Finally

I can finally and officially say that it is done.

That is, the bathroom remodel that has taken nearly three whole years.

The seemingly never-ending project met its end late last night with the installation of the medicine cabinets.

Of course when they arrived, the size was *just* off so more sawing and rearranging studs in the wall had to take place, which of course lengthens what should be a simple project.

Frames needed to be built to account for the offness, which then needed to be stained the custom-blend stain that John came up with when he built the mirror frames.

Since he's such a genius and MacGyver, it all worked out and looks fabulous!

And there's not a bazillion bottles on the counter anymore.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

The funny thing is when the cabinets arrived, they were two huge boxes on our front porch. The kids were wondering what in the world it could be. When I explained, Christian was confused; he had no idea we were in need of a medicine cabinet. He had grown so accustomed to the Hole in the Wall that he didn't realized it needed to be filled!

Hallelujah! Thanks hunny for another job well done.

Now . . . (cough cough) the stairs? :-)

Aren't You Wondering If There's Been Any Progress?

The shower and bathroom project has been moving right along, albeit at a snail's pace.

IT WILL BE WORTH THE WAIT.

It's looking pretty fantastic, isn't it? Even with just a cement floor.

Now we're talking! It's really coming together.

Just when one part is looking good and the dust is all cleaned up, it's time to create more mess.

John installed a pocket door, so had to move the door frame over to create room for the pocket which required knocking out part of the wall and building a whole new door frame.

We wish we could keep the nice, wide opening which grants a better view to the beautiful shower.

This is standing in the shower looking out. Hello mess.

Here's my shower head. It's installed! At my perfect height! John's side is at his perfect height!

One down, three to go.

In case there is doubt, the hole in the wall where my medicine cabinet is going to go was created a year and a half ago...

Yup, there's the date in close up so there's no doubt. This next week marks the TWO year anniversary when this project started. Don't be jealous.

The kids asked why dad wrote the Dodgers logo on the wall. Little do they know yet of abbreviations for things like True Love Always. And kids these days think they own the texting language - ha! Just check out our yearbooks...they're all in code. K.I.T!

Look, the wall's back.
And there is a door! It slides. It glides! It hides in a pocket!

On another front, the school and sports year is coming to a close (yeah!!!) and with that come all the festivities. We put on a end-of-season family track club picnic for the entire club so I got to go to Costco and buy 500 of their large cookies. Oh I got some comments alright. The entire basket was completely full of boxes of cookies with Ashlyn riding in the front. The bigger surprise was having 500 cookies in the trunk of the car which took up the entire trunk of Jon's car - the kids' eyes were bulging out of their sockets when I went to pick them up from school.
We also had 100 boxes of pizza delivered for the picnic. Glad I didn't have to pick those up, too! It's hard to gage exactly how much food to buy when you don't know if there will be 325 or 499 people attending, but we did it perfectly as there was only one slice of pizza left when everyone was gone and the stadium was cleaned up, and only about a dozen or so of the oatmeal raisin cookies. Phew!

My cute niece Domonique and her friend came to town from college for a quick little summer vacation visit so we all got to go out to lunch at the Islands. It's totally awesome that Grandma Carol is in town for it, too.

Ashlyn had her last dance class

and Christian had his last baseball game. They made it to game #5 in the playoffs before they lost. One more and it would have been for the Championship game. Go Dodgers!

Look at that teeny tiny cuteness.

Next up, preschool graduation (I mean Pre-K! She always corrects me).

Things are Moving Right Along This Week

We are loving the beautiful, warm spring weather. It's perfect for going for a walk to the park.

And also great to get out of the house where it doesn't smell like tar.

But that's not for long as things are moving quite nicely . . .

Monday and Tuesday:

The wall tiles are going up

Wednesday:

The deco border

Thursday:

The shampoo boxes and benches

It's getting closer! Andrew is getting quite the workout going up and down our stairs fifty thousand times a day to cut the tile with the wet saw that is on the front lawn. Randy is meticulous from the way he tarps the entire flooring from the shower all the way to to the front porch, to the way the very last tile is cut and placed with precision. And he leaves each day with everything neat and clean, only to get it all out and start over again in the morning.

On Thursday my friend Amanda invited several lovely ladies over for a super sewing day to make splendid summer skirts. She had a cute pattern for a flattering A-Line and we all went to Joann's to pick out some fabulistic fabric and got together with machines whizzing. I really wish I thought to take a picture of us 8 girls and our cute creations. I'm amazed that I actually pulled it off and made this darling skirt, complete with lining and zipper! I bought more fabric to make another (couldn't decide on just one!) so we'll definitely have to get together again. It was so much fun to be with talented and wonderful friends while the kids played.

Mine is a light and airy white with pin tucks and lace criss-crossing the linen-like fabric. Next up is a bold black and white floral and after that I want to get even more adventurous by choosing fun and bright colors.

Perhaps something like this:

That would be bold and courageous for me! (right mom?)

Stink! Stank! Stunk!

The bathroom project continues with some great progress this week. Now that it's framed and plumbed, it's ready to be prepped for tile. First and foremost is making sure everything is water tight. Nothing could be worse than having a leak underneath the gorgeous tile that was installed. The best way to go about this is to HOT MOP the basin with tar.

You've seen trucks like this before and know the potent fumes that surround it, usually for a roofing project. Just imagine confining said fumes in one little indoor space.

Stink!

Stank!

Stunk!

The fumes penetrate and permeate everything. The stink was in our hair. The stank was in our clothes. The house stunk for hours, and upstairs for days; so much so that John and I couldn't sleep in our room and had to sleep downstairs for two nights.

Travis was great, proficient, and frankly quite brave to be able to withstand the 500-degree tar and the malodorous air all day every day.
Fifteen gallons of hot tar, 160 square feet of tar paper, 200 pounds of mortar, and rolls of fiberglass tape were used to make this 100% leakproof.

These pictures may look a little blurry, but that is haze from the smoking tar.

Lastly, Travis fills the shower with water to ensure there are no leaks. This is also a great step to make sure the John's plumbing is holding up!

A glossy, reflective pool.

The bench looks so slick and shiny; if only it smelled as pretty as it looks.

Next Step: Insulation

We wanted more insulation to help with the noise since the kids' rooms are right across the hall from here so John insulated every nook and cranny possible. Hopefully that will help alleviate the blaring noise that turning on the water causes.

The shampoo boxes are sealed tight just in case a drop of moisture wanted to get in - not going to happen!

Up Next: Paper

On Wednesday, Randy and his helper Andrew lined the whole space with special paper

then covered it with superior moisture and mold protection backer board.

Then on Thursday, the next step is starting the tile!

Careful measuring, precise cutting, a lot of calculating is required.

Break for the weekend, but there is definitely some great progress being made!!!

Luckily we have other places to be to escape the stink and this is always a fun way to pass the time; little girls in tutus never go out of style. I will be very sad when I don't have any more little girls to dress up in tutus and take to dance class.

Progress, Thwarted Plans and Beach

It's the end of the week and we were planning on going to Knott's Berry Farm since we have annual passes. John even planned to take a day off, which is a big deal. He only has about 9 years of saved up vacation days because he never takes vacation (or rather hasn't had the time) so we were really planning on this. We (mostly he) was a wee bit stressed on the timing as we decided to go forward on the bathroom project this week, which means he's doing the plumbing, which means the contractors will have to wait for him to do his part but he doesn't really have much time since most of Saturday is being taken up by a youth temple trip.

Wouldn't you know it that this spring break was pretty chilly and mostly cloudy. The kids really wanted to go to the beach at least once, but frankly it was just too dreary except for this morning.

The day we were going to Knott's.

It was bright and sunny when we awoke. Oh well - plans are made and we go forward with them. After going over the details with Randy (the contractor) as to what we want done, we hit the road. We made it all the way to the 405 freeway (about 20 minutes because there was no traffic) when John casually asks if I have our passes. WHAT???

Oh

My

Gosh!

Right as we were in the car and leaving the house, I said to John - I don't need my purse, right? I didn't need money since John had his wallet. I didn't want to leave it in the car, nor did I want to have to shlep it around the park, so I ran it back in the house. Of course the passes are in my wallet, which is in my purse. The irony is that we both, on three separate occasions, thought about having to remember to bring the passes which we knew were in my wallet and yet we both had this strange stupor and disregarded the purse!

He sadly had to announce to the kids that we weren't going to Knott's after all and turned the car around.

Can you imagine the disappointment?

Instead we stopped at the plumbing store on the way home and picked out the shower fixtures that we needed immediately and John ended up having the entire day to get highly important 'home' things done. Also, a big weight was lifted as he now had more than just a couple of hours on Saturday morning to try and do an extremely complicated plumbing project - one that needs a great deal of time and attention paid or else we could be facing disastrous leaking problems under the floor.

We don't want that.

Disappointed children problem averted as I announced we'll go to the beach instead. Our good friends the Johnsons were planning on being there, too and remember when I said it was sunny?

Well, it turned out to be a blissfully perfect day at the beach.

We even saw a WHALE! How cool is that? I really wish I had my telephoto lens, but the giant whale was super close, right near the jetty and it would come up and spout water. What a treat for us all. We've seen our share of sea lions and dolphins, but never a whale!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch . . .

The shower got framed with one pony wall, two benches and three shampoo boxes.

And tonight John is doing the plumbing project which is as difficult as I anticipated especially when he has to contort himself in awkward positions to weld.

He's a stud. There's nothing he can't do. He's even going to try and take Monday off since that's the official last day of spring break and we'll try to go to Knott's then. Let's hope the plumbing will let us!!

Spring Break Demolition and a Tea Party

TWENTY-TWO MONTHS in the making . . .

Say goodbye to the existing tub/shower combo.

The demo crew has arrived and we are once again seeing progress on the never-ending home improvement project that is

the master bath.

Once this is done, we just have the mirror and medicine cabinets and then the master bath can officially be D-O-N-E! Is it possible? The funny thing is that I don't even notice the mirror being hung with duct tape anymore (or maybe I try not to?), or the huge hole that is supposed to be the medicine cabinet.

Contractors always have their tunes and this one is industrial strength. Nothing can hurt his bad boy.

Little by little the walls and tub are disappearing and I couldn't be more thrilled!

Amid all the chaos and noise, we managed to have a play date with the Gredings. While Christian and Owen played Batman Wii, Madison and Brooke put on a lavish tea party for Ashlyn, Summer and CJ.

Even the waitresses dressed up in aprons and high heels. Fun girls!!!