One Room Challenge Week 2: Setting the construction calendar

I've had quite the week for the first week of the One Room Challenge™. Last Thursday, the One Room Challenge began.  Part of planning out a six-week design challenge is to ensure that everything is planned out so that there are not time surprises that arise!  There is no room for delays or setbacks with this challenge.  When I was setting the Construction Calendar, there were items I needed to work around.

One Room Challenge: Setting the Construction Calendar

Have I said this is a six-week challenge?  As this is the first time I am participating in this challenge, I was very fortunate that a design colleague and friend, Linda Holt, wrote a timely blog post titled Thinking of participating in the One Room Challenge? What you should know.   In the design groups that I belong to, Linda is an active member sharing her valuable advice.  I had the opportunity to meet Linda last year at KBIS and wished I had more time to chat with her!  In her blog, she had seven tips - which I have taken to heart with my own challenge.

Backward Planning

With every construction calendar, I do some backward planning.  For any renovation that involves cabinetry, I look at having that booked in first.  I then know that there are certain things that need to get done before the cabinets go in, and then there are things that have to get done after the cabinets go in.

What has to be done before cabinets?

In setting my construction calendar, and having my design in place, I knew my trades that needed to get in prior to the vanity being installed.  When I booked my trades, I also made sure to ask them how many days they felt they needed to carry out their work.  As you can see, rough in (RI) plumbing and RI electrical will only take 1 day each.  While there isn't a ton of drywall repair, there is enough to take up four days!  My wonderful tile setter is going to start the following week (Oct. 17) and mentioned that if he had to come back and grout on Saturday (Oct. 20), he was fine to come and do that.

Demo Work

The Mr. and I looked after the demo work and I hate to say this, but I think we're getting old.  We took out everything and our bodies were aching a bit when we were done!  The only thing we were keeping was the toilet as it was a Toto toilet that purchased when we renovated the rest of our home about three years ago.  I made a trip out to our Bagster® and saw a toilet in there.  When I came back upstairs I mentioned to the Mr. that I think someone threw a toilet in our bag.  Much to my surprise, the Mr. actually threw out our toilet!  And not only did he throw it out, he SMASHED it (which he tells me he quite enjoyed)!I also took on the challenge of scraping off all of the popcorn that was on our ceiling.  While this was not a clean job, it was actually pretty easy and took less than one hour.

Rough Ins

For both the plumbing and electrical rough-ins,  it was super important to have the design plan in place so the plumber and electricians knew what was going on.  Here is what the space looks like now!

Plumbing work carried out by Lumberjack Plumbing, Heating & AC

Electrical work carried out by  4 Star Electric. There is one little electrical surprise that I'm saving for the final reveal! 

Setting the Construction Calendar

As you can see from my construction calendar, there was a lot done in a week.  There was one major hiccup this week.  Our bathtub has a tiny damaged spot in the corner and there is not another bathtub in the city.  With my timeline, I can not afford to wait 2 more weeks for a new one!  The result is that we will have to get it repaired (and while it's not major, it is something that has to get done prior to drywall and tile).  That is scheduled for early Monday morning (as they are fitting me in before their workday even starts!).  On deck for next week:

• Drywall
• The start of tile

Here's the live update from Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018

I hope you'll continue to join me on my six-week One Room Challenge™ journey!