Home remodeling

Since I still haven't started work on the Caboose I thought I'd post what I have been up to instead. I was going to Home Depot to get some WD-40 and ran into a fellow who was looking for work. He's a full-timer, on a bicycle! He's been peddling around the country for many years, and when he runs short of cash he either looks for construction type jobs or looks for a gig playing his guitar. We got to talking, and he said he was a licensed electrician and also did other home improvement, so I brought him home to help work on the master bath that was in sore need of some help. The rest of the house has been completely redone, but I moved furniture into the master bedroom and somehow that stalled all work. Anyway, Todd agreed to take on the project, which consisted of removing the old hot water heater from between the closets, tearing out the wall that framed the closets, building a new wall and putting in a bathtub and installing the new hot water heater.

There was originally a double sink vanity under the mirrors behind him, the stool and shower are in the tiny room to his left, and the 2 small closets are in the wall on the far right side of the photo.

The water heater was behind the wall between the closets.  There's a walk-in closet on the other side of the room and I will gain 2 feet of floor space by taking these closets out.

Here most of the walls have been removed and the old water heater is also gone.

The new wall is up!

The new tub is set in place and the new water heater has been installed behind the wall at the head of the tub.

  At this point I can finish setting the vanity and toilet, hang the tub surround, paint etc. so I figured Todd was about finished here, but while he was working on rerouting the drain vents he had to go up on the roof. Hmmm.... it seems the roof is in worse shape than I remembered, and he mentioned he would be willing to put a new roof on, so this weekend that's what we tackled. Tear-off was done yesterday, and today we got all the new paper down, and he started laying a few shingles. This photo was taken mid morning with half the paper done. With luck we can finish it tomorrow or Tuesday, depending on weather. It gets too hot to work on it in the heat of the day, so we take the middle of the day off.

Once the roof is finished there are a couple small electrical jobs for him to do, then he'll be heading down the road again. He's been staying in my Class C motor home while he's been working here, and other than room and board I'm out very little, we gave him a tent that we picked up at Bonnaroo last year, and a new sleeping pad, he cannibalized Fran's old bicycle for parts to fix the bike that he got (used) in Sturgis SD last year, and I bought a new trailer for him since his is getting quite long in the tooth. When he packs up I'll give him some cash and make sure he's stocked up on groceries. He said he'll be heading to northern Michigan to visit family, then heading southwest again for the winter. So if you see a crazy guy peddling down the road with a guitar strapped to the top of his bike trailer wave at him for me!