2013 - The year we were ready to kiss goodbye to!

2013 became the year of huge ups and downs. I started this blog to share pictures of Parker and I's bathroom renovation. The reason I stopped? Well things got really crazy real.

Our bathroom is finished. And without going too much into detail, it was a giant project that was way harder than we ever imagined it being to finish. Another wall had to be pulled out because the plumber ripped us off. We went over budget. And instead of it taking 6 weeks to finish it took 6 months. That being said, we LOVE how it all came out. Here is how we started:

And here is what we ended up with:

It was a lot of blood sweat and tears. But we love it and would not have changed a thing. Well, actually we probably would have paid more people to do more of it. But that is just us. And we did really learn a lot about our home, using tools, and about each other.

We also have been quite busy this year doing other things. Some good and some bad. Parker lost his job, but in the end found an even BETTER one with a great company making more money. It was a scary few weeks but we are really lucky he found this great opportunity. It could have been worse.

After the bathroom and the job this was settled, we took a road trip out to Santa Fe for a long weekend for my 30th birthday. It could not have been a better trip and one that I will never forget. We hiked, and did yoga, and ate amazing (and hot) food! Here I am doing yoga at White Sands:

Parker also shattered his leg this year. Like shattered! He was playing soccer in the backyard with our nephew and just turned the right way at the wrong time. He did this in September:

He broke his fibula in 8 places and tibia was broken off at the base. We are still recovering from this horrible break. He has a great surgeon, who put a 10 in plate in his leg, and an amazing physical therapist who is getting him back on his feet. 

But the biggest thing we did this year was create a one of a kind: 

Baby BOY Anderson is due in May 2014! We are so pumped. We still have a lot to do to get the house and ourselves ready for this big adventure. But we are excited for what 2014 has in store for us! In the mean time I will try to post some updates about the pregnancy and about our home as we get ready for little baby Anderson. Happy new year! 

LIst update: The devil is in the details

And update on our list for you all:

·         Move bathroom to guest bathroom

·         Hang tarps and lay carpet protector down for demo

·         Buy bagster and other demo products

·         Cover vents to dust does not get everywhere

·         Remove medicine cabinet and other electrical fixtures

·         Remove light from wall

·         Remove mirror

·         Take out toilet

·         Take out bathroom vanity and sink

·         Rip up flooring

·         Remove door and frame

·         Remove fiberglass shower

·         Remove crown bolding (save for later)

·         Take out wall, cut half wall next to toilet

·         Call plumber to move plumbing for new shower and sink

·         Build new wall in bedroom (contractor)

·         Level flooring

·         Buy tile for floor and shower

·         Hang sheetrock

·         Hang hardy backer board for tile

·         Build shower pan (Contractor)

·         Move electrical outlets and lights

·         Lay floor tile

·         Lay shower tile

·         Grout and finish all tile

·         Paint walls (do a beadboard?)

·         Bagster pickup

·         Install new toilet

·         Install new lighting and fan

·         Install new vanity

·         Install new mirror

·         Rehang crown molding in bedroom

·         Install all new shower fixtures and faucet in sink

·         Finishing touches

·         Drink a beer (or bottle of wine depending on our mood)

 

 

This list just reminds me of how naive I was when I started this whole thing. There were SO MANY more steps to this project. But we will not complain. We are almost done!

We can see the light!

Here it is y'all! The latest updates in the bathroom! 

Parker and I have finished the grout and the baseboards and The room is definatly coming together. We installed the drain and sealed up all the corners in the shower so when the doors are put in it is water tight. 

 

I wanted you to have a side by side to see what the tile looked like with out grout. It makes a huge difference right!?

 

I think it came out pretty darnd good! What do you think?

 

You can also see I grouted the tile on the floor too. We used a grey grout and sealed all of it. So it should always be easy to clean and maintain. The tile, I remind you was only 99 CENTS a foot! WOOT. 

We painted all the baseboards and caulked them so they look all finished. I think it came out nice. The only area we are concerned about it this corner where the tile meets kinda funky. We will have to caulk it I think.

 

In addition we have put in the new bathroom vanity and our plumber will be installing the fixture to that this week. Things are really moving along if you ask me!

 

 

Parker will also finish the crown molding and we will show you pictures of how that came out at as well. I think you will like how it looks. We sure do!

 

There are whispers of guests heading our way this weekend, so I will have to update you on how all of this held up with five extra people hanging out!

No Dobt, We Grout!

I am a natural rapper of course.

In other news, we grouted the shower walls. And it came out great! I have yet to wash off and seal everything so I will show you the best part of the action shots.

 

 

As you can see the grout we used is white, and it was messy.

 Basically we just slopped the grout on the walls and pushed it in with a float.

 

 Here I am. This step is board and easy but super gratifying. It makes the shower look more finished. It was a great feeling.

 More pictures of the finished shower floor and bathroom floor to come soon!

 

Step 700 - Tile

Okay so now we are ready to tile.

We have had several issues come up with the tile situation and I want to cover some of them because I think they will help you all understand the feat that it is that we finished this all by ourselves.

First, houses are not built square. So our walls are not plumb. That is an issue when you are tiling a corner! Especially when tiling a corner with small tiles like our chose white subway tiles. Joy. Another challenge. By the way the tiles are from Lowes. $.22 a tile. Pretty good price and we got 5% off with our consumer credit card from there. So that made it cheaper than anywhere else in town.

So we first spent about 5 days laying out the tile on the walls. I bet you many of those DIY blogs don't tell you about that process. No matter what we did we ended up with weird cuts on the end of the walls and in the corner. I wont make your brain hurt with the math but let's just say it was not easy.

Here you can see we began to lay out the tile the way we wanted it. We taped up each tile in the section to see how it would look. Here is what we started with. This about when I realized that the niche, although nice was going to be a pain.

 So then we created a plumb line above where the rubber shower pan was behind the cement board and screwed in a board to hold up the tiles as we went. As you can see we are just getting started cutting and laying everything out. Looks good right? Parker was going at a good pace and this all took him about 5 hours or prep and work. I know. It is hard.

 Once we got started though we got moving. We mudded out the edges of the niche so the tiles would lay flat on the wall. This crated a slight bump on the wall that we are hoping will not be too noticeable in the long run. I guess we should have known how hard this niche was going to be, but oh well. We rolled with it.

 Here it is finished after two days of tiling. We still needed to do the bull nose edging on the tiles and top but I thought Parker did a pretty darned good job right?

We will have spacing that is slightly off in the corner but not by much. We just had to think outside the box and I think we did a good job mitigating any huge issues.

 Here is a close up of the tile with out the grout done. Looks beautiful right? Ohh La La! In case you are wondering we used little pieces of cardboard to prop up the tile when they are not lining up right. Works like a charm.

 So in the same weekend we tackled step one of the ceiling. We added bead board! I love it. It was super hard to cut and we are going to have to fudge a bit of the space around the light. Also caulk and cover the nail holes. But we love it. Plus Parker and I got to use a nail gun. So much fun.

 Love the wide shot. Right?

It's Been A While

We know it has been a while since we have posted on the blog. A lot has been going on. Let me give you a quick update and then we can get to the good stuff.

First off Parker has changed jobs. He no longer works at his horrible retail job! WOOT!!! We transitioned this whole month of April and it has been a big change for us. Luckily Parker found a job at a great company that we hope will give him a lot of chances to grow professionally.

Next, my car died. I know. With the bathroom and the job change you would think we had enough on our plates. Apparently not. So Parker and I had to rush around and buy a new car much sooner than we had thought. Although it is great I have a brand new beautiful car that I love it was a little much to take on. We are recovering though.

So I am sure you can understand the bathroom has had to take a back burner to life. It happens, and we are better off for it, but still, it would have been great to have this all stretched out a bit more over time. Not over three weeks. Let's just say a lot of the following drink was consumed to help with the stress:

Anyway we are getting back to it with lot's more changes to the bathroom to tell you about. First up tiling and then grouting and sealing. Then we install the ceiling and plumbing and fixtures.

It is all happening this week and weekend.

List Update - There was so much more to this than we thought

So this list I made when we started was just a scratch on the surface of all the word we were going to have to do. But we are moving forward. Check it out:

      Move Parker’s closet to guest bathroom

·         Move bathroom to guest bathroom

·         Hang tarps and lay carpet protector down for demo

·         Buy bagster and other demo products

·         Cover vents to dust does not get everywhere

·         Remove medicine cabinet and other electrical fixtures

·         Remove light from wall

·         Remove mirror

·         Take out toilet

·         Take out bathroom vanity and sink

·         Rip up flooring

·         Remove door and frame

·         Remove fiberglass shower

·         Remove crown bolding (save for later)

·         Take out wall, cut half wall next to toilet

·         Call plumber to move plumbing for new shower and sink

·         Build new wall in bedroom (contractor)

·         Level flooring

·         Buy tile for floor and shower

·         Hang sheetrock

·         Hang hardy backer board for tile

·         Build shower pan (Contractor)

·         Move electrical outlets and lights

·         Lay floor tile

·         Lay shower tile

·         Grout and finish all tile

·         Paint walls (do a beadboard?)

·         Bagster pickup

·         Install new toilet

·         Install new lighting and fan

·         Install new vanity

·         Install new mirror

·         Rehang crown molding in bedroom

·         Install all new shower fixtures and faucet in sink

·         Finishing touches

·         Drink a beer (or bottle of wine depending on our mood)