Curves

I'm really happy that the bathroom reno is winding down because I have a new project that starts next week! When I saw in December that Stitched in Color was going to offer a class on sewing curves in the new year, I couldn't wait to sign up. I've never sewn curves, her tutorials are great and her projects are always cute so I figured it would be a great class to try out. After a month of almost no sewing, I'm even more excited to get started!

The class is going to run for about a month and each week will have several projects to choose from with varying levels of difficulty.

This project looks like a lot of fun and I've been wanting a runner for my bedroom dresser. I've made two so far but I'm not happy with either one. Maybe this project will finally help me find what I'm looking for! All of the projects I've seen so far look tempting and I know it's going to be hard to decide what to make because there are only so many hours in the week.

I can't believe that it's been almost two years since I took my first quilting class. I haven't made nearly as many quilts as I would have liked, but, again, there are so many hours in the day. I have lots of ideas but not enough time to make them all.

Hopefully sewing curves won't be too difficult. I can't imagine they're easy, but lots of people can do it so why can't I, right? I like to challenge myself to try something new each year and this definitely fits the bill.

I can't wait to show off my projects!

Pretend

If I stand in one spot, ignore the missing sink, the other sink that doesn't drain properly and the screws that I need to cover on the mirror, I can pretend that our bathroom reno is finished!

Then I turn around and see this...

Ughhhh. The last few projects have been slow-going at best, but progress is being made so I guess I should celebrate that fact.

I hope to have the tub walls tiled by next weekend. Okay, the end of next weekend if I'm being realistic based on how everything else has been going. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised!

Scrappy Fabric Bowl

In between all the bathroom renovating work, I have managed to fit in a little bit of sewing. I've had grand plans to do more but the bathroom keeps winning out. Now we're in a big push to get as much done as we can before next weekend when we're hosting poker night at our house. I'm not going to jinx us by commenting on how things are going right now.

From a lot of the blogs I read, it seems like the theme of the new year is using up scraps. Amazingly enough, I was ahead of the trend because I had already planned this project before I knew that was the theme.

I've been collecting lots of long strips from projects and decided it was time to make another fabric bowl, this time with scraps. They're really easy to make and it used up a lot of my blue/green scraps but I still have a bag chock full of other colors.

Good thing I have an idea for another project for them! Now, if only I had the time to work on it...

Progress!

I'm incredibly excited that we've moved into the rebuilding phase of our bathroom reno! It was a long, busy, chockfull of activity weekend, but we have something to show for all of our work.

Our new bathroom floor!

It took 5 trips to 4 different Home Depots over the course of 2 days, but it's finished! Well, almost. These pictures are pre-grouting, which we did tonight, but we still need to give it the final buffing.

Our first trip to the first Home Depot on Saturday left us without enough tiles and we had to drive across town to another store that had enough in stock. The third trip to the third Home Depot on Sunday was to pick up some more supplies that we needed and that was the closest store they were listed as in stock at. Thanks to miscounting on my part, we didn't have enough of said supply and I had to go to the store AGAIN. I gambled and picked the closest one which fortunately had what we needed. The fifth trip to the same closest store came late in the day on Sunday when we ran out of backerboard screws just as Chris was about to finish. Fortunately, Monday didn't require a single trip to the store for more supplies!

Thankfully after all those trips to the store and all the hard work, I LOVE how it turned out! It was the first time tiling for either of us and things went surprisingly smoothly. It's not exactly easy or fun to tile, but I'm really happy with our work. I think the little tiles (which were in 12x12 sheets) were fairly forgiving to work with but it still took some precision to keep them all lined up. I was a little afraid to walk on it today for fear that I did something wrong and I'd hear tiles cracking beneath my feet. I'm happy to say that it was completely sturdy!

Now on to the walls!

Why yes, I DO have an architecture degree!

Of course, you may not think that's true after this story.

Things are slowly progressing with our bathroom reno. The past few days have been more about planning than actual work.

One of those days, Saturday, included a long trip to Home Depot to look at options for the various things we need to buy, one of them being tile. We walked up and down the aisle trying to decide what we liked best and finally calculated how much it would cost for one of the options. Now, I had already drafted up a general budget so I had an idea in mind. That idea was blown out of the water at the store by over a thousand dollars! Not what I wanted to find out, but we weren't looking at incredibly expensive tile and we didn't see any alternative to bring the price down by much if we want to use tile, which we do.

Fast forward to Monday when Chris came to his mathematical senses and recalculated that our bathroom is SEVENTY square feet, not SEVEN HUNDRED! No, we do not have a bathroom fit for royalty. And yes, as I said, I do have a degree in architecture (achieved with good grades no less), I got A's in calculus and physics, use math frequently at work, yet not only can I not calculate that my bathroom is only 70 SF, I don't realize that it's wrong when I come up with 700 instead! I blame it on the fact that I was converting from inches to feet to pricing all at once and didn't really notice the fact that I came to 700 SF, just the final price. The upside of me being an idiot is that I was able to readjust our tile budget back to a much more reasonable number.

After all that, I guess I should give you a peek at the tile we selected. Going to the store, I never would have thought this is what I would agree to but I'm actually really excited about it.

It's very traditional, which isn't usually my style, and I typically go for earth tones, but I think it will look really nice. The sheet is 12x12 so that gives you an idea of the size of the individual tiles. We're going to use white subway tiles for the walls of the shower and the rest of the walls will have wainscoting halfway up with paint above.

We also decided on this light for the two pendants over the vanity (which has yet to be finalized) and I love them. You can't see the swirls all that well in the picture, but they're kind of modern while still going with the more traditional tile.

I can't wait it all to start coming together! I'm hoping there will be a lot of progress over the weekend!

Well that sucked...

While the wall tile removal of our bathroom reno went fast, the floor removal took FOR-EV-ER. First of all, we took up two layers of flooring and two layers of sub floor, while still leaving another layer of floor and subfloor. The bottom layers are flush with the hallway so it won't be a huge transition when we add in the new subfloor and flooring.

The second layer of floor looked surprisingly like the first albeit in a slightly more beige tone with gold flecks. I guess someone decided it didn't go well with the silver metallic wallpaper. The first layer of floor and subfloor weren't fun, but didn't take all that long. The next layer of flooring though literally had HUNDREDS of staples, 1.5" staples, that had to be pulled up to get the next layer of subfloor out. And then what did we find as Chris battled that level of subfloor? MORE staples! It was awful. It took hours to get the last level of floor up and remove all the staples. Plus there was an added bonus of nails in one section of the floor because clearly hundreds of staples weren't cutting it.

I think it probably took about 6-8 hours of both of us working, but tonight we finally finished it off and are ready to move to the next phase. I think that will be saying good-bye to the lovely wallpaper. I'm optimistic that it will go pretty fast because there's only one layer of wallpaper. I already have experience with it from our master bath and that bathroom had two layers of wallpaper with paint on top!

One thing that did go quickly was the cabinet removal. While Chris was slaving away at the floor, I'm proud to say I completely removed the vanity cabinets. We originally thought we might have them refaced, but decided they were too old and junky. Thankfully it didn't take long!

I'm ready to be done with all the demo so we can start rebuilding!

Out with the Old

Happy New Year! I hope everyone's year is off to a fabulous start. We're dealing with a sick Guinness (mystery illness but likely some sort of gastrointestinal problem or doggy flu), but he seems to be improving after lots of napping. Other than that, it's been a quiet, productive and fairly relaxing day. Hopefully a sign of how the year will go!

After months of talking about it, it seems only fitting that we finally began our hallway bathroom renovation on Friday as the year was coming to an end. Here's the before in all its pink, metallic glory.

Aside from accessories, we haven't done a thing to it since we moved in. We also thought none of the prevoius owners had done a thing to it (except pull up the carpet that we learned used to be in there from Chris' high school classmate who lived in our house growing up), but learned differently the instant Chris began taking down tile.

Why yes, that IS tile ON TOP of tile. Honestly, I do not know what the hell some people are thinking when they take on a renovation project. The good news is that both layers came down fairly easily and we'll have a very slightly more spacious bathroom ;)

Chris was off on Friday and got a good start on the demo before I came home and joined him. All the tile is now down, the countertop and sink are gone, the toilet is gone and some of the wall surrounding the tub is gone.

We gave ourselves a break over the weekend to enjoy some time off and for festivities with friends and family but I think we'll be back at it tomorrow. Next up is clearing the debris out of the bathtub, trying to remove the soffits (unless they're hiding wiring and plumbing, then I think we'll leave them), removing the wallpaper and the flooring. We're still on the fence about the cabinets and bathtub. We might have the front of the cabinets refaced and the tub resurfaced, but we'll see how they survive the rest of the demo.

Wish us luck!