Our Latest Project: Kitchen

So as I mentioned a few days ago, we’ve been working on the kitchen. And as far as our home improvement projects have gone so far, this one has happened rather quickly. We ordered the new cabinets in October, they arrived in November and we installed part of them within a couple of weeks. Then with the holidays and several of the other things that had to be accomplished first (like rerouting the vent, updating plumbing and ordering countertops) we came to a bit of a standstill until the end of January. Here’s what we’ve completed so far:





There are still some minor finishing details to be done, such as the finished end panels, toe kicks, crown molding and installing the hardware. We also have to install some new flooring – not only do the new cabinets fall in a slightly different spot than the old ones, but the current flooring is damaged – and are hoping to get that in by the end of March. We also have a tile backsplash ready and waiting to go up – all we need is the time to do it!

The Bathroom Wrap Up

So, I guess most folks who read this were at Olivia's birthday party and saw the finished bathroom, but I wanted to tie up this loose end, especially since we are so proud of our finished product. I believe my last update left off at tiling the shower surround, so here you can see that completed. The tiles are a biscuit/ivory color, and the accent trim is a mosaic of taupes and one with just a hint of blue to it. (You can kind of see it in the close up of the wall cubby -- did C do an awesome job with those or what??)


We went Old School with the floor tiles -- they are small hexagons that are a blend of neutral browns.


Can you see the touch of blue? The wall color really brings it out and ties the whole thing together. I'd like to say that I realized that when I picked out these little glass tiles, but that would be a lie.

We also put up wainscot that was painted to match the biscuit tiles and our trim throughout the house. As you can see, the beadboard starts at the same level as the mosaic shower trim, providing a clean visual line in the final product.


C got to use the nail gun and air compressor he got for Christmas to finish this part of the project, which was a happy thing for everyone but Olivia. She was not a fan of the nail gun.

See how nice the lines look when they match? I did 90% of the painting in the bathroom, for two reasons: 1) I like to, and wasn't able to do any of our home painting while pregnant for Olivia and 2) I am home during the week.

Next we installed the vanity and commode. I was very particular about the vanity because this bathroom is tiny, making storage important. We found this cabinet with several drawers, and we can still store bath towels in the single cabinet.

And finally, here is the finished product. The mirror is a medicine cabinet, which also provides extra storage space, and matches all of the oiled bronze plumbing fixtures (which we have throughout the house).



So now that we have two working bathrooms again, you're all invited to come visit for a weekend!

Bathroom Update

Remember how we were going to remodel our bathroom over a long weekend? Yeah.

So C took off two days of work in December, a Thursday and Friday, so that we could try to knock out the bulk of the remodeling and get our bathroom back by Christmas. It was a good plan, except for the part where Olivia got double earaches on Wednesday afternoon. It was like having a colicky newborn -- we didn't sleep more than a couple of hours at a time the whole weekend. Even with ear numbing drops, which were a lifesaver, Olivia was still miserable. Anyway, the point of all of that is that we didn't get a whole lot of bathroom work done those four days.


Chad did get all of the plumbing lines replaced with new... uh, pipes? I'm honestly not sure what he did, something about the homeowner's insurance preferring a different material I think. Anyhow, after a couple of weeks of no discernible change, we were ready to make visible progress.

Next up was installing the new not-so-heavy-that-it-feels-nailed-to-the-floor bathtub and putting up sheet rock and cement board. Pretty, huh?


We put in shelves in the side and back of the tub, then started hanging the stuff on the walls. The bathroom is small enough that it become very difficult for more than one person to work in there at once...which is to say that all of my "we" talk means that my duties are more supervisory in nature.
I know all of you just laughed at that, but I had to remind C on all three walls of the shower to include the decorative tile band, which he forgot until he had gotten past it.


The red stuff is the waterproof backing for the shower surround. It goes on like a paint and dries as a thick solid coating. We got a few splotches in the tub, but it peeled off once it was dry.

Next up is tile!

Feathering Our Nest

When C bought our home in 2005, he definitely made the purchase with an eye towards potential. I mean, it wasn't going to fall in on itself or anything, but the original homeowners definitely turned a blind eye towards good taste and practicality. Not to mention that the folks who owned it before us rented the place out to Norma Ray and Billy Bob, so our little Love Nest came with more than its fair share of dings and dents.

When I met my Beloved, he was in the throes of renovating the master bathroom. (Go ahead and look up throes, I know you want to. I used it correctly. It means "epic struggle.") Now, if you have ever been to our home, you have surely gotten a tour of said bathroom because we are very proud of the hard work that went into making it a beautiful and much more functional place to shower and brush your teeth. Much of the work, in fact most of the work, in there was completed by C alone; I, however, will take credit for being the motivation for completion (He had been working on said bathroom project for 2+ years when we started dating. I told him I wouldn't marry him until the bathroom was usable. I was only partially kidding.)

Anyhow, we've done many things to feather our nest since marrying last year. Well, since I was pregnant for 97% of that time, I wasn't a whole lot of help -- unless you count making Honey-Do Lists. But again I was the motivation for completion. Or, in this case, I was growing it inside of me. We painted every wall in the house, remodeled the laundry room, set up the nursery, cleaned out the daylight basement, updated the fireplace and very recently have been working on our backyard. We've had a drainage problem that has washed out most of our good dirt and all of what little grass was there was long ago killed by the dogs...so while the weather was halfway decent, C started building a retaining wall with the help of my dad.

In the meantime, because apparently one project at a time isn't good enough for us, we decided to tackle Olivia's bathroom. It's small, which we can't change, but also had horrible wallpaper and a really beat up little vanity and cabinet. I wanted to paint and patch some holes, and C has always thought that it smelled funny (dirty) in there and wanted to scrub everything down and redo the floor tile.

My handsome Better Half, oblivious to what the remodeling future holds, smiling as we tear down wallpaper.

We figured it would be a three weekend project, with Labor Day giving us a long weekend to work to finish up. So about a month ago we rented the steamer to remove the wallpaper and knocked that out one Friday night after Olivia went to sleep.

Now the fun begins as we remove all of the junky bathroom fixtures.

Next, we started removing all of the fixtures so we could take up the tile from the floor. This is when we first realized we were in trouble. Big Trouble.

(L) The sheetrock was so nasty behind the shower surround that you could push your hand straight through it.
(R) Trouble is a-brewing. This is the hole in the subfloor that was directly under our toilet.

It turns out that Norma Ray or Little Billy Bob or Frank Lloyd Wright had a leaky faucet somewhere along the line. And a leaking toilet. And a leaking shower. As we peeled back the layers, we could see that the leaks had been (mostly) found and fixed, and the damages had been patched up but not really corrected all along the way. And that smell C couldn't source? It was all of the rotten wood and sheetrock. So to recap, Everything in the bathroom had at one point contributed to massive water damage, and the floor, subflooring, floor joists (!), sheetrock, insulation, and all plumbing fixtures needed to be replaced. As I have said to one of my house guests recently, it's amazing that one of you didn't wind up falling through the floor when you used our commode.

Rotten wood and smelly filth are all that's left of the bathroom at this point.
Can you believe someone just covered this up and hung wallpaper?

As the work to remove all things rotten began, C and his father-in-law (who has been a gigantic help with all of this, thank you!) found that the damage to the floor and whatnot extended under the adjoining wall into Olivia's nursery.

Here's more of the water damage and subsequent hole in the floor in Olivia's room.

So they have been working to fix her room first so she isn't displaced. When Mom asked for a progress report earlier today, all I could say was "they've ripped out even more stuff, there's a bigger whole than the last time I talked to you, and they haven't started to fix anything yet."

I just had to include this photo of the bath tub in our front yard. It's cast iron, so when Dad and C first tried to pick it up yesterday, they thought it was nailed to the floor because it was so heavy that it didn't budge!

To be fair, progress had been made. They've worked hard and accomplished a lot in very little time. It's just a far cry from where I expected to be this weekend, putting the finishing touches on a new paint job and beaming with pride at our fresh smelling guest bathroom.

We'll get there. Eventually.