As we said before, we have some pretty fun plans for the half bathroom. When we moved in, we agreed that the decor in the half bath was… not what we wanted. We looked at a bunch of options to improve it, from putting down a wood floor to re-tiling the whole thing with stony pebbles and earthy tiles. We ended up settling on tiling the floor, putting up beadboard on the lower half of the wall, painting upper half and replacing the toilet and sink.
This is how the bathroom looked before we got started:
Yeah.
A few weeks ago, we took all the tile off the walls. That was the easy part, they just popped off with a tap of a hammer and chisel. We found some interesting things hiding behind the wall too! Check out the newspaper from 1961.
The next step was to get the sink and toilet out. The sink didn’t have any shut-off valves on the water lines, and I mistakenly picked up 1/4-turn valves that were one size too big, oops! With the water still off in the house, I had to make a quick trip to the hardware store to get what I needed. Once I had the water lines buttoned up, the bathroom sat as it was for another week, waiting for time and motivation to tackle the floor.
We’re lucky to have some very helpful friends. Chris came over to help us remove the tile from the floor, which was a very noisy and dusty experience. We ended up using a pneumatic hammer to blast the tile off, while trying to be careful of the concrete that the tile was set on. At the time, I figured we could just leave the concrete in place and set the new tile down on top of it, even though it would be pretty tall, and the back corner behind the toilet was cracking a little bit.
Then fast forward one more week to yesterday, Jeremy and Erin came over to help us cut and place the tile. We ended up deciding that the concrete should come out, which meant more demolition! At least it was much easier and faster than taking the tiles out. We brought it down to the sub-floor, cleaned everything up and put down Hardiebacker for the tile to set on. I had recently picked up a Ryobi cordless impact wrench, which was an amazing tool for putting screws through the concrete backer board and into the wood subfloor. It was a piece of cake compared to using a normal electric screwdriver! After almost 11 hours of hard work and two food breaks later, here is what the bathroom looks like now:
Once the thinset cures, it’s time for grout and sealant, then we can start working on the walls!
Many thanks to Chris, Jeremy & Erin for all their help on this project!
Our house is wonderfully adorned with two garage spaces, and two garage doors. When we moved in, just the southern garage door had an opener attached to it, which is fine for the summer, when we don’t need to be parking inside. However, as winter approaches, the need for that second opener increases, so that we can both keep our cars out of the frost, neverending snow and general cold weather abuse during the winter.
After some searching around, I settled on a Chamberlain belt drive; it seemed to have the fewest unfavorable reviews, and had some pretty neat features, like a battery to allow the door to be opened while the power is out.
Installation was actually pretty fun. Nothing hard or challenging, just rather time consuming to get all the hardware together, hooked up, aligned properly, and then doing all the wiring for the sensors and the internal control panel.
Although this is a pretty minor concern for us, the most noteworthy thing about the opener is how quiet it is. Press the button, and you’ll hear a quiet hum of a motor, and all the normal squeaks and groans you’ll hear from the garage door itself. Now we I just have to focus on keeping the garage itself clean so we have room to park in there!
Our last [free] weekend of the summer just ended – we now have Ellen & Peter’s wedding, an Exley family reunion & an excursion in the Poconos to look forward to and here’s hoping we can squeeze in home improvement during the week. We recently had a nice upgrade here in the office – a new desk! Emphasis on new, because it’s actually not. It’s a desk made-over from a door and some a-frame horses. The best part? The total: $15.
We already had all the paint/polyurethane supplies & bought the door for 15 dollars from Habitat for Humanity’s Rochester Restore. That price-tag had me smiling, and knowing we were recycling a door made the project even more fulfilling. So I have oodles of space now, as opposed to my tiny square of a desk before!
We also re-organized one of the office closets, and made a rug switch-a-roo. We took our Pottery Barn striped yellow/brown rug out of the office and put it into the guest room to add more texture and pattern – then the guest room rug made a new home in the office! It’s a cream-white rug which really brightens up the office, like our house mantra…. light, bright and airy!
Office before: Blocky, Compartmentalized, Too much furniture
After: Desk in Mark's old desk location. He's on the other side of the room now. Yes, that's a blue flower I painted on the wall - Mark wanted to test that paint color, but obviously it's not going up :)
Closet before: Boxes we hadn't even unpacked, an unofficial linen closet, old college notes we don't need...
\Closet After: Binders are organized, put all our bags into an IKEA organizer (hanging), arranged a filing cabinet, and that white "suitcase" is all the stuff that came with my new cochlear implant!
We also squeezed in some yard work. We mowed down a huge patch of weeds at the edge of our yard and planted grass seed, which is coming in nicely. In the meantime, we are loving summer and all the surprise plants that came up in our garden. For instance… this purple blazing star…
Blazing Star, Adirondack Chairs, what could be better?
Why hello Viking... care to share your plant secrets?
Life as we know it:
So! It’s been way too long since we’ve posted. If you consider filling up the shelves in the living room a project, then we did get a project done, but otherwise… the adventure so far has just been a steady collection of furniture, getting together with friends, working full-time, making lists of things we need, and chasing after the kitties outside. What we can give you though is a list of things that are soon to be in-progress!
- Half-Bath: We plan on taking out the ugly peach-pink toilet & sink, and putting in a new toilet (from the master bathroom) and a new white vanity (already purchased). We bought a new Kohler toilet for the full bath (which flushes half the water our old toilet used, points for being eco-friendly) and are putting that old toilet (white) in the half bath. Gotta love all-white appliances. We plan on putting up white beadboard in the half bath on the lower half of the walls. Then we want to paint the top half and find some nice tile for the floors. I found a nice table in someone’s trash pile the other day that I plan on re-finishing for the corner of the half bath, to hold TP, candles, a plant, etc.
- After getting over the deer eating half of our new plants in the front garden (we’ve since sprayed them w/ garlic oil and are nursing the eaten ones back to health), Mark and I whipped up a backyard plan – which will involve maybe a re-finished outdoor furniture set, top soil, ferns (LOTS of ferns!), grass seed, more flagstones (we will wear workboots to transport them, Brooke!), some lattice/trellis wood to put up around the house, and maybe borrowing our friends’ power washer……
- Kitchen Painting!
Other than that, I am currently on the last couple days of recovering from my cochlear implant surgery. This is my second cochlear implant, meaning I already have one on my left side, so I now have a bilateral hearing system. I go to get my stitches out today, and hopefully then I”ll be able to wash my hair! (It’s been a week, ugh!) I have to wait till July 20th to get activated (turn the implant on and start hearing on my right side) but I’ll be so busy leading up to the big day so I’m sure the time will pass quickly. Soon enough though I will be able to hear with both ears!!
More to come later… I will say this, we’ve been enjoying raiding people’s trash piles!!! :P
