Many Little Projects

In addition to the cabinets coming together in the garage, this pregnant wife decided she wanted landscaping added to the renovation schedule. I know, she’s crazy!

Anyway, my amazing husband accommodated and spent his afternoons last week preparing the new place for the backyard shed, digging dirt and moving rocks. I leveled the flower bed and moved the rose bushes ( I hope they live!) and yesterday, our backyard opened up beautifully as the shed was relocated!

The contents of the shed are still in the sunroom.

My leveled flower bed – Rob moved the big rocks.

The backyard so much more open after the shed is moved! 

Before (for comparison)

 

We’re on the schedule for a landscaper to come out and do a patio, a retaining wall, and some planting beds… SO excited!!

Other little projects:

Planted seeds

Finally added mirror and hardware to the downstairs bathroom.

Finally cleaned out the basement. The lighting in the basement still drives me crazy. The paper lanterns worked well at first, but were never meant for long term use and many of them have disintegrated. Will be finding another cheap solution soon.

Demo’d the wood boxes in the basement (as we’ve finally used all the firewood) and this space can now be utilized as a guest bedroom! How do you like that rockin’ 70s style basement?

Last but not least, Rob and I poured the concrete samples trying out options for the concrete countertops in the kitchen. We have to wait a couple weeks before we can polish them and really see what they’ll look like. Left to right, they are: adding white, normal concrete grey, adding black dye, and swirling the black and white…

Kitchen Beginnings

My amazing husband has just finished the structure of the future base cabinets! This is the layout of our new kitchen!!!

Above: I’m standing about where the refrigerator will be. The dishwasher will be to the right of the sink, and the oven/stove will be in that open spot on the right (see below).

Below: What the view will be from the dining room. The faces are made of cherry wood. I plan on staining them natural, leaving them a nice medium shade. Underneath the “Rob” banner will be a fridge, then on the left a huge pantry!!

I’ve been polyurethane-ing the shelves on the base cabinets and decided to build a little storage while I was in the garage (with the heaters on for a few hours, it’s about 50! Yay insulation!). I used some of the leftover barn wood to match the work bench and attached hooks according to what we most often needed to use in the garage. Rob appreciates his new storage shelf.

Bathroom Complete… Mostly

I’m gonna call it complete because all that needs to be done is some caulking around the shower door, cabinet hardware, and a mirror. But you can just visualize that, right?

I’m open for suggestions on the mirror – I’m thinking framed in the tile from the shower accent or framed in hickory wood to match the cabinet… what do you think? Other ideas?

Tiling always takes SO MUCH LONGER than I think it will. Every. Time. But the grouting is fun and easy. Just be sure to wear plastic gloves or your fingertips will crack painfully. I know.

We decided to border the bathroom in the darker tile because we thought it would look cool… and there wasn’t enough to do the whole floor in one color… but ALL the tile in the bathroom was less than $40. Horaay!

I LOVE when the cabinet goes in! It feels like it’s almost done! And I love our daring paint color! It really does a lot to update the whole look and make it more “current.” I also love our tile baseboards! So cool!

Even though this new shower is not much bigger than the old fiberglass one… it FEELS a lot bigger. I love the shelf and the accent really spices up the boring tile.

I love that the electrical is a lot more organized. Light, light, fan, plug.

And a close up of Rob’s beautiful handiwork! I adore the glow of this hickory cabinet!

And the big reveal

Before

After

What was entailed in this tiny bathroom remodel:

floor scraping, floor grinding, concrete pouring, researching, shower base shaping, concrete board wall installing, mortar spreading, tile setting, grouting, more grouting, more tile setting, electrical wire running, taping, mudding, sanding, texturing, priming, painting, exhaust fan installing, ceiling tile installing, cabinet making, countertop gluing, sink installation, plumbing testing, toilet installation, shower door installation, shower door adjustment, shower door re-installation, 98 trips to Lowe’s, 8 more trips to any hardware store for just one item, sitting back and admiring…. aah.

Adventures in Bathroom Renovation

Because I felt a little bad about making guests use the ugly bathroom with the gold flecked sink and teeny tiny fiberglass shower…. because I know one can make a bathroom look SO much better with just a little tile and a new countertop…. and because I got plenty of nice tile at the auction for a grand total of $17.50 (as well as a cultured marble sink/countertop for another $17.50)… the downstairs bathroom renovation has begun!!

I tried really hard (okay, not that hard) to salvage the gold flecked sink… but it just refused to relinquish its hold on the cabinet…

The laminate flooring, of which I don’t have a picture, bested me with its grip on the floor. I spend a few hours pounding the scraper with the hammer only to release a few square feet. Rob was my savior with his strength and technique and defeated the evil 70s floor in less than a day, using our concrete grinder to get all the remnants.

So beautiful!

When Rob removed the shower, however, we discovered a rather large hole in the floor where, presumably, the previous owners didn’t like the placement of the drain and just left the gaping hole. So, Rob filled it. But before that could happen, the poorly joined pipe broke loose and Rob had to dig it out and replace the plumbing. First time to dig the dirt UNDER our foundation. Check.

Next came the first shaping of the shower base, the curb for the edge of the shower, and the shower pan liner. Have I mentioned my husband is extremely talented? He did all of this!

Last night, he finished putting up the concrete board for the shower walls. He even designed a shelf (based on my largest shampoo bottle) along the back wall of the shower.

Even though this project has already taken longer than expected, I think the difference will be worth it. Rob is eager, however, to get started building the kitchen cabinets! More to come!

El Salvador

Have I mentioned that my husband is so good to me? I have??You’ve heard it over and over again? Well, it’s a fact.

Last week, he swept me away to the beach in El Salvador. We arrived on Sunday and drove our rented car to the beach house. We were greeted with warm sun, sea air, and local cuisine (pupusas). A pupusa is a corn tortilla filled with something (in this case beans and cheese), then topped with carrot and cabbage slaw and salsa. Wonderful!

The house came with a caretaker, cook, and housekeeper (who all spoke only Spanish, by the way). I was thrilled to practice, but completely saddened by how much comprehension I’d lost over the years. Still able to say what I needed to say, I found myself having to listen extra hard to recognize words and was often completely lost without sufficient context clues. But of course they have plenty of non-Spanish speakers come and stay so the staff is great with communicating past language barriers.

You might think “won’t three more people there cut into your privacy a bit?” Yeah, I thought that too. But they have their own house and we really had plenty of privacy – it was like they only showed up when we needed them.

And as for a cook… well I’m completely spoiled now. It’s wonderful! After a long hard day of lounging by the beach or the pool, you are summoned with “todos son listos” to an already-set table laid with DELICIOUS food. Afterwards, they take the dishes away and wash them! I was in bliss! It’s only been a few days and I REALLY want Rosi to come get me from the living room for my beans, rice, and chicken tacos. Sigh.

This is the house where we stayed. Found it on VRBO.com. It’s mostly open air and you close it up at night, with air conditioners in each bedroom. The bedrooms are to the right through the doors.

The grounds are beautiful. And the pictures don’t do it justice.

We took a day trip down the Ruta del las Flores. If you’re planning a trip to El Salvador, I recommend this day trip for a weekend as the Thursday that we showed up, many things were closed.

On the weekends, I assume there are weavers at these looms.

In the town of Juayua, you can walk down to the waterfalls. I don’t actually know the correct way to get there because we drove our rental car down this very bumpy, narrow, and steep road until some cops at a road block told us we had to park there and walk. A ways down the path, we walked through the gate that read “private property” and something about a hydroelectric power plant to find the waterfalls. That might have been the correct way to do things, but since so few people were out and about on that fine Thursday, I had no cues. So… who knows? But the falls are pretty and worth the ten-minute walk!

The most frightening part was this path that you were to cross to get to the second waterfall. The picture makes it look harmless enough, but the drop-off to the left is really quite substantial. My heart was racing!

 

Overall, this vacation was SO relaxing! We watched the sunset every evening. I did yoga. We laid on the beach. We got massages. We drank fresh coconut water. We read our books in the hammocks. We listened to the sound of the ocean. It was just what we needed.

Garage Gift

Kept secret through Rob’s deployment was my plan to finish the garage. Putting up insulation in the sunroom made me realize how easy it was and my friend’s boyfriend is a handyman with electrical and sheetrock tools… so the garage project was born!

The cleaning out was a formidable task, considering that when we moved in, all our stuff went into the garage and it still had some of that, plus regular garage accumulation stuff. Ugh.

After the wiring and lighting

With insulation (that I did mySELF!) with the pneumatic stapler that the roofing guys let me borrow!

With some taping and mudding

And primed and painted, ready for Rob’s arrival!

There’s still insulation in the ceiling to be done, but it’s a beautiful, considerably warmer workspace! Yay me!

Catching Up

 

In case you missed it, Rob is home!!! He arrived in early November and I’ve been pretty much blissed out ever since. Rob is so dreamy, in case you didn’t know.

My amazing photographer friend came to the airport with a small group from the squadron and took some wonderful photos! Joice Ruffing Photography.

He got two weeks of R&R and we spent it mostly enjoying each other’s company. But since the weather was still pretty nice, we got out for a hike in the hills, a hockey game, a drive to the Badlands, and a visit to Mount Rushmore.

Our trip to Rushmore was quite a bit cold and it was quickly followed by the first big snow of the year – over 9 inches!

We spent Thanksgiving with another couple and our goal of having an enormous amount of food ensuring loads of leftovers was certainly exceeded. We fried a turkey and mourned the fact we hadn’t bought a turkey fryer until this year because YUM!

Oh, I also want to brag some more about my amazing husband because look what he built!

He just whipped it up! I told him I was going to get a pre-made one from Lowe’s for the downstairs bath reno and he just scoffed and made this gorgeous one instead! I love him! So rejoice potential houseguests! No longer will you have to suffer the faded linoleum, gold-flecked sink, wonky cabinet, and ugly 70s shower…. soon, very soon there will be a beautiful bathroom instead!

And one final little detail… Oh happy day! My crowbar shall longer dwell on the kitchen counter waiting to open my dishwasher! We stalked Black Friday and got a dishwasher!!!! Hooray!!! I’m completely in love. This is the first appliance to which I want to pledge devotion! It’s SO quiet! No more turning up the TV or NEVER washing when guests come over! It cleans so well and has got lots of neat settings! Plus, look how shiny!

Hope your Christmas season is wonderful! Just remember Happy Holidays… is what terrorists say. Merry Christmas from McKay and Rob!