The Bathroom Project ~ After

It's done!

Check out our fancy new toilet!  We had some drama installing that bad boy, but it's in now and it's awesome.  It has a coating to help prevent it from growing little nasties, no crevices for said nasties to hide, and you can flush an entire bucket of golf balls in one flush (why you would do that, I have no idea, but still...)

Eventually we're planning to add a shower door, but we're feeling kind of poor at the moment and we've never actually used this bathtub (except to bathe the dog) so that can wait a while.

The Bathroom Project ~ During

We had this idea that we could do the whole thing in about a week, for about a thousand bucks.  By the end, I think we were about four times on timeline and almost double the budget, but it's done!

It took two full days, with two people working, just to pull up the old linoleum.

Then, Keith spent about a week tearing out and replacing all the rotted sub-floor under the toilet.

This is always the point in the project where I do, oh I hope I like these colors!

It took me a full (school) day to get just these tiles down.

Then I spent a full second (school) day cutting all the other pieces to fit.  By the end, I pretty much brought the wet saw to it's knees and my fingers thought that they'd fall off from pushing so many tiles through the saw.

Things we learned from this project:

1. Hire a professional

2. Pick thinner tiles

3. Buy a new tile cutting blade, or see #1

4. If you ignore #1, #2, & #3, you should probably get a heavier-duty saw.  Or, just go with #1

This was my second tiling project (if you count the stairs as a project).  I think that at this point I can confidently say, I'm never doing that again.

The bathroom project ~ Before

We've been talking about re-doing the bathroom pretty much since we moved in, but thought we'd wait until the kids were old enough to not be constantly peeing on the floor. Hopefully we're at that point, 'cause we're going for it.

The before:

"But Julie" you say, "Sure the bathroom is boring, but there's noting wrong with it, do you really NEED to re-do it?"

Yes, yes we do:

Memorial Day Camping

We went camping again with my sister this Memorial Day.

The kids had a BLAST with their cousins, and Keith & I very much enjoyed having built-in babysitter available.

Cecily spent about half her time right here.  Nora & her friend were there pretty much from the time the pool opened until it closed.  Cecily is tall enough that I was able to sit on a beach chair reading my book and trust that Nora could take care of her fine in the water.

Tooth #5 is out!

No loose teeth for this one, but she's cute anyway.

No school Mondays

Apparently the children are only about to go to school two mondays a month, so we had this monday off (along with next monday, and the friday after that).

Anyway, Cecily needed new shoes, so we headed to the mall.

At the Rack, the kids each found something they wanted to buy with their allowance money.

Cecily got a puppy purse and Parker bought a frisbee golf game.

And we found Cecily some UNICORN shoes.  Seriously, where were these things when I was a kid?

In the afternoon, we went home, grabbed Jared, went out for lunch, then headed to the zoo.

We did see some real animals, but you'd never know it from these photos.

So Seattle Storm!

Last summer, the Library did a summer reading program where if you read for a certain amount of time, you'd get Seattle Storm tickets.  Unfortunately, we didn't turn our forms in until the end of the summer and all the games were over.  Fortunately, we were able to get tickets for this season and we got to go to the season opener.

I've never been to a Storm game, it was really fun.  Most of the seats are general admission, so we could see pretty well and the kids had a great time.

...and we got these fun blow-up sticks that light up and made tons of noise, what more do you want from life?