1/2 bath | part 5

What a weekend! Have a look from the main hallway....With the tile down on the floor, the walls up with trim, Aleks got busy painting this weekend. We went with a bright white for the beadboard and trim, and a very dark slate (dark blue/gray) for the top walls and ceiling. We love the look. What do you think? (in some pictures the lighting + flash of the camera make the walls look greenish - they're not at all)

It was scary at first to see such a dark color going up, but it goes so well with the floor. It's a very sharp contrast with all the white and shiny silver finishes. It's now a sleek, contemporary room.

Fom a PM perspective, we're about 80% complete with the remodel. Once the toilet goes in, we'll be more than 95% complete!! Aleks already got the light and medicine cabinet in, so we will just have some finishing touches and decorating to do. ....finally, I can contribute to this project. :)

As you can see, the sink is in, and working great!

Enjoy these pictures from the weekend. We can't wait for you to see all of this hard work in person soon.

...and unfortunately when I do a batch upload of pictures you are not able to click to enlarge them. I hope to find time this week to figure out this issue so you can get an enlarged view of each picture. We don't want you missing out on all the great details. :)

And stay tuned for the finishing touches. We'll include some before/after images when the project is complete.

Creative Critters

I needed a break from all the 1/2 bathroom remodel blogging I've been doing, so I'm sharing with you a funky new collection of completely useless information about me here:

http://daytum.com/creativecritter

I was introduced to the creator of this website when I was in NYC for a web conference a few months ago, and forgot about it until now. It's completely useless information at this point, but from a UE/IA perspective, I love how the information is collected and displayed. It's user friendly and growing and changing daily. I've been having fun between meetings playing around with entering and displaying data.

Click through some other profiles from the logo/main site to see what other useless information you can gather from other random people. Stay tuned, I'm hoping to find or create a widget to put in a spotlight on our blog page that will link you to this new page so you can stay posted at your leisure.

Cheers! Happy Tuesday.

1/2 bath | part 4

Walls and Trim = 1/2 bath remodel part 4.

This weekend was a little slow going regarding our bathroom remodel. We got a very late start on Saturday, getting back from Lowes with materials for the walls and trim around noon time. That's VERY late for us, especially considering Aleks left the house by 8:30 to pick up the sink and faucet that morning. (ha ha ha, joke's on us, we have a crapper in our living room as extra seating for the next month... you can keep keep laughing...)Either way, we got working on the walls, which took much longer than expected. We did everything from getting the panels parallel and even on the existing wall, aligned to our pencil line at 4 feet from the floor, and everything else, it was a lot of work. Even Aleks was surprised we didn't get all the walls up in one afternoon.

I think Aleks is getting tired and ready for a 2 week break as he heads down to NYC for work and then we're off to the farm for a 3 day weekend. I just have to say, Aleks did a great job measuring and cutting the holes for all the plumbing along the left wall. I know he's so handy, and I'm so lucky to have him around, but it's really amazing the things he can accomplish sometimes!

I won't even tell you how many cans of liquid nails we went through, but Mason will be high off the fumes for a week from it all! Speaking of the pooch, he's been a great subject for testing out and playing with our new digital camera! We went with the Nikon D60 and LOVE it so far!We're also loving all the snow. Too bad it got dumped onto all the ice we still had, but it's so much fun to play in. We've had Mason off-leash all weekend in both the back and front yards. He's been great about staying on our property and coming when called - most of the time. We've also started keeping him out of his crate and in the family room when we go out sometimes. It's great to find him curled up and sleeping on his bed cushion without destroying anything around the house. He's really settling into being the best dog ever! And to top off the weekend, we're heading to friends of ours in Boston for a pot-luck dinner tonight. We'll be buying our main dish, but we made our now famous (thanks to Mrs. Trainor) peanut butter crunch balls. They are amazing! It's basically crushed up graham cracker and peanut butter (plus some added sugar and butter), rolled up into balls, then dipped in chocolate!So, as we wind down for the weekend, we wanted to share all the progress we've made. I hope you enjoy all the pictures. I'm even more into documenting things now that we have our great camera. We hope everyone's staying warm and well.Come visit us soon!!!

1/2 bath | part 3.5

Grout! Today was another great day and progress towards our 1/2 bathroom remodel.

It was nice to have to take a 24 hour break while the tiles set in the mortar from yesterday. That left us time to run some errands and swing by the Gales to have lunch with Dan, Jessica, and Jenna.

By early afternoon the bathroom was ready for it's next step - grout. Aleks was good about following directions and mixing parts A, B, and C, applying the grout at an angle to the lines, and waiting the recommended time between rounds of wiping down the tile and grout to finish the process. I think Aleks is getting a bit tired from all this work because he felt that today was just as hard, if not harder than yesterday's laying all the tile.

As for me, the good assistant, I baked plenty of chocolate chip cookies and hung out with Mason (who was Mason as usual, as you can see from the picture above) while occasionally shouting out words of encouragement and praise. I think we're both amazed at how well this floor is turning out. I just can't believe that this is still only the beginning if you consider the time we still need to spend measuring and getting the walls up, getting the sink and toilet installed, finishing all the trim, and painting. We may be up to Bathroom Remodel part 34 before it's complete.

We'll be sure to keep you posted. Thanks for keeping an interest and following along on our journey. We hope you're all having a great weekend. Talk to you soon!

1/2 bath | part 3

Thanks for keeping up with our bathroom remodel. Today was a fantastic day!

As you saw from the pictures yesterday, we had all the tile laid out and cut. This morning we marked all the seams, numbered the tiles and squares on the floor as we removed them from the room (temporarily), and got to work - big time!
Since only one person fits in this bathroom at a time, and Aleks is the most handy (and does the most research on everything), he got to do most of the work while I acted as the #1 assistant - A.K.A. tile hander-offer/support coach/soda getter. It is still amazing to see how much of a mess we can make of our entire house just for one little project. Everything from the basement, through the living room, dining room, kitchen, and even upstairs in the bedrooms looks like disaster struck. Just as we think we're getting the house in order and our things are organized, we mess it all up again. This project is definitely going to be worth it!
So, everything worked out as planned. Exactly! Aleks did a great job with the mortar and laying each tile according to our plan. He got everything complete in under 2 hours! Now we get a nice break as they have to sit for 24 hours. Yippee!! We get to treat ourselves to a night out on the town. ...well, at least a few hours out walking through the mall and going to dinner. We can only hope that the rest of the bathroom remodel goes this smoothly.

Tomorrow is grout work in the afternoon, and possibly measuring the walls for the bead board. We'll be sure to keep you posted. Stay tuned.

I've also added a quick video clip of Mason, who's also been a good sport through this project. We've managed to keep him away from most of the mess so far. As you can see, he's still into his huge sticks and LOVES playing in the snow. He can't wait to pass along his kisses and press his cold, wet nose to everyone's cheeks. Cheers!

1/2 bath | part 2

Happy New Year!!!!


I had to post today to keep everyone updated on our bathroom progress.

A LOT has happened since last Sunday when we demolished the room.

I also have to show off how amazing my husband is! Have a look...


On Wednesday (yesterday) we spent the morning in the snow shopping for a new toilet. (This is after we went to the park and took Mason for a great hike through the woods.) Since Aleks took 'the wife' with him to the showroom, he left with much more than just a toilet! We spotted a pedestal sink and faucet that was too perfect for the room, we just had to have it - sorry the only online picture of the sink is bad, we'll have great ones once we get ours in place. Even though it took us about 3x over our expected budget for the toilet, it was money well spent and will make the whole room a contemporary & sleek space. Notice how the faucet handles match so well with the lights above the mirrored cabinet we installed about 2 months ago!


After going overboard at the plumbing showroom we headed to Lowes - and it was snowing even harder at this point, practically a blizzard, but we were on a mission. We picked up parts A&B for the grout (apparently part C is only the color tint), we got a few extra floor tiles, Aleks bought a wet saw for tile cutting (since we had a few potential "L" shaped cuts to make) and wood for the step under the door frame between the floors. No overspending here.

Then it was home for an afternoon of Aleks cutting away at the 3/4" wood boards for the floor base. I think this task proved more challenging than expected, but he did a GREAT job. Dad - I can't even count how many times we followed your advice: "measure twice, cut once" ...we probably measured 8-10 times before each cut, but it paid off in the end!

After such a full day neither of us could stay awake until midnight, but we woke up just in time to count down to the new year. Happy 2009! Someone please explain to me why Dick Clark is still on TV for new years!? That was really hard to watch, almost more so than last year. Can we say retirement anyone?

So, here we are today, January 1st, laying out the tiles for a dry run. Aleks is busy cutting the tiles in the basement while I type away. How cute is he with the apron on? Hopefully tomorrow will go smoothly with the mortar and then grout on Saturday. The plan is to have the floor completely done by the weekend, put up the walls next weekend, do the plumbing and painting as we have time, and have everything complete before Lisa and Mike come visit the last weekend in January. We'll keep you posted.


Best wishes to everyone this year!! We love you!!

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!! ;)

Ice Ice Baby

Vanilla Ice Ice Baby. To go. To go. ...sorry for the horrible early 80's flashback for those of you to cool for school.

So, as usual, we were busy around the house this weekend. Aleks got a water line from the basement to the new fridge, so we now have ice! We haven't had a freezer before this one that made it's own ice. I'm liking it a lot, and Mason too, he loves ice treats. ooo, and check out the awesome linoleum floor hidden in the alcove where the fridge goes. Clearly Harold (the previous owner) didn't move his fridge when installing the floating wood floors. Busted!

I'm also including some pictures of the mirror we just hung in the dining room. Aside from a new dining room furniture set there's nothing more we can possibly do in that small room! Since we moved in we got the chair rail up, painted floor to ceiling (including the ceiling and the cabinet), installed a new light fixture, hung curtains, added the three panels of wall art, and now the mirror to finish off the space. Oh wait, I lied. We can still have the wood floors redone - it's on Aleks's wish list. ;)

For those of you who haven't seen the house yet or haven't been here in a while - and that's EVERYONE - plan a visit! We'd love to have you stay with us. We promise you won't have to do work around the house while you're here.

Be sure to send us pictures of all the kiddies dressed up for Halloween this year. I think Mason might wear the raindeer antlers he got at Christmas last year, but that's about as far as we'll go.

Happy Halloween!