demolition begins!

It's now official - we are redoing our 1/2 bathroom!

We got home from a busy holiday vacation in NY with enough hours left on Sunday to being our bathroom remodel. From start to finish it only took about 3 hours to take out all the doody-brown tiles and mosaic tile flooring. The hardest part about the whole job so far was getting the "new" sink out of the bathroom without damage. Aleks has quite a lot of plumbing ahead of him.

So, as you can see from the pictures, we had no problem getting the wall tiles out. This included the chunky paper towel holder, toothbrush holder, and soap holder all in the ugly shade of 'nasty' that it was. Since we recently replaced the vanity and light fixture, that's staying as is!

The floor wasn't as bad as it could have been. The tiles were laid in almost an inch of concrete. Because it was done over half a century ago, everything seemed to flake apart and came up easily for us. We're now down to the sub-sub-sub flooring of thin wood planks. Not much, if anything, separates this room from the basement at this point!! (No exageration! I can see our washer/dryer from a hole next to the sewer pipe!)

So there you have it. Our next steps include laying a sub-floor high enough to match up with the sewer pipe (which all has fancy industry terms and names that make me laugh but I can't remember). We've already picked out the tile we'll lay on the floor, but you'll have to wait until next weekend for updated pictures and stories about that. Once the floor is in we plan to put beadboard on the walls to cover where the tile used to be. We'll finish that off with some chair rail and baseboard. Then Aleks has the fun job of getting the sink back in (de-ja-vous) and a new toilet which we'll be shopping for on Wednesday. After the final paint is complete we'll have a much improved DIY bathroom remodel!

We hope you'll all make a trip up north to visit us soon and see all this hard work in person! In the mean time, enjoy our pictures and updates. Stay tuned. We've only just begun.....

Happy Holidays!

We want to take a minute to thank everyone for keeping us in mind this holiday season. We got an overwhelming amount of holiday cards, photo's, and family updates. It warms our hearts to know we have so many great friends and family!!

Here's a sneak peak at our dining room table filled with holiday cards. We didn't do much to decorate the house this year except for two vases filled with ornaments and the menorah we lit the first few nights of Hanukkah we were home. It has been a very busy season with work, a new niece, the snow storm, and traveling to NY. ...but we wouldn't have it any other way.

We hope everyone's well and enjoying the holidays. Stay tuned for a post about our house projects. Like I said, it's been a busy December 2008!

Cheers!

digital upgrade

Aleks and I are planning to upgrade our digital camera. We had the opportunity to demo a Nikon D40 from his office this weekend. I love it. It's definitely towards the top of my list - just a bit more research to do on a few others that friends highly recommend. If you are reading this and have any suggestions please let us know.

I was really pleased with the D40 and how quickly and easily I was learning about all the features and settings. I played around with it a lot and used Mason as my test subject, of course. He was great because I could practice in all different lighting conditions, and with movement, portraits, and so many other features of the camera.

The only hesitation for me right now is the shutter speed. Nikon has a D60 which is almost identical to the D40 but with a faster shutter speed. It also offers a package deal with a second telephoto lens for zooming in on objects much further away. We'll check out prices and see what we think is best.

For those who might not be clear on what impact shutter speed could have, check out this filmstrip picture I've attached with 6 sequence shots of Mason getting up from the kitchen and running towards the camera. All I did was hold down the button and the camera automatically took a sequence of shots. With a faster shutter speed I would have more incremental pictures of this action taking place, which would be great.


Enjoy these pictures, some of Mason and his friend Brady, a 5 month old mini-Mason who lives in our neighborhood and is Mason's new best friend. They played so well together and had a blast, we hope for many more puppy-play-dates in the near future.


ps - for those of you who haven't heard yet... Mason is a move star! He's premiering this Christmas in "Marley and Me", you may have heard of it. You should check it out - get a sense of what our world is like since adding Mason to the family!! ;)