Friday, April 9, 2010

Home Projects

Ethan's Aunt Margaret once told us, if your marriage can survive long road trips and home improvement projects, then you can survive anything. The very next weekend we left for an 8 hour road trip to Colorado and spent a nice chunk of money at Lowe's to begin the bathroom remodeling. We were going to test that theory even before we marry.

We survived the road trip, and even decided to try and make that an annual vacation to the Rocky Mountains. The bathroom remodel was about to commence. The task: add a shower to the bath tub, tile the walls, wallpaper what was left, new sink, new toilet, new faucet, new flooring, and do it all ourselves. (Well, actually Ethan and his dad would do the majority of the work, I helped pick things out and learned how to wallpaper).

The demolition began the weekend after Labor Day and continued through most of September. Ethan and his dad were able to get the plumbing done for the new shower head, and Ethan attached the new counter top.

This was perfect timing for a home remodeling project because I was going to be busy most weekends coaching volleyball and wouldn't be in Ethan's way. One Saturday I came home from a tournament and Ethan had replaced the old window with glass tile squares. It looked great!

Soon it was time to begin tiling...but we hit a little speed bump. The cold weather set in and the only place to cut the tile was in the garage. The tile has to be cut with a wet saw...meaning the tile is wet. Cold and wet. Not fun. So the project got put on hold for a couple months.

After January, Ethan and his dad, Bill, set in on the tile. This was something new to both of them (and that's saying a lot, Bill has done many many things.) I was amazed how good it was looking. I now was setting my sights on the perfect shower curtain. This was going to be a much bigger undertaking that I thought.

I found the perfect shower curtain, I fell in love with it from the beginning. It was at Bed Bath and Beyond, and it had the perfect amount of blues, browns, and creams. Now, I have a tendency to make decisions a little too quickly, I find something I like and just go for it. So, I decided to shop around a little...I mean I was in no hurry. Turns out I should have been my normal speedy self...I went to order the shower curtain and, as luck would have it, the darn thing was out of stock and not going to be replaced. Crap. Now I had to keep looking. After months of pouring over every possible shower curtain...this one too brown...that one not enough brown...that one too sheer...and those are just plain ugly...I found one. Again at Bed Bath and Beyond and this time I bought it right away!

Once the tiling was complete everything else seemed to fall into place rather quickly. The sink went in without a problem, new flooring looked wonderful, the toilet was pretty and white, and I helped Dolores (Ethan's mom) wall paper the rest of the walls that weren't tiled. And then finally after a lot of hard work...mainly by Ethan and his dad...the bathroom was finished. We survived, rather easily I might add, our first home improvement project together. I hope that the rest of them go just as smoothly...





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