Real Life "Love It or List It"

I can't believe I posted only once last week.  I'm so glad you all like my choices for the kid's bathroom. The tile came in this week so once a few other projects are finished up, we will get started on the bathroom.  I will keep you posted.

Who watches "Love It or List It"?  I really like that show.  I watch it often while I'm running on the treadmill at the YMCA.  Like most home decor shows, it's a fairly predictable script.  Couple hates their house the way it is, one partner wants to update the existing house, the other wants to move all together.  They give X amount of dollars to update and X amount of dollars for a new house.  A designer takes X amount of dollars and does all she can to make their existing home what they want and a realtor takes X amount of dollars to find them an already existing dream home.  Of course the designer always seems to hit some problem which prevents the couple from getting everything on their wish list and the realtor shows them a few cruddy houses before finding the "perfect one".  In the end they have to decided if they love the renovations to their existing home or if they want to sell and buy the dream home.  

Well, we are not renovating this house to sell, but it does seem like we uncover more problems as we go along.   And with more problems, means more money.  Luckily, while this week uncovered some new problems we also discovered better outcomes then we expected on previous problems.  

To kick off the week, let's play a game, shall we?  In the picture below, tell me what just doesn't look right to you.

Did you catch it?  Does anyone else see the problem with cutting your floor joist to put your plumbing?  AAAAHHH!!  I really don't understand people sometimes.  And I really don't understand/can't believe the home inspector didn't catch this.  

The pipe through the floor joist was just half the problem.  In addition to having to do something to sure up the floor joist, the toilet that's hooked to this plumbing had had a leak and it lasted long enough to compromise the plywood subfloor causing the toilet to never be able to screw in and hold tight to the subfloor anymore.  Therefore, we would always be dealing with a leaky toilet.  Well a leaky toilet is no good, so a fix required my contractor to have to ripe out the subfloor which unfortunately had a wall over it so that had to come out too, and then rebuild everything.  Ca$$ing, Caching, Ca$$ing!!!  But we all remember the importance of "underwear" right?  It had to be fixed.  Here are the pictures of that process, as well as a peak into the walk in pantry which is part of another project I will blog about soon.

Bathroom before the demo.  You can see the pocket door to the left 

which was in the wall that had to be taken out and rebuilt.

The beginning of demoing out that wall.

Subfloor, wall, and bathroom demoed out.

A view down into the basement below the guest bathroom.

You can see where he reinforced the floor joist.

Another look at the plumbing through the floor joist.

This was the bad news of last week.  Fortunately we got some good news which saved us money.  That is for tomorrow.  Have a great Monday everyone!