How's That Bathroom Looking?

So, have you been waiting with baited breath to hear about our little adventures in remodeling the White House?? Sure. The last installment left us in a predicament with our toilet, right? Well, here are a few pictures I snapped just before the old toilet was taken out.

Ripping out the fake tile wallboard stuff:




Ahh, yes. Getting the old cruddy sink out of there:




Here you can see several layers of walls that the bathroom had seen:


Plaster knocked out, down to the slats:



Oh, and just so you can sleep tonight, here is a picture of our new toilet, installed and working perfectly!!! (There is the new drywall in the background as well!)


I'm going to leave you in suspense over the results. Wuahahahaha! Tune in for the next installment!!

Yes, Yes, I Am Actually Alive!!

And yes, I do realize it has been over a week since my last post... I Am So Sorry!! We have gotten ourselves mixed up in a complete bathroom renovation, and boy this 69 year old house had some surprises in store for us! On Tuesday night the Mr. took out the vanity and toilet and took down the fake tile look cardboard stuff. The wall behind the board was not salvageable so he ripped out all the plaster from four feet high down to the floor. On Wednesday we put up drywall and I spackled while he was at work. Wednesday night and Thursday he fussed with putting the toilet in which is where things started going south, I will get to that in a minute... Also on Thursday I went to order the sink, which as luck would have it was going to take "around a week" to come in. Sheesh!

So, I don't know what the people were thinking when they "fixed" the bathroom before, but they somehow thought that having a flange on the toilet wasn't necessary. Yeah, the (rusty, corroded) bolts were cemented into the floor and the wax ring was just sitting directly on the floor! Furthermore, they fitted some new pipe into the "poop hole" and cemented it in but didn't make sure it was level while the concrete was setting, so the pipe was crooked. So when the Mr. brought home a new flange and put it on it wouldn't sit level, and he couldn't shimmy it to where it was level because then it wouldn't sit flush with the floor. He got a metal bit and for the next three days, between working at his real job, getting three hours of sleep per night and me shoving food in his mouth so he wouldn't have to go through a two hour decontamination process just to get dinner in his belly, he was grinding the metal pipe to the point where he could fit the flange on correctly.

YAY! Or so we thought... After correcting the ID10Ts slap job of getting the toilet (they just kept reinstalling the original toilet, by the way... BLECH!!) in, the Mr. put in our new Lowe's toilet, which went fine until he put the tank on the back. Hmmm... it wouldn't fit. The bowl was right against the wall, literally touching the wall, so the tank couldn't fit, the bolts to attach the two together wouldn't even match up! URG!! Well, after yet another trip to Lowe's we found someone who actually knew what he was talking about! He said that we needed a toilet with a 10" setback (which is the distance between the wall and the bolts in the floor) which is something most people "nowadays" don't know about. Of course, Lowe's and the other big box home improvement stores don't stock that kind, but he could order it for us and it would arrive in three to ten days (Lets see, it's Saturday, and I've had to shlep down to the basement to pee since Tuesday, what's another week-and-a-half) OR we could try some small plumbing stores, one of which was the store where we ordered our sink. YIPPIE!! So we run right over to that store only to find out they were closed on Saturday and Sunday.

Well, at 8AM this morning I was on the phone calling this store, but no one answered. Wait 30 minutes. Called again. Yep, they have 10" "rough in" toilets. They probably have a couple in stock. They'd cost around $125.00 - less than we paid for our Lowe's potty. Told the Mr. and he jumped out of bed and ran (well, drove, actually) over there. An hour later he was bringing our new toilet through the door! Then he bathed really fast, dressed, grabbed his lunch and ran off to work. So, maybe with a little bit of luck and a lot of prayer I will at least have a potty up here before I go to bed tonight. I guess I can keep dreaming about my inspiration bathroom:

6AM

That is the time I have been setting my alarm. I don't necessarily want to get up so early but there are things I want (need) to do before the girls get up. I just went from a 7AM wake up to the new 6AM wake up schedule this week because they were getting up before 7... Ideally this should work. In reality they seem to have this sixth sense that Mommy is getting up earlier and therefore they should as well. So for the past two mornings I have been trying to get Taz back to sleep so I can get laundry and blog rounds done. It ain't happenin' folks. I'm starting to tear my hair out. Now I'm an hour-and-a-half behind "schedule." What do your schedules look like?

Can We Tear Up This Little House Any More??

Remember my ugly duckling? Well, yesterday I was is the bathroom talking to my husband while he was getting a bath (what, you've never done that?) and some water splashed all over our basket of magazines so I moved it to keep the water from ruining our required reading. Now remember why that basket was so strategically placed? We started looking at the linoleum and got the bright idea that we'd peel up the floor! I knew what was underneath because I had already looked under it in the bathroom closet. There was a loose tile in the closet so I yanked it out and we went to Lowe's to see what it was (I thought maybe it was quartz) and what we needed to fix the floor. It turns out that the tile was marble!! We have marble floors under three layers of linoleum!!

My husband hard at work:

Here the first layer is peeled up and you can see the second layer:

Here is the original marble floor:

This picture is after he ripped the whole top layer of linoleum up.

You can see the bottom layer of linoleum in this picture. I'm guessing it was laid in the 60's or 70's.

I'll keep posting the progress on this project. He started last night and we still have a long way to go!

My Sad, Sad Laundry Room

Meet my laundry room.

She's a little sad.
The first reason for her sadness? This thing.

Yep, that's an All jug rigged up and duct taped to the drain pipe. The amount of water the washer shot into the pipe was too much for it to drain fast enough to keep from overflowing, so my husband fashioned his own "reservoir" to try to contain the overflow until it had time to drain. It worked okay...

...but not perfectly, that's why there's that cooler sitting there to catch the rest of the overflow.

Here is what the dryer gets to look at day after day:

By the way, that's what it looks like when it's clean. That puffy yellow stuff? That's called Great Stuff. It's for filling cracks. You spray and it foams up and dries hard as a rock. Maybe I could take a chainsaw to it... Keep an eye out for it throughout this post. I don't know what the deal is with the wall and baseboard being cut off about four inches above the floor. Next to that toilet is a sink and next to that is this:
That's supposed to be a shower.
Here is is from another (blurry) angle:


And here is a head on shot of it:
That green piece of soap in the soap holder? Yeah, that belonged to the previous owners. We've never used this thing for it's intended purpose. Oh, it's comprised of a concrete floor and metal surround. This sucker would take a jackhammer to remove.

And as if you haven't had enough of the shower?
That silver thingy in the upper right hand corner is the shower head. I don't know what kind of water pressure it gets. And I don't know what's up with that two by four wedged up there...

Here we have the lovely brown astroturf that is on the floor in this room.
Those nasty looking stains would be courtesy of our washer. Something about it leaks oil onto the floor.
Here, let me move this baker's rack so you can get a better view of the corner.

Oh, there is that Stuff again and there is that strangeness with the wall and trim cut so far above the floor again.

Well, I understand that you are saying, "Would you shut up about your hideous laundry room already!?" See, there are actually two reasons I brought up the thing. One is I found this blog called Pink and Polka Dot and she is so cute! About a week and a half ago she posted about her laundry room. Let me tell you: I was drooling just over the before photos! But the no-cost after is so stinkin' cute!!

So, what's the other reason I would post this? See, my poor laundry room is now more depressed than ever because now she has to share her nastiness with this:
I'll pardon you with the details about our acquiring this set of fabulousness for today. But I do feel bad to have to put them in this room.

Oh, look at this:
Did you see?? Rather, did you see what's missing?? No more rigged up "reservoir!"!!!!!! The washer uses so little water that we don't need to worry about that anymore!

And now I'm pondering painting the room, see:
...as if that will help... Sorry my little sweethearts!

I Must Be A Pack Rat

This is everything we cleaned out from just one portion of the basement!!! What is even more sad is that every single bit of this is trash! As I took boxes out I realized a bunch of this junk was stuff that was put in the basement the day we moved in... That was almost six years ago, people!! Too sad.


Oh, and do you see the big hole in our basement door? That is courtesy of Bismarck, the Belgian Tervuran that my husband used to own. He decided that he wanted to go outside when we wouldn't let him, so he ate the door! (I'll leave that thought for another day, though.)

I even thought I'd be so kind as to give you another view of this mess!
All those flattened boxes were going to be used some day to pack stuff ...yeah, right!

There you have it: I am officially a pack rat...

It Had To Be Done

I can't believe I am about to show you this, but I soooo need a kick in the rear to get things started.

This is just a tiny glimpse into our dungeon, er... basement:This is really just the tip of the iceberg, but I don't have the courage tonight to let you see the rest...

BUT

That was one aisle of the basement yesterday.

Here is what my husband and I accomplished today:
Not perfect, but oh so much better.


Here is an after picture going the other direction:
Ooooh, man, I should have taken a picture of what came out of the basement... I'm too lazy and it's too cold right now, but I think I'll post that tomorrow... I know it doesn't look like much, but this took us almost two hours to do! I can't tell you how long it's been since I've been able to walk through that area without hopping over something or squeezing by something!

An Ugly Duckling of a Bathtub

Chris asked me in this post if that was my bathtub to the right of the window. Well, yeah, it is, but I'm going to give you the real deal on this.



Here is the glorious arched alcove bath:

And here we have a basket of magazines to peruse...

...or to hide the three layers of linoleum that are peeling up from mildew!



Here is the bath from a different angle:

That tile going around the arch is just ugly.

"What's that?" you say? "What's that thing at the top where the shower head is supposed to be?"

Why, it's a broken shower head nozzle! And it's ready to spray the skin right of your body like a power washer!!

Oh, this is the example of the lovely mildewed corners of the bathtub...

And this is the lovely job the previous owners did of putting up a fake (cardboard) tile do-hickey on the back of the tub. Gotta love how they pieced the thing!!

Well, I guess I should mention some pros about the tub now. I do absolutely adore the alcove, although I'd like to figure out how to improve the tiles (you can't paint them can you???) And the tub itself is so deep and great for soaking. I also love the lines of the tub which you can see in the second pic...

Hmm, maybe I can get pictures of my grandparents tub on here after Christmas. It's really neat... REALLY colorful, but really neat.

Messy Office Cleanup

Well, today I guess I'm going to be a little boring and show my cleaning skills. Ha! Ha! Since I've started spending more time in the office with this blog the uninspiring desk configuration and basically the entire look of the room have been getting to me. So I rearranged everything and am working on getting an office that looks more like me (Yikes!). Well, here is what the desk area looked like before:

You can see I've already started ripping down painted wallpaper in these pics. The ivy wallpaper was on top of textured wallpaper, and on three of the walls it was only put on the area under the 2x4's that I'm guessing are supposed to be a chair rail (the chair rail was only on three walls as well. On the fourth wall the ivy covered the entire wall (blech!).

Here are the after photos:

See that pile of papers under my cell phone? Those are bills that need to be paid and if they are not in full view for my husband, he'll forget that they are still due...

Doesn't that look much more streamline? Those canvases under the desk are hiding all the mangled electrical cords.

This do-hickey thing slides out so we can access the printer supplies and our other files without having to look at their messiness all the time.

Well, that's it. Pretty boring.

Hey, join me for Kimba's Christmas open house next week! click the button on my sidebar to find out what it's all about!

What Could Be Hiding in the Ivy???

I was going to write about favorite toys from my childhood, but we made a little discovery the other day that I just had to document here...

Okay, so in my first (Wait, wait! Did you notice what I just did? I just made that word a hyperlink! Woo hoo! No more stupid hyperlinks-that-are-just-the-address's for me! Yeah, I rock!!!)post you caught a glimpse of my hideous breakfast-nook-turned-office-room with the nasty ivy wallpaper crawling all over the wall. Well, that picture wasn't actually that bad, because, see, on three of the walls the ivy wallpaper was only on the lower two feet of the wall below a to-low-to-be-a-chair-rail-chair-railing (What's up with the phrases-that-are-all-dashed-together today?? Promise that's the last one. Promise.). What you don't see is the one wall on which one of the previous owners decided to nix the railing and just do the whole wall in the ivy monstrosity. See?
That's just half of the wall because on Thursday I was doing some rearranging in the off ice and I just couldn't stand to look at it anymore. So, I got and exacto and just started ripping it down wherever I could. My poor dear husband came home to find "his" office rearranged, wallpaper everywhere, and me smiling stupidly (after having downed almost half a bottle of wine), "Doesn't it look great, Honey?"Wow, that picture is blurry! I must have had a kid hanging off of me...

Well, as I was ripping I uncovered a "sweet" little message someone had left for me. Can you see it??
This is after I scrubbed part of it off today! Honestly, I know it must have been a stupid teenager, but still, on the wall of some one's home? Give me a break! Well, I guess it's all the more incentive to keep at it, so I'm going to be working on that tonight.