RESTORING WATER To This Old House!

After replacing several hundred feet of water pipe, electrical wire, and the well pump itself, we are finally ready to test the system. I hope it works. I had no idea. You know, it could be busted from here to there. I have no idea. It could be cut somewhere. This is a big week for us as we turn water back on in this home for the first time, get countertops installed, and tackle the tiling. Have you ever heard the saying that beauty is pain, Josh? It applies to home building. Six months of non-stop renovations, problems, solutions, and progress have brought this house back to life, given us an investment for the future, and have us counting down the days until we walk away from this property for good to head back home. 30 years from now, if somebody were to buy this place, they're going to say, who the f*** did this? And they're going to cut that entire thing down. Just so you know. We got a call yesterday from the countertop company letting us know that they were all ready to come here today to install the countertops. It's super exciting, but we also weren't fully prepared. I really wanted to get this paneling here on the back side of the kitchen peninsula stained before the countertops got installed, so I'm going to try and tackle that and get it done before they show up today. Josh is going to do all of the prep work for the well so that we can get the pump flushed out and water finally turned on in here. As you guys remember, we installed the pump outside and we did not have a hose. Now that we have a hose, I hooked the hose up to the hose bib on the pressure tank itself. The reason why we're doing this is I'm not sure how nasty or muddy the water is down there. We just don't know. We closed the valve that goes from the tank to inside the house, but we are going to turn it on and we're going to flush the pressure tank out and see what type of water comes out. It might be brown water for a few minutes and it should get clear. I don't know. We'll see. I'm just a little bit nervous if it's even going to turn on at all. We did have power out there. We did put the pump in properly, but I'm not sure if the pipes cut from there to here somewhere. We don't know. So last thing I do is turn it on and see. Hopefully it works. Hey Ellie, put it up straight that way honey. All right, good. Go that way a little bit. All right, put it down. Perfect. Ready? I hit it. I didn't turn it on. I hear nothing. Are we supposed to hear something? There's water coming out girl. Yeah. And it's clearly clear. All right, you get the hose and drink it first. No way. We'll wait two days before I test it. You want to do that? No, I'm good. Thanks. We keep sneaking back in to look at the countertops because they look so amazing. They look great. I'm really happy about this situation we got here. Me too. It was a gut feeling that these were the right ones to go with and they were. Yeah, it gives a mountain feel. Oh yeah. Fun fact about the stone. Erin and I found the stone when we went looking and they didn't actually have enough stone for this area. So they sent us over to the main warehouse. We looked around. This color is called Brown Fantasy and everything we looked at was brown, not this color. You can see this has some whites, grays, and some blacks in it. Not brown even though the name is Brown Fantasy. We're talking like nothing we looked at matches what they had there that's Brown Fantasy. Oh, let me show you something. They took us into the back and they have more Brown Fantasy with a leathered finish. So the ones we have is a leather finish. It makes it look like it's grays and blacks. But once they polish this, the entire thing turns brown. That's why it's called Brown Fantasy. That's how I feel. This means that the last thing that we're going to need to do for the kitchen is pick out the backsplash. And I wanted to wait on that because I felt like it would be so much easier to have the actual countertops in space and then be able to visualize what we wanted for the backsplash. And like now I'm really thinking that those, you know, diamond shaped tiles that we saw would probably be really pretty. I really do. Please, why? Do you understand what's going to happen? It's like probably the most difficult tile for you to install. Because we're going to start down the bottom. We've got to cut them all in half and then it goes up next where the range is at. All the ones that they're going up, they all got to be cut down, cut half that way going Have you ever heard the saying that beauty is pain, Josh? It applies to home building. It applies to our marriage also. Now we're definitely doing that tile. So we've been to one Home Depot, four Lowe's. This is actually the fourth Lowe's. Erin knows what she wants. She doesn't know what she wants until she sees it. That makes sense. When she sees it, she knows she wants it and then we get it. So a lot of problems we do have is when she does see something she wants, it's not in stock. But we finally found something in stock. So it's a huge win for me today. So you thought I was going to be a hassle but it actually turns out that I made your job really easy. You did. So the big huge tiles, put 40 of them up, the entire wall is done. So not a pain after all. No, it's not a pain. I'm not sure, babe. I might like the gray a little bit better. I like the gray too. I know. I think we made the right choice though. Yeah, probably too much gray regardless if you put gray in there. So the tile that we really liked had two different color choices. The gray obviously and the white and we went back and forth, back and forth trying to decide what to do and we ultimately chose to go with the white. But we are going to change kind of I guess the way in which we're doing it. Originally we were just going to use it as a backsplash coming all the way around and then directly from behind the range all the way up the top behind the hood. And the white competed too much with the white of the wall. So there really wasn't enough variation and it didn't stand out enough. And on the other hand, the gray was not a total color match and it seemed a little bit dark with the dark gray cabinets. So what we decided to do is instead of only tiling around the backsplash and then up behind the hood, we're going to do this entire wall with the white tile. And then we get a little bit of texture on the wall and it's white so it's not too much gray. It's another one of those situations where we're just kind of like crossing our fingers and hoping it turns out well. Don't turn back now. I'm getting installed with garlic. I already caught you. The plan today is to finish the tile from the countertop to the ceiling behind the range. Get the entire thing tiled. We want to do something similar here. Not go all the way up with tile though. We don't want to do that. We're going to use the same tile for the backsplash to go around here. But we're just unsure how to finish that tile because this tile has no finished edges if that makes sense. So we might be putting metal back there. I know Erin doesn't want to. I really don't want to do that either. Maybe we can find this tile with I guess a rounded beveled edge so we can do a nice finished tapered edge on there so it looks finished and instead of looking incomplete. So we need to do a little bit of research and see what we can find to make this side proper. That work out well? No. Not at all. Looks like it's a little shy. Let's go. Try this side. Do it again. Cut everything first? Yeah at least the bottom row. Get it up and cut the bottom row first. So this entire first row has a whole bunch of outlet spots. Four outlet spots to be exact. So Josh is going through and he's getting everything measured in this entire first row cut down and just kind of dry fitted to make sure that it's working properly. And then we're going to come back through and he's going to mud everything, put all of those up, and then we can kind of start rolling on the rest of the wall. And I think once we get past all of these outlets we're going to move really quickly since they are such big pieces and they take up such a good portion of the wall. So hopefully this is a quick project for us. 16, 15, 16. That'll work. Yeah that's gonna work. So let's take these tiles, lay them down flat on the countertop. We'll pull the receptacles out because we want to cover them up with the tile. We'll get everything mudded to the wall, get them in place, and then we'll start the next ride. Let's mix some mud up girl. So if you hire an electrician to do your tile you may as well expect there's going to be a mess. I get paid to install. I always hate this point in any project because it looks terrible. I think it looks good. Do you like it? Yeah I mean I know once it's done it's going to look good but right now it looks a little sloppy. It's got the gaps where the grout's going to go and all that. It's kind of like you got to like hold tough until you get to the end of the project and you see it completed. I hope it looks good when it's done. It should. It's just at the ugly duckling stage. We do a lot of this. Yeah we do. Remember what those hatches looked like when we first bought it? Yeah. What do you call it? A duckling? No. Yeah? Yeah. It's a pileup. You don't know what that means. Guess. Five, ten, fifteen, sixteens. Oh I forgot to pull a plug out. Do you have to take it back out the whole piece? I don't know. Note to self. Take them all out at once instead of doing them in sections. Come on you. Good night. And now. So we have a small gap underneath the hood and around and there's actually a little I guess like a nipple you could say on the back side here that actually keeps this off the wall just a smidge. And it should be enough for me to cut my tile perfectly so I can come in a little bit and come underneath this back side so you don't see any of the cut around the hood. It looks like the hood is sitting on everything. So hopefully that's how it's going to work. We'll see. Maybe we could do it. What? Pull the entire hood down. Right and just tile roll on the whole thing. My concern is is rattling. Does that hood rattle when the fan is on? I don't know. Or because like the nipples probably keep it off the wall to partially make sure it doesn't rattle. But if it's against tile it might rattle. So you're definitely going to want to get it off. I agree. 100%. So I think we pull this whole thing off an entire tile up there and uh we come back through and we screw this in after the fact. Yeah. I'm so smart. I'm good. I'm good for more than just cleaning up your mess. And the thing that it is too those nipples are rubber also. Your favorite. Since they're rubber it's going to help the vibration against the hood against the tile. Correcto. You know what can I say? I've been doing this for five years now. We have a few tiles left. We have like four or five tiles left and we have open shelves. They're going to go from wall. It's going to turn onto the tile. It's going to be dark wood. I guess the same color as the floor. The tile is great. I think you did a bang up job girl. Fantastic job. Thanks. You're welcome. So I don't think the camera does it justice though and that's the issue. I'm looking at it right here. It doesn't look that great. It doesn't look the same on camera as it does in person. Maybe once we get the hood back up everything grouted and everything put back in it's gonna pop. It's probably just the lighting from the camera that makes it look different. Because we also keep calling them white tiles and they're not white. They're cream colored. They're cream colored with a brown and gray detail in them. Yes. That matches the countertops. Yes. I'll tell you what. You help me mud and I cut. You mud. I install. Cut. Install. You mud. It's like dream team baby. Dream team girl. We're smoking it. This is the second time we've ever done a wall. The first time was a shower. Yeah. We did so much better this time. It's so much faster now. It's probably the same amount of space. Yeah. I like it. Oh I love it. It turned out great. Once the grout's all in. Once you get the open shelves in there it's gonna be just perfect. Yeah. I might repaint that wall but you know. Which wall? That one. Why am I not surprised? Seriously? Josh just trust the process okay. What do you think? 30 years from now someone's gonna buy this place and say who the did this and they're gonna gut that entire thing down. Just so you know. Vote for now in year 2023. It looks great.