Building the bathroom

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You know what stinks (literally and figuratively)? When you need to pee and A CERTAIN SOMEONE is hogging the only bathroom in the house for an obscene amount of time. I mean, there is the lonely commode in the basement, but there are spiders down there, man! Two months into home ownership, it was decided: we needed another bathroom.

Luckily for me and Adamo, Adamo's uncle is an amazing architect and contractor who is completely awesome and stayed with us for a week to help us add on a bathroom. (LEGIT, all construction was all done in a week!) In advance, we picked out the wall colors, toilet, sink, faucet, and all that other fun stuff so that (almost) everything was ready for Adamo's uncle! Because I chose such a teeny sink and toilet, we ended up changing around the bathroom plan a bit—the initial plan had the door coming from the dining room (a little awkward during dinner, but whatevs):

I got a teeny toilet so that I could keep my garden window!

We ended up switching the toilet and sink diagonally, putting them against the inside wall, and moving the door to the kitchen side—this way, we also didn't end up needing to worry about putting plumbing in an existing wall (that is probably full of horsehair and magazines and crap). We also left the original dining room door (which was about where it is in the picture above) to add a little broom closet where I AT LAST had a spot for the vacuum!

Either way, we still needed to tear down my pantry and the built-in so that we could get to the dining room from the kitchen.

I wasn't actually at home for the destruction of the wall and our built-in. It was too much for me to handle T_T

But here is a little collage BOATLOAD OF PHOTOS of our progress:

Kitchen before, note awesome garden window!

Beginning to dismantle the built-in

Beginning to frame up the bathroom. Goodbye pantry, I miss you even though you smelled kinda weird

more framing, note the new plywood subfloor

There goes the pantry

no picture of the the built-in smashed up for you, too traumatic for me :(

and now there is a hole!

finishing up framing, including the closet, also that drill was left standing on its bit and that's really bugging me

Insulation and drywall up on the outer wall

Added poop hole, beadboard, drywall, and bathroom fan

beadboard on the outside, drywall nail holes patched, our awesome tile floor!

Btw: this is the tile we picked (but with a light gray grout:

We liked the classic style

Priming the beadboard

painting the beadboard

Painting the drywall, please excuse my terrible technique and instead note that now there is a light

Hole in dining room now patched!

Sink and toilet are in! (Aren't they lovely??)

Adamo's uncle brought his dog, and we learned pretty quickly that the floor was a dangerous place

Finished, with mirror, lights, towel bar and art! 

Check out that sweet antique marble doorknob! The door and door frame are actually what was formerly the pantry door, re-purposed. Unfortunately, one of the original hinges was broken and the other mysteriously disappeared (aka Adamo forgot it in the garage), so we ended up needing to get new hinges.

I still really need to paint the bathroom side of the door; it looks like someone was murdered against it via axe.

Anyway, that is all for the bathroom—however, this project meant that a lot more work needed to be done in the kitchen and the dining room! They get their own posts, so that I can keep all of this straight!

Lawn care?

We got pretty lucky with our house in that it had a decent lawn starting out. Well, at least until they put in a new septic tank and destroyed the east side of the lawn.

We still don't know what happened to half the earth they dug up :(

We were hoping the "hydroseed" stuff the landscapers put down before we moved in would make it stay pretty...

Hydroseed is awesome!

...but after a month or two the grass was not long for this world. A couple weeks after we hired a local landscaper to give the yard a once-over starter mow, we finally got a lawn mower and took it from there. But that poor east lawn did not age well:

Hydroseed - not awesome :(

We didn't really want to be those crazy nighbors obsessed with their lawns, but I definitely wanted to have some kind of turf/root system on that side of the yard before the snow set in. So I did some research, asked the local garden center some questions about lawn types and basic care, and then with the knowledge gleaned, completely ditched them to get much cheaper lawn care products at Lowes ;)

We also picked up a medium-size Scott's seed spreader and a bag of fertilizer.

After raking the side yard clean (pine needles are the bane of my existence), we aerated it by raking it again with a metal rake and churned up the dirt a bit, then went back and seeded the whole thing.

You know, I love pine trees, but why they gotta be like this?

It was super important to water it at least once a day (twice was recommended), so we finally got around to buying some hose, and automatic timer, and an industrial-grade impulse sprinkler that could cover the entire side of the lawn. These three items made it effortless to keep the new seed healthy!

The power of a hundred super-soakers

We went back (later than we ought to have), and fertilized a couple weeks later using the same seed spreader, and kept on watering until it got too cold out (mid-November). And it worked! The new grass came up healthy and decently thick, and was tall enough to trim with the mower. Huzzah!

2 months later :D

A Light Under the Attic

So, lately I'd been thinking that I should replace the light at the top of our stairs. It was kind of a gross color, and really dim, which isn't the greatest when you are trying not to step on a cat and fall down the stairs. 

Then, the other night, I happened to take a close look at the light and noticed that the light was off-center. Hey! Maybe there is more than one bulb, and that's why it's so dark! 

I took the light off, and lo! There were three lights, and two were out!  

And look at those adorable little lightbulbs!

But arghghehrrrh [horror noises] the light itself was horrifically grimy, buggy, and dusty. I had to clean it immediately; I didn't even move the incredibly-safe-and-sturdy chair that I had been standing on. 

I do not recommend the ikea nandor chairs for standing on

About five increasingly less gross paper towels later, it was clear that this light was actually quite pretty! 

And there are parts that are clear glass! Did not realize that before.

I think we'll keep it. 

But with three working lightbulbs, eventually.

That same day, we set up two new chairs in and our triptych painting the sun room. Eventually I will be reupholstering the chairs. (Is there a cat-proof fabric out there? Because my cats leave most furniture alone but have decided these are their new scratching posts.) 

My lemon tree is pining for the fjords