Monday, February 27, 2012

Bathroom Update

Since the last bathroom post, we've had the electrian and the plumber come to our house and get our bathroom all fixed up.  We got a new light box wired and our light switches simplified. 







The plumber jackhammered our foundation and moved the drain a good 5 inches to center.  He also raised the shower head and moved the fixtures to be more centered as well.







This weekend, we took out the toilet and removed the tile and thinset from the floor.  It created a lot of dust in a tiny room and poor Stephen's hair was all dusty white.



It's all very exciting but we still need the drywall fixed and the new shower pan to be properly sloped in.  Hopefully we'll get to that in the next month.

We haven't ordered the tile yet, partially because I think we're still a bit torn on our final design... and color scheme for that matter.  We had decided on a dark tile, but then we saw cool light colored mosaics at the store and Stephen then got the urge to go with a light tile.  So, we've still got time to decide on that.  I think we're worried that even though the dark tile is awesome looking, the whole shower bathrom area is only 5'x5'ish so it might make it look smaller and darker.

 Oh well, we've got time to figure it out.

Anything will be better than this:

Monday, February 20, 2012

New look!

The HUGE picture I had on here was nice but ....huge.  I finally figured out how to make the picture smaller and customized.  Welcome photoshop and pixel sizing.

I hope you like the new look!  I'm thinking of making the backdrop more of subtle lighter pattern but I haven't decided yet.

AND!!!  The electrician is here right now!  Update on that later!

Saturday, February 18, 2012

We're like best friends now

Ahh.. this is so cool.  I know I'm such a dork for this, too but I don't care.  I commented on young house love's blog the other day and Sherry commented back!  EEK!


um...that's all I got for today!

Friday, February 17, 2012

Stats

So, I'm already doing so much better at updating this blog than I was in 2011!

Woo to the hoo.

In 2011, I had a total of 30 posts.  That's roughly 2.5 posts a month.  That's sad.

Now, already in 2012 this will make 17! ... and February isn't even over yet!

Now, I know some of my posts have been about nothing in particular...like this one. But it's fun to write about nothing and everything. 

Now for some graphics.  I didn't make these by the way.  Blogger tracks it for you, and it's pretty fun to see the stats.  For me it is anyway.


This graph shows my top traffic sources.  What's up everybody!  I've gotta give a shout out to my top 3 followers!  My brother Eric and his wife Liesel...wassup!!!!  My friend Ashley...Holla!  And my parents...hey!

This graph shows what browsers and operating systems people use to view my site.  Or in dumbed down words "what internet are you using" as I have to explain it that way to people that call into my work.  No offense to anyone who reads my blog and doesn't know what a browser or web search engine is though.  This graph is cool because it's about a techie as I get.

So, anyway, here's to a year of exceeding my average posts by a lot and hopefully having fun things for you all to read!


Thursday, February 16, 2012

Funny Pictures!

                                            


Drunk on spagetti sauce and water!  So good!

To avoid pictures with his eyes closed....


                        
  William resorted to the wide eye look. But he couldn't quite master the wide eye look with a smile...


Woah!!! Mario Kart

 This is me exasperated with the amount of stuff I had to take off just the sit down and eat lunch. And I was cold and out of breath.

Mom telling a story about skiing Paradise Bowl

Eric and Liesel zoned out.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

My deal with...

...Valentine's Day.

Yesterday was all about showing your love to your loved one. Giving them a card, flowers, chocolate and taking them out to dinner.

I'm not opposed to any of that because Stephen and I have done V-day dates in the past.  But this year, we're just like "I'm glad we're not big we-must-go-on-a-dinner-date-because-its-valentines-day people".  I mean we just thought, why would be want to go out to dinner to a crowded restaurant when everybody else and their dog is, too.

We'd much rather have a quiet evening just the two of us doing our normal thing.  And besides, we can show our love to eachother every day!

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Valentine's Day!

In honor of this love day I'm wearing my only red sweater. I've got on new jeans that are actually long enough to wear with my tall brown boots and I feel pretty.

And that's the extent of my post that has anything to do with V-Day.

Except for my hair. 

Here is my dilemma.  My hair has been soo dry this winter making it staticky and pointless to wash and dry everyday because it doesn't even really get dirty or oily overnight.  Just a little flat.  So for a little while now, I've been experimenting with just washing it every other day.  I bought some of that "dry shampoo" to use on the days that I don't wash it.  It works pretty good actually.  It kinda puts some life back into it and takes the little bit of oil out of your hair around your face.  But, you can't use too much because then your hair feels a little bit like you put hairspray all over and then brushed it out.  Hence, your hair is not really soft.

Well today, I didn't wash my hair, used dry shampoo and thought I would have time to curl it to really give it some body.  I got like half of my hair done and realized I was not going to have time to finish it.  So I had to straighten it, but I had already put in some hairspray.  Basically, my hair was just a mess and looked really flat with some kinks in it.

I finally just pulled it all back with a clip and tried to make it look like a casual updo.

Oh well. Tomorrow's another day!

Monday, February 13, 2012

This is a really good reason as to why we are remodeling our bathroom.

This weekend we did some more work on our bathroom.  This time around it's so much more slow going.  I guess I don't have the DIY gene as much as I thought I did.  Oh well, we're still making progress.

Since I have Presidents Day off from work, I thought it would be a really genius idea to have the plumber come in that day and replace our pipes with flexible stuff and move the drain.  More on that in a second.

In order for it to be ready for him, we needed to remove the curb of the shower, the tile, concrete and shower pan.  What we found was that the shower pan only went up the sides about 4 inches.  The ideal would be 12.  We also found that the pan was punctured with nails, that's probably one reason why we had mold growing and another reason why the 2x4s are also a bit moldy.  The most crazy thing we found though was that beneath the shower pan, like on the foundation concrete, it was wet.  Like small puddle of water wet.  

And I'll tell you that we basically haven't used this shower since we finished our other awesome bathroom in October 2009.  So...just think about that for minute.  Something must have gone wrong in the installation, and we're so glad we are going to make it right now!


 And back to why we have to have the drain moved.  Ugh.  What a TERRIBLE NUISANCE!!!!!!   Once you put the curb in, our drain is off center by a good 4 inches.  And to make it even more annoying, the whole shower floor was sloped to the center, not the drain.  So there was constantly a puddle of water just sitting there.  So now, to make it right, and so the tile guy can come in and do a new pan for us, we'll have to have the plumber move it. Which is then going to leave us with a whole in the foundation which we'll have to fill.  But, despite this cost, it'll be worth it!

So this is what our shower is looking like these days.  

This is the before of our sink area (although after we took the big mirror down)


And here is the after, or during I guess I should say.  In this part of the bathroom, we are going to keep the cabinetry and just strip the paint and repaint it white.  Doing a better job of course than what it looks like now.  I mean, who paints OVER the hinges.  So annoying.  We are going to put the big mirror back as well, and just frame it out so make it look less like a builders mirror and more custom.  

And this is our new light fixture!

Obviously, there is still lots to do and it overwhelms me every time I sit down and think about or run through our checklist.  Hence this post of our bathroom update it ending!  

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Check out that rack!

Come on...get your head out of the gutter!

I'm referring to our wood rack!  We finally put it together last weekend after getting the cover delivered to our doorstep. 

It was really easy to put together and the cover is of great quality.  It has buckles and velcro and everything.

It is eight feet long and when it was first put together and empty I thought it was huge and seeing how much wood we had stacked on our back porch I didn't even think it would fill up half of it.  Well, as it turns out, it all just barely fit on there!

Now, after what seems like two years, we finally have our porch back and it's awesome!



Thanks to the in-laws for getting us this wood rack for Christmas!  Also, if anyone is craving a a real fire, you can come to our house!  Or if you want some wood of your own, we obviously have enough to last of 4-5 more winters so we are happy to share a bit with you.  As what is not pictured here, we used in the last 3 winters!

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Stuff I gotta do

Sometimes I think if I write stuff on this blog that I need to do, it will somehow make me more accountable to actually doing it.

That almost never actually happens.

But it's worth a try and I don't have anything else to talk about right now.

TODAY:
- clean kitchen. because the dishes I used this weekend are still just sittin' there.
- cook dinner. because I haven't acutally cooked a meal (other than superbowl food) in like a week....or more.
- finish my art project. because it just needs to be glued together and it's been sitting in the guest room for a month now.

LATER: As in, next week, next month, or just sometime before July.  This is going to be overwhelming. Oh and why July you ask.  Well, becuase that's halfway through the year and that seemed like a managable time frame
- make mini movie of 2012 ski trip and download it to external hard drive and upload to youtube
- download South Africa videos to hard drive and begin editing into a home movie.  Seriously Megan, I can't believe you haven't done this yet!
- get quote on sod for the backyard and install it.
- finish the bathroom remodel (and all that that emcompasses are posts dedicated to themselves)
- plan the veggie garden
- get back into going to the gym and back in shape.  I mean, who are you kidding, people that have way busier lives than you make time for their metabolic health so you don't have an excuse.
- fix my sewing machine and sew some stuff