New bat!

Hopefully it will bring a lot of home runs my way.  We'll see on Wednesday!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.4

Yee Haw!

Gotta love gifts brought back from Texas!
Can't wait to rock it at the Kenny & Tim concert in July!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.4

Tubby Love

We're makin' progress people.  We are a few (hopefully) short weeks away from the bathroom being 100% complete.  It cannot come soon enough.  The weather will hopefully take a turn for the better any day now and my yard will need some attention!
Anyway, the latest step to get completed was the resurfacing of the tub.  When I started renovating my lav, I was told it would be a lot easier to keep the current tub in there.  For one, it's the original cast iron tub and besides being somewhat stained, it was in tip top shape.  No major chips, dents or anything like that.  Number two was being that it's cast iron, it would be a pain in the hinder to get out of the bathroom.  It would defiantly need to come out in chunks because it's so heavy and that would just make another mess.  So in she stayed and I am SO glad.  No plastic tub for this girl.  All's she needed was a facial and some botox to get rid of her blackheads (stains) and wrinkles (pitting or corroding in some parts).
Somebody in my immediate family who shall be left nameless wanted to attempt to do this makeover ourselves.  I am all for doing other things ourselves, but when it comes to a cast iron makeover that could end in catastrophe, I decided to take the upper hand and call in a pro.  After doing some online surfing to find a local company, I came across these guys.  I was drawn to their site for a couple reasons.  A., They are family owned and you gotta love family owned businesses.  B.  Their website.  Their website wasn't too fancy at all.  Very simple, probably didn't cost a ton of money to build and some of their "testimonials" were actual hand-written notes that they obviously got sent in the mail or were left by customers and were scanned into the site.  How can you not love that personal charm?  Being the smart, intelligent person that I am (heehe), I decided that since this company is family owned and didn't spend a ton on their website, I figured they probably did excellent work and don't send out 100 guys a day to mass re-surface these tubs and just slap something together.  Does this make sense?  I hope so.
Anyway, I COULD NOT BE HAPPIER with the job that was done!  Steve (brother 1 of 2 (mom Donna does scheduling)) was very friendly and made sure to keep me in the loop on what he was doing if I ever had questions and when it was time for him to locate the "repair" spots (i.e., small chips and corrosion not really visible to the untrained eye), he brought me in and showed me the spots so I knew exactly what he was going to fix, etc.  It took him about four hours the first day and then the second day, he came back and caulked the seams and was done in about an hour.  It seriously looks like a brand-spankin' new tub.  I would HIGHLY recommend these guys if you have a yucky, stained tub like me or you just want to trade in that old pink, avocado or robin's egg blue tub for a pearly white one, but don't have the heart to throw a perfectly good, sturdy tub away!  :)
So enough with the chatter...let's see some pics, shall we?
I didn't want to be "that customer" and take pictures of poor Steve while he was working, so I did my best to sneak some shots while he wasn't looking and I may or may not have been kind of creepy/stalker-ish when I secretly went to the driveway and took a picture of his car!

Here are the two before shots:
Please know that the tub no way looked this horrible when I was still showering in there...A lot of the stain you see his from debris from the past 5 months of work.  (wow, 5 months...has it been that long?)
Also take note of my new shiny spout.  :)

Crazy customer takes picture of workers car...I think I should get a small rebate or something for not only promoting their work but also giving you all the information you need in this one-stop-blog post.

Shortly after Steve left--I wasn't able to go all the way in in fear that I might disturb the paint in its curing process, so I just snapped this from behind the plastic in the doorway.

Wa-la!  It's like a brand new tub I tell you!  I should have taken this first picture at a different time of day--the shadows don't do justice to how squeaky clean and pearly she looks in real life.  You'll just have to take my word for it.  The second photo (of drain area) is more life-like.

Until next time!

Measure, Measure, Cut, Measure, Cut, Repeat.

Well folks, after a LONG seven weeks of measuring, re-measuring, cutting, re-cutting, bickering, measuring, re-measuring, bickering, cutting, fighting, measuring, bickering, cutting, bickering, measuring, (need I go on, or do you get the picture?), gluing, grouting and cleaning, all of the tile in my bathroom is in!!!  Can I get a HALLELUJAH!!??
Seriously, I can't tell you how over the top, beyond words, excited I am about this major step in the bathroom renovation!!
Part of me wants to get into all the gooey, gorey details and show you all 195 pictures that I took during the tiling process, but I won't.  I'll give you some of the highlights instead (35 photos to be exact).  Thankfully, I refrained from photographing the low-lights.  You wouldn't want to witness some of the arguments my dad and I had while doing this project.  I can now see why people say "I don't think my marriage would last through another renovation".  Although we fought like cats and dogs at times, looking back at the hell it sometimes was, it was a fun project.  I don't want to do it again anytime soon, but it was still fun and I can't put into words how grateful I am to have had my dad at my side, measuring and re-measuring, cutting and a lot of the time, re-cutting, in order to make my tile look so good! I also need to give a shout out and thanks to my mom who did an excellent job on the nastiest job of all:  wiping the grout.  Not surprising, we didn't fight once!  :)  Anyway, without her help I would have probably had lumps in my grout and air pockets everywhere, but as far as I can see, it looks pretty dang good!
Alright, are you ready for the reveal?  Brace yourself people, your right index finger is going to get a workout from scrolling that little ball on your mouse so much.  Here goes:

February 4, 2012:  It All Begins--prepping the seams with the thinnset.

Placing the tile begins...the prep work for that first Saturday took about 8 hours.  I'm not kidding.

Using that level about 5 billion times and looking at the handy diagram about 2 billion times, two weekends later, we have the first part of two walls done.

February 13, 2012:  A stall at the built in.  We are not sure exactly what to do about "framing" the built in so it looks right...a trip back to the Tile Shop leaves us with these cool gray marble "pencils" used for things like this.  I'd say that not planning correctly for the built-in and the white tile frame that would have went around it was a nice, happy accident.  It gives it a little character and it totally looks like we planned it that way!  Oh, and don't worry, the tape comes off.  We just didn't want those heavy suckers sagging in the drying process and leaving us with a droopy, crappy looking built-in.

February 19, 2012:  The tape came off and we were on our way.  Next came the installation of the mosaics inside the built-in.

Fast forward to March 15, 2012:  All other tiles are up except the little mosaic strip.  Look at how even those suckers are.  All the measuring and re-measuring and maybe a few re-cutting really paid off!  

March 16th, 2012:  The mosaic strip goes in and we can call it a day!  I am so happy I may have hugged the walls on more than one occasion.

March 17th: Now waaaiiittttt a minuuutee.....you know you make me want to Grout!  Kick my heels up and Grout!  Throw my hands up and Grout!  C'mon now, Grout! 

In case you're wondering, I used Whisper Gray grout and the Subway tiles are 4"x16".

Now lets move on to the floor, shall we?

March 29, 2012:  After three days of measuring and cutting, the tiles are ready to be laid.

Note to reader:  The floor does not really look purple.  I will show you what it's closest to a few pictures down.

March 31, 2012.  You make me want to Grout!  Kick my heels up and Grout!...again.

Here's my mom and I grouting again. Me putting grout in, my mom wiping it clean.

April 1, 2012:  No joke, the tile is complete!  All it needs is a little sealer, some caulking in the corners and where it meets the ceiling and she's good to go!  I actually put the sealer on tonight (April 4) and as I was putting it on, all I kept singing was "Signed sealed, delivered, You're Mine"! --see how I changed the words a bit??  

Anyway, here the floor is in all her glory.  I am not kidding you when I say that I sat on the edge of my tub and just stared at it for 5 solid minutes.  Then I may have laid on the floor.  Please don't judge me.

Excuse the unflattering angle of my double chin. 

This is a more real representation of what color the floor actually is...

And so is this...

And here are a few other randoms.  A close up of the mosaic strip that is two feet from the ceiling, on all walls.

And the best I could do with trying to get the bathroom in its entirety. 

And for S's & G's, let's just take a trip down memory lane, shall we?  Here is what she looked like back in November right before and right as the makeover began:

Wow, even I can't believe it's the same room!

Anyway, there you have it!  Stay tuned for the final touches...paint, trim, putting the fan plate on, the sink, toilet and accessories!

Thanks for sticking though this long post!

Crowd Cut Mislead

Months ago my friend emailed me a "Crowd Cut" deal.  For those who are unfamiliar with Crowd Cut, it's just another version of Groupon.  Anyway, the Crowd Cut (or which shall be known as "CC" for the rest of this post because I don't feel like spelling it out anymore) was advertised as "Paint and A Pint".  This caught my friends eye and she thought we should give it a try.  Back in the day we used to like to grab our paint brushes and a blank canvas, open up a Mich Golden Light paint to our hearts content, so why not try it again in a more organized, official setting?  I thought this could be fun.  I'm usually not a sucker for these deals, but just glancing at the title, I figured "what the heck?"  It's 20 bucks, you get to drink a beer or two and you get to paint.  And now instead of my friend and I always talking about getting our paints out and re-creating our life 7 summers ago, we can actually DO it.  So after months of trying to schedule a day to go (these Paint and A Pint activities are only available Thursday nights), we were finally set on last week. My friend made the call and turns out they are booked out a couple weeks.  But the questionably crabby receptionist said we could come Friday instead and still use our CC.  Although there was a 'catch'... "well, you can come Friday, but instead of Paint and A Pint, it's wine and the artist is Van Gogh".  .. Excuse me, what?  Van Gogh?  Wine?  I didn't sign up for this.  This wasn't in the fine print when I purchased the CC.  I was kind of expecting to go in, grab a beer, throw on a smock and paint whatever the heck I wanted.  Now you are expecting me to drink wine that gives me an instant headache and paint a replica of a very famous painting?!?  Oh yeah, and did I mention that it was BYOB?!?!  Again, misled big time by the title of the CC.  Why call it Paint and A Pint when you have to bring your own beverage?  Oh well, I got over it and the two of us went.  Plus, my friend's got a bun in the oven so I wasn't about to go and drink alone.  The "studio" was in Minneapolis (of course) and we ate at some "organic" restaurant before hand where the waitress wore sandals (totally violating health code), had two long gray braids hanging from her head and rather than asking us how our food was, she instead asked if we were "enjoying ourselves".  I really wanted to tell her that yes, we are enjoying ourselves, but the only food we are enjoying is the popcorn, which was free.

From the organic farm restaurant, we crossed the parking lot and went into the studio.  There were about 11 adults in the class and two hippy-ish "instructors" were there, teaching us how to pain like Van Gogh.  One of the instructors was the harsh one, going around and telling you what you are doing wrong--excuse me, but last time I checked, I paid to come and take your drinking/paint class and now you are going to rip on my lack of painting skills?  And the other one was the gentle sole, "anything goes", "art is in the eye of the artist" style teacher who only gave out compliments.  After three hours of painting, I ended up with this version of Van Gogh's Starry Night :

Not too shabby I suppose.  It's not going into the Smithsonian anytime soon, but it might get hung in my computer room someday if I ever get around to cleaning, painting and organizing it.  Right now it's a catch-all while the bathroom is in getting a facelift.  Here's the pile o'crap I am currently staring at on my desk:

And this is the pile of stuff behind me--mainly bathroom stuff with a couple plants thrown in the mix:

Anyway, that's my Crowd Cut turned Restaurant Review turned Messy Room post.  Kind of a weird turn of events...oh well!