bathroom

Is it time?

Yes. It's time.

It's time - as in it is finally time to get this bathroom updated for real.

Finally.

We bought this bathroom:

So much blue. All the improvements that have been made over the years are past their prime, too. And they are not really improvements.

Then we ditched the wall paper, the extra layer of molding around the window and door and traded out the light fixture.

Next the sink faucet had to be replaced - The old one was just so, so awful.

Then Hero harvested tiles from behind the vanity and took out the soap dish, tooth brush holder and towel bar - all blue and built into the wall to last forever.

We edited the counter top, too - That thing just kept on going.

And we ended up here after I painted the vanity white. Not the worst looking bathroom ever, which is why we were not rushing to do the big renovation, but we sure don't love it.

And then this happened.

This is the soap dish in the shower. It is supposed to be attached to the wall forever like the others, but it has rebelled and broke loose. It has happened before guessing by the amount of caulk that is smooshed on there like bubble gum. (sorry about the fuzzy photo.)

This little issue was the thing that finally propelled this project to the top of the list. 

Yay!

We measured and figured and came up with a budget ($1000!) and made our plans. We were on our way.

And with that excitement Hero did a little "research" to see what was behind the walls and under the floor. 

Looks like mostly dust. And insulation.

Which is better than lots of other things. Like critters. Or mold.

But money would have been better than dust. Maybe next time.

Look at that!

A whole (partial) wall with no blue.

Things always look worse in the middle of a project - Holy cow, what a mess.

Hero scoped out the other end of the shower / tub and found some previous water damage, but nothing wet, and the studs are in good shape.

 Another good sign.

We are really hoping the wall with the rebel soap dish is not too awful. Fingers crossed.

The floor was a little more challenging. Apparently these little tiles are set into about a foot of cement. Since the tub we ordered was a little wider that this one, Hero took the opportunity to get a new cement cutting saw blade and take out a section.

What a stinkin' mess!

Seriously, there was so much dust in there. Even with respirators, we could hardly breathe. 

Fortunately, Hero determined we should be able to pop the rest of those tiles off the cement. After prepping the cement the plan is to lay the new floor right down.

He only cut about 2-3 inches off. I cannot even imagine the crazy mess we would have going if the whole thing needed to come out. 

Need toilet paper? We keep it right next to the reciprocating saw.

But what a difference in our lovely floor with all the dust. After the first swipe cleaning, the white dust settled into the icky gray (probably used to be white) grout. I always knew white grout would be a huge improvement for this floor.

The real demo work starts this weekend. 

So excited!

the most unfortunate looking tree

We really like trees.

We all grew up in Michigan, and trees (and water) are part of our heritage and landscape. We feel hopeful with new buds in the spring, we like the shade in summer and we like to play in the leaves in autumn.

We even like them in the winter - Not sure why though.

Anyway - We have two trees on our property. This is one of them.

You might think it looks just fine. But there is a problem:

It's in the wires. Ugh.

To solve that problem, several years ago, someone lopped off the top. Since then it had been growing again and looking so sad.

We were sad to take it down, as we knew there were happy critters living in it (think squirrels and birds), but it just had to go. It was destined to become a big problem real soon.

And like I said, just not good looking at all.

I secretly think Hero was totally excited to go to the rental place and pick out some beefy chain saw to play with for the day. Since Colin was home, he got in on the action, too. 

I was safely at work.

And it's down. Really. Just like that. 

The details are a little sketchy to me (remember I was at work blissfully unaware that my so was wielding a chainsaw around), but I understand that a few branches were taken off that might interfere with the wires, the tow rope was tied on, one of them cut and the other pulled.

And done.

Colin doesn't even realize what he is doing is work. He is just loving this.

Not sure where Hero is standing to take this photo. Some things are better unknown.

Moving right along - little bits and pieces of tree. 

The neighbor's little dog barked at them all. day. long. That's always fun.

Firewood for the fire pit - Yay!

And there it is. Done and done.

Hero left the stump at 4 feet high to build something awesome for the grandkiddos.

(Look at that cute little lineup of arborvitaes, which will probably provide some privacy in, oh, about 17 years.)

It's good! We love it!

We miss the idea of the tree, though. We are really trying to think how we can get another tree in our yard that won't get into the overhead wires or the underground sprinklers.

the shed and the bushes

We are making some progress in the back yard. This is the first of a few posts about bringing our backyard out of it's pathetic, neglected state.

I love privacy. Who doesn't?

I love things open and wide, too. At the big house, our neighborhood did not allow fences, so it looked like our backyard went on forever. We actually had a really great treeline along the back that kind of defined our yard, and some arborvitaes along half of one side. It was somewhat private with openness. 

That made sense.

Anyway - At the small house, we have fences. And we have bushes. The bushes are great because of the privacy thing. They are not so great because they take work to be maintained. (Imagine Hero balancing on top of a tall ladder with a wicked looking hedge trimmer extended out as far as possible over the fluffy hedges. And me trying to stay clear of that beasty trimmer while holding the ladder steady. Fortunately, we had no injuries.)

So at this house, we like the privacy all around.

The hedges along the sides are decent - meaning there are no gaping holes (well, there is one, but we have hope it will fill in), give lots of privacy and are pretty healthy looking. We trimmed those babies up and left them alone.

Along the back - different story.

First there is this:

The ugliest shed in town. 

It has no foundation but has a wood floor (great for creepy critters to hang out under). 

It is pink. Yes, pink.

The previous owner really tried to spruce this up and fixed the roof with tar. It doesn't leak, but it seeped into the cracks on the inside and looks a little wonky.

And the doors. The squeaky, screechy doors that barely open. 

Here it is in all it's glory. 

Here are the bushes on the back fence line. Very sparse and sickly looking.

And we have a very unfortunate looking evergreen that needs to come down (another story for another day) that will leave a giant gap in the hedge.

Wow - just looking at these photos - what an icky backyard we started with.

Have hope if you are thinking you may have a yard that is this sad (You probably don't though.)

Hero just pulled all these out with his bare hands!

Ok - not really. He used a cool thing called a "come-along" that he hooked up to the very unfortunate looking evergreen. 

(There are not photos of the action, as I was no where to be found while Hero worked his fingers to the bone.)

But I did stop at 7-Eleven to get him a giant slurpee!

That pile of bushes got dragged to the curb and hauled off by the city. Hooray!

Here's how it looked without the bushes - all except one, lone shrub. It is different than the others and actually had pretty flowers on it. But it, too, soon went the way of all it's buddies.

And here is what we are filling that long empty line with. Two foot tall arborvitaes. I know. It's going to take a decade for them to offer up any privacy at all, but they were only $3 each! The four foot tall arbs were about $15 each. 

We have time. They will grow. 

Although it's a little strange to be so exposed along the back.

Hero was pretty darn sad to see that shed go. He loved having the extra space so he could move around in the garage a little easier. He was actually really resistant to losing that space.

It took some convincing, but he got on board after we looked at these:

Woohoo!

back yard

I like having a back yard. Really I do. 

But I really do not like yard work. Not in the yard either for that matter.

I know some people love it. My next door neighbor is one of those people. She is working on her yard all. the. time. And her yard is beautiful, with lush green grass, colorful flowers and fun yard art in the design on critters, flags and light up things (which our grandson Jett just loves).

The following is not anything like our neighbor's yard. Just sayin.

There is so much to do in this yard, it is crazy. Let me show you -

This is along the back fence. These bushes were most likely planted around 1960 by Hero's parents. They have lived a long a fruitful life. But their age has been starting to show for a while now.

And the grass weeds. Just lovely. 

There is actually grass in most of the yard, just not here. Even if it is green, do not be fooled.

Looking at the south/west corner. First, more bushes, with a few bare spots. (Hero actually transplanted one of the smaller bushes removed along the back to this spot. Here's hoping it lives.) This line of bushes is actually in pretty good shape, so they will stay. They just need a little trimming.

And then there is the shed. This has to be the ugliest shed on the planet. Ugh. It is one of old those sheet metal situations with the awful squeaky doors when they are slid open. And to top it off, this thing sits on a plywood floor - No foundation. Last year Hero had to tilt the thing on it's side because he saw a possum run behind it. Yikes! He got the whole thing cleaned out and secured it the best he could without pouring cement. Seriously, every time I had to get something out of the shed, I would kick the side to make sure nothing jumped out at me.

Hero tied a come-along to this evergreen and pulled all the bushes out one by one. Fortunately, even those things were like a million years old, they didn't have very deep root balls. They popped right out. 

(For the record, I say they came right out, because Hero did all this while I was at work. I came home and they were all laying on the ground. Easy!)

See the roots? No big deal. (And there is some of our grass!)

Looking toward the northwest corner. A long line of no bushes. Yay!

Oh, wait. There is one bush left. Hero left it there because it is different than all the rest. It has little pink flowers on it. Hero wanted to save it in case we could use it somewhere else. We couldn't, so it also got pulled.

When I got home, I helped out in a very important way. I got Hero a Slurpee. Boy, was I needing a break after that.

We weren't entirely sure what size arborvitaes we were going to plant along the back as we didn't want to spend a ton on them, but we didn't want little tiny twigs. But, I found these 2 footers for $3! We needed 17 of them, so we saved a bunch over the next price range we were looking at that were around $10-12 each.

So we are good with small. They will grow.

Another lovely shot of our shed. Ugh. Even looking at the photos, I get a little shaky.

And here is the new shed. Oh, it so glorious and not metal and not on icky old plywood and not squeaky and loud and not ugly. And not hiding any critters.

Looks like we might be on our way to having a yard like the neighbors.

Or not so much. But it is a big improvement already.

bathroom update

The bathroom is on the list for a renovation, but not until maybe next summer. We have a few other projects up our sleeves to get on before it is this room's turn.

We may or may not have started with something that looked like this:

Actually this photo is after some clean-up. 

Then we took it to this point:

Which was much more live-able. But we still had a long way to go.

I'm sure you have seen these 1950's bathrooms before - There are a lot of them still around. They are built like tanks and usually all one color. We certainly cannot fault the quality of the materials used, just the overabundant use of blue.

So while we are dreaming of the day when we can really start a complete bathroom overhaul (Besides all the blue, we are starting to see a few problems that are not going to go away on their own), we have to be patient.

So hard.

Hero and I came up with a few things that we could do in the meantime that we could do to get rid of a few things that make us crazy make our bathroom work a little better for us.

(And the reason we started thinking about these few updates is that we bought new, desperately needed towels. It is very strange how projects get started around here.)

1 - Get rid of the useless towel bar. We actually used to have a row of six hooks right under the window (See the leftover holes?) But when there were towels hanging there, it was a little tricky to find the toilet paper. We ditched the hooks (moved those to Colin and Liam's room for them to hang their towels on. They always took their towels in their rooms anyway. Now they can hang it up instead of leaving it somewhere else in there room.)

2 - Lose the extended counter top. It is such a funky set-up! It has a cut out over the toilet to access the tank, which is better than not having the access, but so weird. 

Anyway, we don't like it.

3 - Ditch the soap dish.

4 - And it's evil twin, the toothbrush holder that would not fit any toothbrush made today.

5 - And while we are at it, that back splash is getting the heave-ho as well. I just don't understand how a four inch strip is supposed to protect anything. And that would be one less blue thing.

Hero started with the towel bar. Gentle, gentle....

Nice!

Oooh. Not so good. But really, at this point, we would rather have a hole in the wall that that towel bar.

But I know Hero has a plan for this.

Next up - The soap dish.

I think Hero really likes demolition.

That turned out great!

See that little "m" on the back? Another original "Murphy" product!

And the toothbrush holder vacancy.

Good place for these.

Hero loves this awesome reciprocating saw. Any chance he gets to give it some action, he takes it.

He just cut that strange jutting-out piece of counter right off.

And pry off the back splash.

Doesn't it look better already?

Maybe not quite done yet.

Great thing about these industrial strength tiles is that they can handle some tough scraping.

This is one of those super-duty scrapers we got for taking care of our stairs. They make the job so much easier! I cleaned all the industrial strength glue and caulk off while Hero harvested a few blue tiles from underneath the sink. That guy is a genius.

Cleaning out the industrial strength glue and grout to prep for the transformation.

Harvesting industrial wall tile stuck on the wall for the last 56 years with industrial strength glue and grout does not always result in a perfectly intact tile. Rats. But so.much.better than a useless toothbrush holder.

Hero just filled in the gaps with caulk and it blends in pretty good. 

Um, and after it is cleaned up a little bit, it will be even better.

Sealing that pesky edge between counter and wall should do the trick in keeping things sealed up. And it makes it look a ton better.

See? You can hardly tell where the new harvested industrial tile is. It just blends right in.

Nothing hanging uselessly off the wall, getting in the way, gathering dust.

And here is where we ended up. 

Hero filled the little holes leftover from the towel bar with pieces of harvested tile. Smart!

From this:

To this:

Not completely revamped. Not radically different. But enough revamped and different that it feels sooooo much better.

Still just as blue though.