Replacing a Floor

When we bought our house (almost a year ago!), we knew we'd have to fix the bathroom upstairs. Not only was it wallpapered with this horrid hunter green/cream vertical stripes, but the floor by the sinks was carpet and the floor by the tub was laminate that had been leaked under and showed a bit of damage.

We took the wallpaper down about 3 months ago and painted the room a much nicer brown/yellow/tan color (it's called cattail) . And that was pretty much it. Until this past weekend.

For another round of updating our house, both my mom and Shannon's mom came down (again). This time, we were on a mission to tile the bathroom floor.

Here is a before shot. You can't see in this pic, but there are those really cheap vanity lights up too. Like these, but in gold.


Here is what it looks like now that its done!


Friday night we took out the toilet and removed the molding from the floor and around the doors. Only one piece broke. But I should be able to fix it. Then if I just hide it behind a door, you won't notice. We also tore out the old flooring and were left with this.


Saturday we went shopping for the supplies. It was under 300$ for everything we needed to do the room. Including a new blade for my mom's tile saw. When we got back home, we started to layout the tile and then we cut the pieces we needed to. We decided to lay the tile on the diagonal, so we had a lot of pieces to cut. Here is the Hardi-backer down.


Then we were hungry, so we ate a bunch of sushi. In case you live in Tulsa and like sushi, I suggest you try Asahi. It'd on the northwest corner of Memorial and 71st hiding in a strip mall. The sushi is good and half price so long as you get enough!

Okay, tummies full of rice and raw fish, time to cement down the tile. Mom did this while I watched. The bathroom was just too small for more than one person to work on this. We finished around midnight and hit the hay. This is the cemented floor with the 3/16" spacers.


We had to wait 24 hours to grout, so I did that by myself Monday after work. But on Sunday, while we had the mom's there, we changed 8 light fixtures in our house. :)

A nice weekend. Not only because we updated parts of our house, but we had sushi, AND got to see Mom and Rhonda!

This is the grout down, but not the finishing touches, like molding and cleaning and curtain and the such.


And this is another view of it all together. Would have finished sooner, but the 5 gallon bucket of primer got moldy. Yes moldy. So we had to buy new primer. But the day we were gonna go do that, our car battery died, so we had to wait till tomorrow. But now it is done! What in improvement!

Tiled Floor

This is just a tease. We've been working on updating our second bathroom for some time and I should be able to finish the work (not the decorating) tonight. Pictures to come soon!

Happy First Monday of Spring

This weekend was a special one. The last two weekends we've had guests here, which is awesome. I love having people come over on weekends. The weekend before that we helped Jay and Charles move, so that means we were out of town. The next 3 weekends Shannon and I will be gone. So this weekend will be the only one in 7 that Shannon and I are home and can do stuff around the house. So we did (and we played a lot of Blood Bowl too).

We started on Saturday by trying to fix our yard. It is mostly weeds and those evil baby trees. We raked and then on Sunday sprayed the entire yard (front and back) with weed killer. I fear we may have to take more extreme measures though. We will see. Here is a picture from before we raked.


And this is after. It looks like more of a difference in real life. I really hope the weed killer works!


The other thing we did was to paint our second bathroom. Yay! I know, I know. Everyone whose seen the previous wall paper (below) is thrilled. Try to contain yourself. We aren't done with that room yet.


We still plan to replace the carpet with some pretty tile. We also will change the lights, add some pretty decorations, and maybe even new faucets. We'll see what we find (and how much Mom wants to do!)

Yay! It's so nice getting things done around the house.

Stripes

I've been doing some housework and updating recently. Such things as...

1. Hang a picture from my mom that I got for Christmas in our bedroom. Nothing matches in this room at the moment. There are some old blue curtains from Jardine, a few boxes for Goodwill, some light lilac paint, and other random things.


2. I also made some curtains for the kitchen window (shown below) and our master bathroom window. I don' t have any pictures of that one yet for you. But the kitchen curtains match the color we painted in the eat-in part really well.


3. And a project in progress is this fabulous bathroom. The wallpaper is now down and the walls puttied and sanded. Once we get the opinion of another party about our color choices, we can buy the paint and tiles and finish her up. We plan to paint it green and put in a new tan tile floor. Currently the flooring by the sinks here is carpet and in the water closet part (through that closed door) its a cheap linoleum sheet. That will go too.


I've also been doing other crafty things like sewing, crocheting, working on a BloodBowl board, and making a stained glass Sierpinski's triangle.

A Little Elbow Paint

This weekend Mom and Rhonda came to T-town to help around the house.


It all started in the kitchen. Shannon and I already removed the border, now it was just a matter of deciding on paint colors and painting the room. We ended up painting the walls in the dining area green and the walls in the kitchen brown. The ceiling we painted a lighter brown in both rooms. It matches the floor really well and the blue/gray in the hall really well too.


Since we finished that on Saturday, we made plans to hang the light in the dining room and put in a dimmer switch on Sunday. The other thing we did on Saturday was the only thing that we said we had to get done this weekend.

About two weeks ago our garbage disposal just pooped out on us and quit. So Shannon and decided we'd just buy a new one and install it while our moms where here. So we told the moms about it Friday (when they got it) and they said that our home-owners warranty would cover it. Well that was a lot cheaper. 75$ for them to do it all instead of 200+$ for us to have to do it. Yay. Then on Saturday, after we painted and were admiring our work, Rhonda got to talking with Shannon about the garbage disposal. They did some things involving an allen wrench and pushing really hard. They plugged it back it and turned it on and it worked! Rhonda knew how to fix our garbage disposal for free!


On Sunday, we headed out to Lowe's go get what we needed for the dimmer switch and ended up buying paint for our master bathroom. When we got back to the house, Mom and I put up the new dining room light and installed a dimmer switch while Rhonda and Shannon removed all the wallpaper from the master bath. It came down so easy and fast, it was awesome.


So we puttied, sanded, taped, primed, and painted that room too! A-w-e-s-o-m-e.


We treated Mom and Rhonda to a yummy Japanese dinner for all their help. There is no way we would have done all of that this weekend had they not been there. Thanks guys!

Making in Mine

This last weekend was great, it was missing a Maria and the major purchase of a washer and dryer, but still great. Mom, Jayme, and Nikki came down on Saturday and we started two large projects. Here are before pictures of our projects, or kind of during for the fence. It started with a broken pole and 12 feet of fence laying on our grass.


The fence was falling when we looked at the house in May and my June, it was down. So Mom, Shannon, and I replaced one post, reinforced another, and put the planks back on. It's far from perfect, but its standing which means the grass isn't being killed by the 12 feet of fence laying on it. We left some 2x4's there to support the fence while the cement cured all the way. They will come down. The post we bought was about 18" too tall, so we had to cut it. But Shannon and I don't own anything more than a 6"blade hack-saw. No way we're cutting a pressure treated 4x4 post with that. So Mom and I went to Lowe's (much better than Home Depot) and she bought us a table saw! Neat!


This is the half-bath in the hallway. It had this crazy wallpaper (as do the other bathrooms in the house, one room at a time...) that reminded me of an old fabric my mom had for crafts and reminded Rhonda of what used to be on the walls in her bathroom in Garden. Either way, we knew it would have to go. Shannon and I came back after talking with our neighbors about the fence and found Mom, Jayme, and Nikki peeling wallpaper. :) The room isn't quite done, it still need a toilet paper holder and a towel holder and a picture or two for the walls. It's an awesome color, called Brick Wall. I like it a bunch. We got a nice new light and a really fun faucet (thanks mom). Now we just have to get Mom to come back some weekend and tile the floor!


It was a great weekend, spending time with Mom and Jayme and Nikki and getting stuff done. Maria was going to come, but had to work (boo). Maybe next time. Hopefully next time. Oh, and Nikki, freaking adorable! Check out this cute video of her on Shannon's blog. (Charles is Jayme's male friend.)