Sliding Door for Master Bathroom (Actual)

So I described our dilemma in my post about our master bathroom.  We did some research at the local Home Depot and Lowes, some online research and brainstorming on Houzz.  We decided to go with the barn-styled sliding door.  Here is the end result:

We love the work that our contractor did.  Total cost came out to a little bit more than $200.  All materials were purchased from Home Depot.  Here is the cost breakdown:

• Sliding Door Hardware ($170)
• 36″ Interior Door Slab ($40)

It works great and serves 2 different purposes.  What you see on the photo is a door for our master bathroom.  When it is open, it serves as a door for our small 2nd closet in our master bedroom.  It is definitely more functional than the folding door that our previous owner installed; and less work compared to a pocket door where we would have to drill into walls.

It’s been awhile!

It has been awhile since I posted my update.  Bottom line up front – we are all settled in our new (first) house!  In fact, we moved towards the end of March and have been extremely busy putting our personal touches to our new home.  In the next couple of weeks, I will do my best to use my memory and photos that I have taken to share my progress with our projects.

It’s a good feeling when you see progress

We are finally seeing some progress in our renovation and we can actually picture how the final product will look like.  The windows are pretty much complete with the 7 Jeld-Win windows in the bedrooms, bathrooms, living room, and laundry room.  We decided to paint the trim pure white to brighten up the place.

Here is a look from inside the living room.  The window was a single piece 8′ by 4′ but Home Depot doesn’t carry anything that size so we decided to go with two 4′ by 4′.  That turned out to be a smart choice. This way, we can get a couple of reasonably-sized blinds instead of an extremely long one.

Moving on to the floors, our contractors made more progress than we expected so far.  As of Saturday, they are pretty much done with the 3 bedrooms on one side of the house.  There was enough of the Wellmade bamboo floors by Costco to cover the 3 bedrooms and closets.  What’s remaining are the 2 living areas and the 4th bedroom.  This is the completed area in the master bedroom.  As far as maintenance is concerned, this bamboo floor, which I have installed myself in my current condo, is very simple.  Wiping with any generic-brand solution for bamboo/wood floors once every couple of weeks should be sufficient.

Lastly, the paint job is also coming to an end.  I would say that he is about 90% complete.  The color was definitely a smart choice.  The color is called Cottage White from Behr.  It turned out to be a little darker than we thought that it turned out to be perfect.  Lorenda and I wanted something different than the off-white that we always get, but didn’t want to go too bold in case we didn’t like it.  This will definitely give the house some character.  It will be much different when we have furnitures around.

Raise Me

During the process of purchasing all of the materials for the renovation, I found this great app called Raise.  What this app provides is simple – gift card at a discounted price.  So how is this useful?  Imagine that you are paying thousands of dollars for your materials, you can typically get gift cards from Home Depot or Lowes for 8-10% off.  This is a great savings.  Imagine you are paying $10k for your materials, that equates to about $800 – $1000 of savings.  What is great about this app is how quick the gift cards are available after your purchase.  I was literally sitting at the desk with my consultant – while he was ringing up my order and I realized that I was about couple hundred bucks short with my gift cards, I quickly purchased one at 8+% and it was available for me to use before he finishes scanning all my gift cards, which are on on my phone.

Renovation Finally Began

Let the hammering begin!  It has been awhile since I wrote in this blog.  It has definitely been a busy month.  We finally got our hands on the keys this past Sunday and we have “recruited” 阿廣 to start our renovation project.  This includes:

• Bamboo Floors
• Windows
• Closet Doors
• Master Bathroom Door
• Interior Painting

We have done the HGTV-styled shopping together at Home Depot for 2 days this week.  We hope that these projects can finish with 2 weeks.

Signing – Checked

We signed last Friday and barring any weird things, we should be homeowner once again this Friday.  Homeowner as in house-owner.  We also got to talk to my contractor (阿廣) to get an idea how much it would cost to do all the works that we wanted.  Of course we didn’t get an estimate but he said that it would only take a week, which would be amazing.  He also gave us an idea to add an awning so that it gives the entrance to the yard a little shade.  The downside is that it may make the living area a little darker.

Sliding Door for Master Bathroom

When we were at the first open house, one of the concerns that we had was the size of the master bedroom.  It is on the small side – what’s worse is that the ensuite bathroom would be right in front of our bed – generally not good feng-shui.  We have been brainstorming on what we can do to add some separation between the bathroom and bedroom and we came across this type of door called barn door.  Here is one that is pretty elegant:

Photo by AppWood Custom Woodwork. See more farmhouse hall designs

What we like about this style is that it doesn’t have a bottom track for the door.  The sliding hardware is above the door.  We are curious how sturdy this is so we are hoping that our local Home Depot would have some on display so that we can check it out in person.  Just googling the term “barn door” will come out with thousands of search results.  Some of the pricing on the hardware itself could be quite expensive, minus the door.  Here is another one that I kinda like: