2009 in Pictures

* Click the image to enlarge it.

First Bath

No not Ace's and no not mine but the first bath in our new bath tub! Yes a few nights ago I got Ace to sleep and switched monitoring duties over to Loving Husband and for the first time locked myself downstairs in our new bathroom and enjoy pure silence. Yes I know that my son was sleeping so there would have been silence regardless - BUT if he had woken up - I never would have known... my time would have remained blissfully mine - uninterrupted no need to put my head under water while Loving Husband sooths our boy back to sleep (that didn't happen Ace slept just fine - but one day it will and I'll never have to know.)

I dropped in some bath salts of a soothing relaxing scent and turned on the water. Plenty of hot water and and a favorite feature of this tub... the sides are wide enough to hold a wine glass!




I lit a few candles, poured a glass of wine, and broke out my book and enjoyed myself some time alone in a lovely bath salt soaking tub. Pure bliss.

Complete!

Yes that's right we broke out the bubbly, why? Because our bathroom is complete! Yes Thursday they were done, finito, my garage returned to me! Now granted they will be back after Thanksgiving sometime in order for our cabinets to be installed above the washer and dryer and then we will be REALLY done. And we're not yet able to shower in there the grout that we chose requires 14 days to cure and so we'll be able to use it on Saturday - can't wait! Although it is literally the day our guests leave. Siiigh.

We still have some returning to do to Lowes and the shower curtain to hang (we weren't allowed to for a week in order for the grout to set/cure a bit longer) which we should be able to hang on Wednesday with no issues! Everything is purchased and that's the nice part of all of this. Our remodel expenses are done!!

Below are some before and after pictures and a few of the shower since it can't really be shown in the side by side. All in all we replaced our heater, installed a shower/bathtub, toilet, sink/vanity, ceiling fan, all new light fixtures, tile flooring and cabinets in the coming weeks. Yay! We're done and I love it!!!!

Houston We Had a Problem

See at the end of Day Eight of the Great Bathroom Remodel our shower looked like this:

All sealed with it's red glory of waterpoofing and all set for tile. Day Nine began with tile installation. 18x18 tiles being placed on said walls.

I left for a few hours, expecting to see lots of tiling complete. I returned to see all tile removed. Hmmm turns out that the wall was bowing under the pressure of the bigger tile and in general due to the house 'settling'. I've been told it's good that they caught it now because what would inevitably have happened is that the bowing of the wall would have caused one (or more) tiles to detach and then the whole mess would have come tumbling down at any time. That would have been delightful.... or not. So what occurred was that these poor workers had to remove the tile and then take off the walls.

Yes the sealed in place walls and then put some extra support and level out the walls. So instead of tiling on Day Nine they spent redoing what had been done on Day Seven and Day Eight. They were none to happy. So on Day Ten the walls went back up and tiling began again. By the end of Day Eleven this was the status:

Saturday: Day Twelve (a day past the finish date of Friday, the new finish date is Tuesday) they will finish the last few tiles and then put the grout in and then they will begin the laying the floor tile. They are done with painting, in fact in this last picture you can see the color 'Gravity' that we went with. We like it. I'll be happy when the tile gets going for the floor. Oh let's be honest I'll be happy when it's DONE. D-O-N-E!

To see earlier remodeling progress click here.

Fixtures!

I am pretty sure that Ace is starting to believe that Lowes and Home Depot are his second and third homes as he has been in them nearly every day for weeks now. Checking tile, toilets, cabinets, lights and vanities, oh my! Tonight was the final installment of our tour of Lowes. Yes all the items have been purchased and thanks to the Veteran's 10% discount offered at both Lowes and Home Depot we saved $150 on all of our purchases! Yipee! Tonight was picking up the toilet and ordering 'custom' cabinets - that aren't custom at all but they don't keep them in stock so um yes, our cabinets above the washer and dryer will be here around December 1st.

In our family the member dragging and screaming NOT to go into Lowes is me, not our son. In fact it's a giant playland for him. He loved running up and down the aisle and pushing the 92lb toilet!! My boy's got some muscles!

Smells

I hate the smells and breathing factors that come with remodeling. Bleck. It all smells like something and none of it is good... It's actually a mystery to me at this point as to which smell is driving me nuts or if it's all just in my head but bleck either way. You see today they sprayed the texture on the walls and that of course comes with a smell. However today we also had air duct people come and and discover some early mold in our vents - delightful! So we had them spray a "sanitizer that they use in hospitals" into the vents. Grrrreeeeat! Just what I really need breathing chemicals - but I guess what I really don't need is to breath mold - so it's a flip of the coin as to which is going to kill me faster I suppose and we chose chemicals over mold. Hopefully it was a wise choice.

As a result of those chemicals being sprayed yesterday, I left my home at 11am after shutting off the heater and opening several windows (did I mention it was 50' outside?). I returned at 2pm in order to turn it back on - just in time to see the results of texture being sprayed all over the walls: a LOT of dust. Not exactly the time you want to turn a heater back on - especially since it lives in the very room they created all the dust in. So I left it. At 7pm I returned home after buying tile with the intention of turning it back on. The heater itself was EXTREMELY taped off - and while I'm no expert I didn't find it to be ideal to turn ON a gas heater with paper taped all over it. They also planned to paint the next day (today) so tearing it down wasn't exactly what I thought was ideal either. So at 59' my house sat and dropping... I wanted to turn the heater on and NOT be home for a few hours afterward with the windows open just to push as much of the "sanitizer" out of the house and not into our lungs as possible. Loving Husband came home and assured me all would be ok - so we turned the heater on and headed out for the evening.

All seems to be well, the overwhelming scent in the air is still paint and texture spray and the house didn't burn to the ground by turning the heater on with paper surrounding it. So we've survived to live another day.

Remodel

Yep! Tis the season (in our house) to remodel. Although I feel 'remodel' implies it was there to begin with and that was certainly not the case in our situation. You see when we purchased this house our laundry room looked like this.


We decided that while I was in California it would be a good time to turn it into a real bathroom and laundry room. Since this decision I have come to the conclusion that remodeling should be a part of pre-marital counseling. Wow! There haven't been knock out drag down fights - but sheesh we sure have had an inexplicable amount of time spent discussing tile and paint colors.


It was a challenge to plan afar and it was a tad unnerving not to be around to oversee things. I did review the contract and edit and revise it with a fine tooth comb - what kind of an attorney would I be otherwise?! :) Day One was heater removal, framing, and installing some installation and drywall. Night One my husband and the kitties slept with no heater as it was Day Two that it arrived. In case you were wondering it was about 45' during the day. That was a moment I was thankful to be afar in So Cal. They survived and our new heater went in. It's the quietest thing I've ever never heard. Seriously, I kept cranking the heater on when I came home because I didn't think it was on. Our old one (original with our 1987 home) sounded like a freight train powering through the house.

Day Four the tub went in and mudding on the drywall began and the bathroom is really starting to look like a room and not a construction zone that was unfinished... although clearly still unfinished. Day Five and Six were plumbing and the other side of the shower wall installation. Stay tuned for more pictures! The project is slated to be complete on Friday!