July 29th, 2019

 Yippee!  Wahoo!  Yay!  It's finally done!!!!!!!!!!!

"What is this crazy woman raving about now?"  I can hear you saying.  Yup I can hear you thinking. It's one of my superpowers.

Our bathroom has been under renovation for the past 3 weeks.  It was desperately needed. Not only was it old and out of date,  (peach tiles and gross yellowy/beigey/creamie "rustic" plastered wall) but it was falling apart.  We literally had tiles taped to the wall. I wish I could say that I was joking about that.

It was more than a year ago that we were ready to take on this project.  We got several bids, we started looking at tile and lighting and all of that sort of thing when one of the contractors asked if we had already had the plumbing scoped.  No we had not.  That had not even occurred to us.  Considering the age of the house, it was strongly recommended.  Because we recognize smart when we hear it, we did that very thing. As it turned out, the plumbing was in terrible shape and we ended up having to have the entire house replumbed. Dang.  We put the reno on hold, had the plumbing issue taken care of and started saving our pennies again.  Fast forward to early this past spring.

We again had several bids done and selected our reno guy.  He wasn't available until July. Okay.  We waited this long, we can wait a little longer.  

We used the time wisely by hanging out in tile stores and bathroom supply places all up and down the west coast.  Eventually we knew exactly what we wanted and made our purchases.  When the reno guy called to say that he could start about two weeks earlier than anticipated, we were already ready to go.  So exciting!

Tim and I have been through this reno thing before, we were prepared to make do but we wanted to minimize the upsidedownedness of it all.  There is just something about a construction project, even a small one, that tends to take over the entire house.  I was trying to avoid that.  Keep it to a minimum.  Hah!  And if wishes were horses .... you know how that goes.

The day before he started, I emptied and cleaned that bathroom.  There are two bathrooms in this house, the main bathroom which is on one side of the house and the guest bathroom which is on the other side.  For the duration, Tim and I would be consigned to the guest bathroom.  It is a teeny tiny itty bitty bathroom.  It's so small, as the comedian says, you have to step outside to change your mind.  It is small but it works. So, good enough.

I emptied the contents of the vanity into a laundry basket and put it on the floor of the guest room.  Anything we might possibly need was in there, we just might have to dig for it.  The guest room was already going to be a mess so one more messy thing didn't make it much worse.  That was the plan.  Let's keep the mess contained.  Just the bathroom being worked on and the guest room.

 You see, Tim ended up having to break down the guest room to make room for the vanity and the toilet from the other bathroom.  He took apart the bed and leaned it all up against the wall: head board, foot board, side rails and mattresses.  It makes for an ugly room but I really didn't want them sitting in the middle of the living room for three weeks.  I mean, I suppose it would be an interesting conversation starter but geez. No. Just no.

So I folded up the bedding and stacked it in the guest room closet.  But there wasn't room for the  bedspread and extra blanket. I kept trying to find a spot for it in the guest room but it was taped out.  So those things ended up on a chair in the family room.  See already things were already leaking out of the designated messy area.

The new medicine chest/mirror and lighting fixture arrived (ordered online) and came in such enormous boxes that those ended up in the living room.  The towels bars in a corner of Tim's office.  More disorder.

The tile started out mostly just being in boxes stacked in the utility room but in a remarkable short amount of time ended up with quite a bit of it on towels on the kitchen table (on towels to protect the table you see).   Reno guy's tools and equipment were stashed in the utility room by my washer/dryer.  So now, we have a mess in the kitchen, the utility room, the guest room, the living room and the family room. We over shot our goal and the work had not even really begun!

The reno guy was great, he did a wonderful job.  Once he demo-ed the room he found a problem that meant intruding into the closet of Tim's office so that had to be emptied.  While our reno guy fixed the problem, he had to remove part of the closet wall (and later repaired it too of course) so Tim spent the 3 weeks of reno surrounded by the contents of his office closet. It was like working in a warehouse!

Reno is messy, it's crazy, it's noisy and for the duration the entire house will be covered in a fine coating of very fine dust.  The reno guy cleaned before he left every night.  And after he left I cleaned again and it still wasn't fully clean until it was all over.

We were very ready for the process to be over and delighted to have two functioning bathrooms again (we are so spoiled!) but it was worth every penny and every second of dust and noise and inconvenience.   The new bathroom looks nothing like the old one, thank goodness. It's gorgeous!  In fact right now, it's the best looking room in the house!  

In case you doubt me, here is a slide show of the progress:

So it seems that because we chose this older home as our home (we keep doing that!) we are also committed ourselves to one major project a year.  I wonder what our project will be next year?

Stay tuned to find out!