Sunday, December 12, 2010

Bye-bye, Bathroom!

It's that time of year again! The time of year when Evan suddenly runs out of work mid-December. No matter how much work looks like it's lined up, he always runs out of work at this point.
So, when we don't have income coming in, we might as well spend money and gut and refinish our lovely bathroom!

We'll miss the original salmon pink wall tiles from 1960, though.

The medicine cabinet isn't so bad, but I'll miss the lovely drywall patch job around the outlet and switch to the left of it.

The real tragedy will be losing the pink tub, though. Mostly because that black stuff you see around the rim is not there because I'm a horrible housekeeper that never washes the tub (although that's pretty much true, too), but because someone tried to fix the leaks around the tub surround by sloshing a tube of silicone caulk around the rim. Now the mold just grows BEHIND the caulk, where you can't get it! Very nifty.

Lovely stuff!

One of the many cracks in the wall of the tub.

Hey, tomorrow we'll be able to pull the towel rod down that's been on the verge of falling for the last three years! (And that's not even the towel rod that Owen used for chin-ups.)

A moment of silence for the ceramic pink toilet paper holder. It tried to die years ago, but someone repaired it, making it look lopsided ever since.

This the back wall of the homemade vanity. Highly classy. Anyway, we've been wanting to re-do this bathroom since we moved in, and we've been trying to save enough money to do it this winter during the down months. It's a little bit scary, though-- this is by far and away the most invasive project we've done on our house so far. We're sacrificing our closet to give us enough room for a double vanity and a WINDOW! It will be so exciting to have natural light in the bathroom. Especially natural light that isn't reflecting off all that lovely salmon pink!

We've been planning this bathroom for ever, but we never seemed to have enough time to really sit down and make hard and fast decisions. We decided before we ripped the whole thing up, though, we better make sure the floor plan was at least feasible. So Evan blue-taped the whole thing out on the living room floor. Here, Elliott enjoys the convenience of a toilet in the living room.

Rilla, in the bathtub. She had to have a chair like Elliott.

A nice double vanity!

The bathroom isn't the only remodeling gig around here. Cheyenne's bureau is one of those unfinished ones that you're supposed to paint or stain right away. Well, we bought it second-hand off a friend of ours in Alaska 8.5 years ago. It was looking a little worse for wear by this point. So, for her birthday, Evan helped her sand it...

(Evan sanding, using his new Festool HEPA vacuum to collect dust! Oh, the excitement!)

And paint it! We used up the Fabulous Red paint that was left over from the kid's kitchen (Unemployment Project from February 2009.) Then she got to go to Home Depot with daddy and choose new knobs.

Rilla on Saturday-- this is kind of blurry, but I love the Evil Genius look on her face. I'm not sure that she had bad intentions towards the sweet little paper dolls, but it doesn't look hopeful for them.

A much nicer picture, holding Lincoln.

I love this picture of Dad, the Hardcore iPod Touch user. I plunked it in his hands and told him to read a funny article, ("Fancy Man Enjoys Tea,") then took a picture. It might be the only time I ever see him hold it.

Cody and Dad were here because they had gone to Rochester to pick up Cody's Sweet New Ride. It actually runs nice and looks decent, so I'm not sure why Cody bought it, but it's a bee-you-ti-ful truck. Evan is offended because I think it's a better looking truck than Evan's truck.

What I DON'T have a picture of, because I am a thoughtless moron, is our visit from some of our Alaska friends. Tanner and Amy Smith were here Friday night and Saturday morning, en route to Vaughans'. It was awesome to sit around and talk with them. That's one thing we miss about Alaska-- all the hours we sat around the living room, just talking. Even if we had stayed in AK, we probably wouldn't have as much free time to do that, now that we have 4 kids, but we do miss the friends there.

Although we still have some pretty nice sitting-around moments with our snuggle bugs. This was were the kids were curled up this evening.

Cheyenne coloring, sitting between the (not pictured) Auntie and Angela.

Lincoln has the best grins.

Proudly displaying his two teeth.

Saturday, December 11th, was our 11th anniversary! We were busy thinking about bathroom remodels, and entertaining company, so it didn't rate as our most romantic anniversary ever, but it was a nice day! It's great that, eleven years later, we have four beautiful kids, a nice little house, and lots of friends. And I still kinda like that tall guy pictured above!

2 comments:

Lisa said...

How exciting about your new bathroom! I don't remember much about it, except that the color was less than desirable.... and the shower was pretty bad (although it was very evident it wasn't your lack of cleaning!).

Been thru all those lovely remodeling ordeals; now we are enjoying living in somebody else's house, and we call them when it needs fixed. Good luck, glad you have another bathroom downstairs! And maybe it'll be done when we come so we can try it out? =)

Lisa said...

P.S. You really should try and get rid of the stuff you take out, on Craigslist! We even sold our really old toilets, and the smokey-smelling vanity, etc! Beats taking it to the dump, and it can help pay for the new stuff. If that doesn't work you can at least put it in the free section and not have to pay to take it to the dump.