Losing my dog, Bella, a month ago was the last thing I thought would happen. We were getting ready for our big road trip across the Southwest, and had it all planned out so our sweet Bella could swim in the ocean before she died. Her death wasn’t in the near future in our minds, we just wanted to be sure we did this trip before she got to the point that she wouldn’t be able to make it there.
The Wednesday before we were heading out, I had scheduled a special vet visit so she could prescribe some arthritis pain pills for the trip. Bella seemed so healthy, and our vet agreed she was in great shape, albeit a bit slow moving. I had always chalked it up to her arthritis, her only ailment at 12 years old. We received a clean bill of health, and I touted the good news of her well-being to everyone I saw. Dean and I loved this dog like I’m sure you love your pets, too, and we were so proud that she was still healthy and lively in her old age.
I have fond memories of the occasion of actually adopting her as a puppy. When we had been married about 2 years, I had convinced Dean to take me to a puppy shelter just to look… wink! I had a gaping hole in my heart from losing my dog, Muddy, a year before, and I am such a dog person I needed to have another furry companion in our home. Dean wasn’t too keen on getting a dog because we weren’t really financially stable due to me losing my job and the recession that was in full effect. I told him I would just want to see what kind of puppies they had, and then we would have a good idea for what we would want when we would get a dog some other day. Inside, I knew I wanted to get a dog that day. One way or another, I just had to convince him.
Now the time came to tear up all the old flooring, and we didn’t really want to be displaced in every room of our home while doing this project, so we tore up the floors area by area. The first rooms to go were the living and dining rooms. I have a picture from a couple years back of my living room with the carpet.
This room never looked terrible with the carpet per say, but it always lacked that finished look. Here are pics of the living and dining room bare and ready for the flooring to go in:
I took these photographs wandering around my aunt’s yard in California! Proof that still life photography doesn’t need to be done in a studio or found on a far away journey. Beauty is all around, just take a moment to find it.
It had a modern look and clean lines, but it also felt warm and cottage-y because of the distressed wood look. With that checked off the list of things to buy, we moved on to faucet fixtures and tile. Once all that was purchased, we just had to wait for the week we had planned to actually do the renovation.
Here are the before shots, thanks to my sister for reminding me to take them!
It was dark, dingy, and falling apart. The inside of the cabinet, the bottom was totally warped out from a faucet leak and wasn’t very functional for storage space. The vinyl peel and stick tiles had gaps, the baseboard next to the shower had rotted out, and none of the shower faucet handles were useable and fell off all the time. She had been using pliers to turn things on and off! So, it was definitely time to tear it all out and bring in a whole new look.
Demo day is one of my favorite days when I do a project. Destruction is cathartic for me, however, cleaning up the mess is not my favorite. I just want to smash, bash, tear out and move on to rebuilding. No clean up, please! It never works out for me that way… bummer. The toilet, cabinet, and vinyl tiles came out with no problems. The shower walls were a bit more work, but I got them down all the same. Now, her original wish was to keep the tub since it would keep costs down, but as I was tearing off the walls of tile I realized if we kept the tub it would stick out like a sore thumb against all the new, shiny things we were about to put in. So, I had a discussion with my sister, and she agreed with me and began perusing tub options as I finished up demoing. While browsing all the tub options, she asked if we could just turn it into a stand alone shower and not have a bathtub at all. With this being the only full bathroom in her house I told her it would really be whatever her preference is, especially since they plan on living in the house for a very long time. If her husband agreed, we decided we’d go for it. He didn’t even hesitate when she called and asked. He said a shower would be way better and loved the idea. Since we made this decision on demo day, we had to go out and buy more tile. And while we were there we also bought the shower pan and a new toilet, cause we couldn’t leave the old toilet now that everything else would be brand spankin’ new!
Welcome to the most intensive and longest bathroom reno I have done so far, with my ever trusty hubby-sidekick, of course! This was the very first bathroom remodel in our house, as it needed the most attention right away. The actual renovation spanned 2 years. “What!?! 2 years!” you say. I know… craziness. It was mostly due to a bad situation hiring out for our shower glass, and NOT because we work that slowly. I promise, we don’t work at a snail’s pace… usually. We also choose to pay cash for our projects, vowing not to go into debt! So, saving up to do this bathroom took a while, and we would collect things as we could afford them. We started buying tile a year or two before we even began this project. Side note, if you do this, be sure you buy plenty more tile than you think you will need!!
I, again, almost tore it all out without remembering to take before shots! But alas, I have the “mostly” before pictures, so here’s what we were dealing with:
Brass and pink everywhere, with rotting carpeted floors! Oh joy! Carpeted floors in a bathroom should be against the law. And, we had the same drywall detail running around the perimeter at the ceiling, like in the other bathrooms we have remodeled. It made the ceiling feel so low, and in the shower, the drywall would get wet and mildew would form in little droplets off the cornerbead. The can light above the tub didn’t work, and it was dark, even though we had the famous bar lights that seem to be the trend when these homes were built. The countertop (not pictured due to over-eagerness to get started) was 2×2 magenta tile, and a nightmare to clean with all the grout. Gross. Ultimately, the only things we kept were the cabinets, which we were going to repurpose for our vanity. The layout also stayed the same, mostly because I MUST have a bathtub, and when we brainstormed how to get a bigger shower AND keep the tub, it didn’t work any other way without driving up the cost extensively and losing closet space. No biggie for us, as we don’t need to run laps inside our shower, so a smaller shower stall worked fine for our purposes.
We began by tearing off the drywall detail and the tile walls. We then realized how the lazy electrician had ran the wiring inside the framing where the drywall detail was (to save on staples?), and therefore Dean had to rewire the entire bathroom. We added a can light above the vanity and swapped the two bar lights out for a single sconce that would go between the mirrors. After we tore out the carpet, we realized that at any moment we could have been stepping through the floor into the ceiling below because it was so completely rotted out. Hence why carpet in bathrooms should be outlawed. It traps and holds all the moisture in the padding, and mold was growing all over our subfloor and even up the wall. So, we had to replace the subfloor, and tear out all the drywall, thankfully it hadn’t gone into the studs. While that was happening, we also had a water leak in the exterior wall that took a couple days to sort out. Turns out it was actually condensation from a steel strap bracing the studs, since it was so hot in the bathroom with freezing temps outside. Crisis averted!
Ah, the dreaded task of remodeling another bathroom… just kidding, I love it! My boys’ bathroom was in dire need of a complete overhaul. For starters, it was pink… this is a trend in my house, made by a previous owner. Boys shouldn’t have to deal with a pink bathroom. This was a fun design project for me, as I had some input from my boys as to what style they would prefer. It had to lean more masculine and modern, but I wanted it to fit in with the rest of the house. The design I came up with has some edgy elements, but keeps with the style and feel of our home.
My husband really hates demo day. He would rather not be involved at all if he had a choice. I, on the other hand, relish the day of destruction! My son, Gavin, also takes after me in this area, so, together we demolished the bathroom. And guess what, we were so excited to smash it all to bits, there are no before pics… sorry! It was a great time though; the boys even were able to kick out the ceiling from the attic above. It was all fun and games until we had to clean up our mess.
At first we were just going to remove the drywall detail at the ceiling, but leave the rest of the walls up in the sink room, but then things changed when we saw the disastrous plumbing job that was hidden where the cabinets once were. Friendly advice from someone who’s been there several times: Don’t expect anything to go as planned. You always run into something. Always.
I made the cake using three sizes of cake pans: 8in, 6in, and 4in. For the green pipe on top, I made three 4 inch cakes, trimming down two to be a bit narrower than the top layer. I used a biscuit cutter to make the hole at the top of the pipe. My family doesn’t really like fondant, so I coated the cake in a buttercream frosting, and only made the decorations from my homemade marshmallow fondant. My dad and son share the same birthday, so I made him a Bowser castle cake. I probably should have found a better cake stand for that one… oh well. I got the sparkler candles at Party America, which I love using on cakes. They are way more fun and exciting!
My house was built in the mid-90s, the era of when pink and orange-y oak was on trend. We bought our house as a foreclosure, and pretty much nothing had been updated since it was built. This was totally ok with us, since we wanted a house to renovate to our own taste. When choosing what to redo first, we had to put things on a list of priorities, because it all needed fixing. Bathrooms came first on that list. We did our master bathroom first because it was in the worst shape. Next on the list was the powder bathroom. The toilet had obviously been leaking because the laminate flooring had a big black stain around the left side of the toilet. Gross. The layout of the bathroom was awkward, as well. When you walked in, there was little space to get in and close the door due to a huge counter and the toilet being on the wall facing the door. It seemed like poor planning, but I guess if we had wanted a whole bunch of counter space to display things in our powder bathroom, it would have been great. We did not, so things had to change completely. It also was not well lit, even though it had the iconic 8 bulb bar light, trying its best to make it bright. Last, was the ceiling height. They had made a drywall detail, similar to a tray ceiling, around the walls where it met the ceiling. However, it came down a foot, almost touching the top of the door frame. So, this made it feel like it had very low ceilings, even though it was an 8 foot ceiling. I drew up some sketches of how I wanted things to look, and off we went finding materials to fit the design.
Here are my almost before shots and a picture of the drywall detail after it was torn off. (I got eager again! But I remembered to snap photos before it was totally stripped down to the studs):
This is a four part post. Read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.
Day 10 We were off to our next safari camp at the Maasai Mara National Reserve. Our day began with a looooong drive leaving Lake Elementaita, heading towards Narok, where our guides had planned a stop to get gas and take a bathroom break. It took three hours to get there, and then another three and half hours (maybe more) to get to Sarova Mara Game Camp. The drive was down right awful once we exited the paved highway road and started driving the dirt road to get to Maasai Mara. After we had left Narok, it was only 30 minutes more of highway, then the rest was dirt roads, that were under construction none the less, and definitely the worst we had been on yet. I tried to take my mind off the pain I was experiencing, being bounced around and jarred all over the place, by talking with Shaddy, our driver. I always enjoyed our talks. He is Maasai, and had some great stories to share with me. His father was a ranger in Nairobi National Park, and he got to travel along with him sometimes as a child. He knew every animal, and helped me learn several of the Swahili names for them, especially the “Big Five”. He had the best eye for seeing animals, while he was driving, hidden out in the grass or amongst the bush. He told me of a time when he was walking home from school (as we were driving down the road that this story actually happened on) and he felt like something was behind him. When he looked back, it was a leopard stalking him! He ran home and made it to safety, but always feared leopards since then. He said a leopard will kill just for fun. After a couple hours, we had ran out of stories to share with eachother, and sat, stuck in the blistering heat of the van watching mile after mile of dusty, barren landscape pass by. All the sudden our van started making awful noises, and Shaddy had to pull over to take a look at what was going on. At this point, anxiety started to settle in, as there is no one for miles and no services for vehicles except back near Narok. After some discussion with my father-in-law, he put the van in reverse and out popped a rock from the brakes. And we were off again, desperate to reach our destination. With tears in my eyes (from pain) we finally pulled up to the gated entrance of the Maasai Mara game park, and shortly after arrived at Sarova Mara. We had barely enough time to throw our bags in our tents and eat lunch before we were back in the van, off on our first safari in the park. It wasn’t long before we turned out of the camps driveway that we saw a baby giraffe with its mother.
31 Downing Street 