Making progress on the bathroom!

David, Tommy, and Grandpa continued to work on the bathroom on Saturday, and then Tommy stayed and helped until about 3:00 on Sunday as well. After Mom and Tommy left David's mom joined us and we continued our mission to finish the bathroom renovation! Even though we stayed up working until 3:30am on Sunday/Monday morning we were unable to get the bathroom in working order for the week. Because my grandparents live just 20 minutes away this wasn't a big deal though, and we are staying with them until Saturday morning. Right now we have finished the tiling and plumbing for the shower/tub, we have drywall on all of the walls, and we have tiled the floor. Remaining tasks include grouting the floor, putting the toilet back in, doing the plumbing for the vanity, installing the vanity, installing a light, spackling and painting the walls, and installing a ceiling. Luckily most of these things are more "finishing work" and so by the end of Saturday we should have a functioning bathroom! Shown below is a photo of the finished shower/tub, and more pictures can be found by clicking on this link:

https://plus.google.com/photos/111337432367013111703/albums/5748429679097607105?authkey=CMHDhdGhuaD1KQ

For those of you bored with our garage and house updates :)

Contrary to what our recent blog posts may lead you to believe, we DO in fact have a life outside of working on the house and finishing the garage! Since our engagement, one of the things we have been busy with is initial wedding planning. We have chosen our date and booked our venue (Burke Mountain in East Burke, VT) and photographer! It's been fun thinking about the details and how we'd like everything to unfold. David has been busy with his new go-kart, he participates in races at F1-Outdoors a couple of weekends a month with his friend Matt. In addition to keeping up with rock climbing, I have had one two week trip to Seattle, a lesion surgically removed from my tongue (OUCH) which luckily turned out to be benign, and the first of two gum grafts. With my two surgeries and our bathroom renovations I've spent some time "living" with my grandparents, which has been a nice scenery change. We have also had Coal stay with us for a few weeks (he and Ash had a grand time), Sam has visited, and David spent a week in Iceland for work. I'll be in Illinois this coming week to re-do an experiment I did last fall.

Ash has also been getting even more comfortable as a member of our family. David likes to say that he is finally "acting like a dog". He LOVES to have his ears scratched, and he has started nudging your hand when you stop or if he is laying next you and wants to be scratched. Two things that he needs to work on now are walking better on the leash (he doesn't like it when there is tension so lays down / "puts the brakes on" if you walk faster than he wants to walk or in a direction he doesn't want to go) and if he is leashed and tied to anything he immediately chews through the leash - we have gone through more than 5 leashes at this point I think! Thankfully Lupine leashes have a guarantee even when chewed. I took a couple of videos today of Ash playing in my grandparents old tennis courts, he's such a cutie!

Bathroom Renovation, Day 1

If you have been to our house before, you know how ugly our bathroom was. A great example is the green cardboard wall board that was in the shower and on the walls. In addition, the sink was a little falling apart, the toilet didn't have any shoulder room, and the tub had about 50lbs of caulk on it. Needless to say, a renovation was required.

We decided to change the entire layout and use a smaller tub. This is going to give us more of a runway style bathroom, and will open up a lot more space for a vanity and for some shelves. Day one was mostly demolition, but we also got the tub in and the new partition wall built! Thanks to Tommy and Grandpa John for helping, as I wouldn't have gotten nearly as far without them.

Selected pictures are below, and all of them are here: https://plus.google.com/photos/117598496317711140914/albums/5746667399344453777?authkey=CN_0_e_StcT-2QE

The bathroom, mostly pre-demolition. Notice the green wallboard.

20 years of junk at the bottom of the tub's useless cabinet

Grandpa John pulling the HEAVY cast iron tub out the door. David is pushing.

Checking out the new tub.

Progress for day 1!

 

Doors and Gutters

The progress on the garage has been slow recently, but I have finally gotten doors and gutters on it. Dad was down to help a few weekends ago to put the doors on, and it looks pretty good! It is awesome to be able to easily open and close the garage doors quickly. I also added locks so the place is now completely secure!

I didn't really have the right amount of room to make the doors a standard vertical door, so I ended up making them sliding doors. The doors themselves are standard garage doors, but I put a strip of aluminum along the side of each door so that they are pretty stiff. It worked pretty well!

I recently noticed that the wall was leaking! It had actually caused a little bit of damage on the floor, and was  causing things near the wall to get wet (including some charcoal). After climbing on the roof with a hose to investigate, I found that water was running down the wall, on to the window, under the window (where I still need to put trim) and then down the holes in the cinderblock, pooling, and seeping out. I need to put the trim back on, which should help most of it, but to be safe I installed gutters on the roof. I think it should also end up helping control the water hitting the ground hard under the roof as well.