have to spend the extra money to get quality work. Thank you Jason... I'm confident things will be looking good when I get back. I doubt it will all be done, but hopefully it will be close by Sunday.

Send me photos!