Rockin the Suburbs

It would be safe to say that the tiling process for “Project ClusterF%!K” has been an educational experience. As my better half put it “Simple, but not easy”.

It’s up, every last damn piece of tile….(the tape is holding some of the top-heavy pieces in place until the thinset fully cures)….but behold the wonders of a LOT of tough nights and 125 pounds of thinset.

So this weekend we have some headway on the bathroom. All the doors have casing on them and we are officially done with the professional building type of help (actually he is coming back one more time to drop a piece of molding off, but E is installing). We do have one minor issue with the electrical that we have to have a box moved a bit (got a little too close to the tile line). And Erich did his first foray into trim. He did an excellent job putting the outer trim on the octagon window, and the recessed cabinet he built for storage. We got the tile started on Sunday – Saturday got sucked into the remodel black hole… I don’t even remember why or what happened! But we got the fancy part mostly figured out and hopefully every night this week we are going to do a little bit of field tile to get that out of the way. Then I am hoping to finish the tile work Friday afternoon and grout on Saturday (then maybe I can get my toilet installed on Sunday!!) We’ll see.

the bathroom – a start

fancy tile work – electrical outlet was getting into the thick top border

And Bon Jovi on Friday – we had a good time. Kid Rock opened and was really good (I was surprised it was such a good show) then Bon Jovi started at 9:30… ugh, that was a little rough. And we had to walk out in the mob, that took about 40 minutes. But E was waiting with the car so it worked out. The weather was perfect, cool, nice breeze, low humidity (lucky for me!)

our seats – pretty close, but nobody ever came over on our catwalk

Love chandeliers… just got some for the house

Medium 6-light for living room – there will be 2 of these, so awesome

Large 12-light for dining room

3-light for foyer at the bottom of the steps

Don’t ask me when we are going to stop spending money on this house… it’s getting a bit ridiculous though!

I thought I’d post a general update.

Construction continues on the bathroom. There were some tricky framing obstacles, so we ended up hiring a carpenter to re mediate them for us. So now the walls in the bathroom are probably the strongest in the house! They also fixed some previous bad decisions by other renovators (don’t cut giant notches in the boards that hold the house up – just an FYI). So here is the progress.

the green line of tape on the floor represents where the bathtub will be when it arrives. the line on the wall is for the tile. We have some more stuff to finish up, then the window will get replaced, probably next weekend. Then it’s just drywall and tile! (ha ha) I’ll probably head to the tile store on Friday afternoon to see what is what. I have an idea of what I’m going to do. Samples here and here.

As far as the biological construction project everything is going very well. I am well and the peanut kicks and kicks and really likes to sit diagonally with her butt in my ribs on the left and her bony little feet crammed in my ribs on the right side. I just had a short massage here at work (Massage Day!) and the masseuse was able to move her down a bit. I swear I just took my first deep breath in a week! (awesome)

I’ll try and get a new picture up – since we’re at week 25 and bump-tacular!

We used this plastic bag dumpster for bathroom demo debris. They came and picked it up today – no muss no fuss. Here’s the link to Bagster

New garage door. oooooh! Thank you professional garage door installers.

swanky

So this weekend was a very productive weekend. On Saturday I hung out with my cousin all day while her husband and her Dad and E totally fixed our steps! The stairs used to squeak and creak to high hell even when the cats would run up them… and they had begun to feel a bit “squishy”. Now they are solid as a rock and it doesn’t wake me up anymore when E walks up them. I feel a bit guilty about abusing family like that, then I remember the $2600 + we got in an estimate for a new staircase… which would have had to be to code, and lord knows what kind of can of worms that would have been! So a HUGE thanks to Uncle Jim and Cousin Steve!!!

Then on Sunday E kicked me out of the house and started the demo work on the upstairs bathroom. I want to get this project done before the peanut is finished incubating – and since I will be doing the tile work, we need to get going before I’m too huge to do it. We’re already on the border… I realized on Friday I cannot paint my toenails anymore… I didn’t think I was that big, but bending over enough to reach the toes ain’t happening anymore! So E got the first round of demo done, and he is hopefully finishing the rest today. Then once we see what there is to see – we can start putting everything back together. Luckily there was no plaster, just 3 layers of drywall?!

upstairs bath – BEFORE

upstairs bathroom – demo day 1

Notice that there is a giant windoow in the room… hmmm. We wanted to replace it with a round window – but then the siding on the house is an issue… We MAY be able to have the new tub be under it, but we’ll have to measure it out to see if it will fit… then maybe when we can do the siding, we can replace the window and I would just have to do a patch job on the tile – which wouldn’t be so bad, if I buy enough to do it now.

I’ll post an update tomorrow from demo day 2

So E and I are biting the bullet and having the front landscaped… Basically it’s just dirt right now, plus we have some drainage issues that are annoying. So the landscaper is going to fix the gutters and the drains, he’s installing lights, and a TON of plants… Here is my half-asses comp of what I think it will be… most of these are out of scale and some aren’t the exact plants because I couldn’t find what he was saying… but I think the only thing I’ll change is the bit of orange…to pink, of course!

the whole effect

the south side… highlights are a beautiful magnolia and hydrangeas, azeleas and some color all year with boxwoods and red twig dogwoods

the north side more boxwoods, hydrangeas, rose of sharon tree (hibiscus) and burning bushes flanking the front door.

Even better – a warranty on the plants and someone else to do all the digging!!!

This morning I woke up actually a little uncomfortably warm – there was warm air in our room and it seemed to be moving around… Wierd because I couldn’t hear the furnace blasting away trying to push non-existent air… Very strange to have heat on the second floor – I’m actually going to adjust the thermostat timer DOWN for the morning run – stranger still. Guess the old dog was too small and old. The new one is awesome! See it here We got all the options – well, we got the whole house cleaning filter and a new digital thermostat, which is so much better than the POS we bought at Home Depot when we moved in.

Image of our new furnace

I can’t wait till next summer so I can feel the air conditioning up there too! (Yep, we did the whole system at once). On the plus, we have now updated all the moving-part type systems in the house. So as long as the electrical holds out, we’re all good.

Thanks to Dane at Dane Heating and Cooling ((630) 514-8916 also on Angie’s List) – they did a great job! (And thanks Uncle Tim for recommending them)

We finally finished the porch, screens in, covers on, railing is replaced. done.

Looks 10x better, don’t you think?