A work in progress!

Well, once again it has been MONTHS since I have updated my blog. Genna has turned 9 months, then 10 months, and now 11 months since the last time that I posted. She has been trying to walk for the last couple of months and took off about a month ago. Now she just runs! Life is exciting around our house! Over Spring Break, we started a renovation project. We actually started a few days before thinking that it would only take us the week of Spring Break to complete. We are now on week four and have no end in sight! Actually, we hope to finish it all before Genna's first birthday party...now one month from today. Pray that it happens.

Our original projects included getting new granite countertops in the kitchen, laundry room, and front bath, along with replacing the sinks in each place. It also included taking the 40+ year old tile from the walls (shower and otherwise) in our master bath and replacing them with drywall and new tile in the bath/shower area. We live in a house that was built in the late 60s and it was the thing to put tile halfway up all your walls in the bathrooms. We had a lovely canary yellow in our bath and it was time for it to go!

We started before spring break removing the old countertops in the kitchen, front bath, and laundry room, which meant that we were down to one sink in our bathroom. We also started taking off the tile from our bathroom walls. A day later, we noticed that the carpet in the front hall was wet and discovered that we had a leak somewhere in the wall. We went in under the sink in the front bath and found nothing. We went in through the shower wall in our bath since we were going to take it out anyway and found nothing. We ended up having to take out the toilet and go in behind it in the front bath...which meant taking out tile that we were not planning to touch during the break. I will refer to this as Episode #1. Since we had already taken the toilet in our bath and then the front bath, we are down to one toilet in the half bath. Also at this point, we cannot use our shower/bath anymore since we went in through the wall to check for the leak. So we are down to just a shower in the front bathroom. And since we had a leak and couldn't fix it late at night, we had to turn the water off. Yes, this is my life!

We finally got the leak fixed and turned the water back on, but since we had already taken down one of the tile walls in the front bath, we figured that we would go ahead and try to take out the rest of the tile at some point, except for the shower, because we do have to bathe! We got all of the tile taken down in our bathroom and it was stripped to the studs!

Monday of spring break comes and we get beautiful new granite countertops. The three sinks (gradually) go in during the week with only 16 trips to Lowe's to complete them. Sixteen is the actual number. On Wednesday of that week as my hard-working hubby is trying to put in the new fixtures in our bath, he discovers that our drain pipe for our bath/shower is cracked in the slab. Then somehow it gets broken down in the slab! Let's refer to this as Episode #2. He informs me that if I ever wanted to replace my bathtub, now would be the time to do it. So we make yet another trip to Lowe's searching for a new tub, only to purchase nothing. We ended up hauling our 500 pound cast iron bathtub to the back porch where it still rests. We live in the country, people!! And when I say cast iron, I don't mean pretty claw foot, I mean ugly apron tub! We also had to take off the door frame to get the monster out of the bathroom.

So here we are on Wednesday of spring break and pretty much nothing has gone as planned. We decided that we would do our tile work ourselved instead of paying someone $1000 to do it, but at this point, nothing was ready for tile. Once the granite was in the kitchen, I decided that I wanted to redo my kitchen cabinets. I had glazed them a few years ago, so I redid it in two record breaking days and I LOVE THEM! Finally something accomplished!

I still had to tile the backsplash in the kitchen and laundry room to accomplish. Just about the time that we were going to start that, one of our hot water heaters went out. Episode #3.

Spring break has now come and gone, but the last Sunday before I headed back to work, we started on the tile backsplash in the kitchen. It took us a whole week of working after we got home from our paid jobs and after we got Boo Baby down at night, but we got it finished.

We ended up taking the green tile in teh front bathroom down now so that we could go ahead and drywall everything at the same time. While in the middle of that, we realized that we were going to have to replace some of our floor tiles because there was an inch gap that we could not cover with molding. So when I called to get more tile, it has been discontinued since 2007. We now we have to tear out the tile floor in both baths! Episode #6. We have accomplished that this week!

Also during this, we discovered that the sewer vent pipe that vents from the master bath to the outside was cracked all the way down into the slab! Episode #5. With the help of a friend who is a plumber, we got it fixed last weekend and can close up the wall now.

My parents visited last weekend and before they left on Monday they called me at work to inform me that it was raining there and water was running down my fireplace brick! EPISODE #6!! Really! My husband said that he knew that God would not put more on us than we could handle, but He must obviously think that we can handle A LOT!!

Last night after waiting for the third round of mud to dry on the drywall in the front bath, I was finally able to start to texture the walls. I got three walls done, but still have three to go! We WILL finish that bathroom this weekend if we have to stay up all weekend to finish it!

Now that you have read all of this, you deserve some pictures to prove my point!

Kitchen before (40+ year old formica countertops and backspash, yucky sink, and old cabinet glaze)

Kitchen after

(new granite counter tops, tile backsplash, farmhouse sink, and new glaze on cabinets)

And we did everything, but the granite ourselves!! Hooray!

Laundry room sink before

(again with the 40+ year old formica and yucky sink!)

Laundry Room After

(Granite with farmhouse sink and tile backsplash)

Ignore that bath toys! It is Genna's baby washing sink until we get our bathtub in!

But she LOVES it!!

Front Bathroom Before

(Yucky formica and sink, and I had already pulled the formica backsplash down)

You can see a glimpse of the green tile in on the right side!

Front Bathroom...during!

(not quite finished, but new granite countertop with vessel sink)

You can see the big whole on the right, but that has now be patched and the leak fixed! Woo Hoo!

I will post finished pictures soon!

Master Bath Before

(In all of it's canary yellow tile glory!)

Master Bathroom During!

(Yep, this is how it still looks, four weeks later! Wow!)

4 weeks to deadline! Hopefully we can make it!

And just because she is the most beautiful thing in the world, our Boo Baby! She is the best thing. She has slept through all of our remodeling each night. Even when we hammered tile off walls, climbed over her room in the attic (which I fell through this week! Episode #7), and pulled tile off the floor in the room directly across from her's, she slept! She is one amazing baby! She turned 11 months old this week and her daddy captured this great picture! Just when I think that I cannot love her anymore, I see this and I can! I am blessed to be her mommy!!