Renovation + Cleaning = fugheddaboutit…

I love a clean house.  I hate cleaning.  And yet I still love a clean house.  Conundrum??  Absolutely.  This is why I have a wonderful cleaning lady who is absolutely worth every penny I pay her to come and clean the house once a month to help keep me on track.  Problem solved!  However, I haven’t really been calling her lately because it is *just* not worth it.  The trash, the dust, the demolition – no, it’s REALLY not worth cleaning.  Let me show you the dust pile I collected from the front hallway DOWNSTAIRS after one day of bathroom renovating/drywalling, etc.:

This is downstairs, people!  A full floor away from all of the mayhem.  And sure enough I got just about the same amount of dust the next day too.  It’s also spring, which means it’s Maggie shedding time, so that certainly adds to the dust bowl.  Le sigh….oh, it’s *so* not worth it to clean, but we can’t leave it dirty every day – drywall dust, pollen, dog hair, etc – makes for a very itchy nose, lots of sneezing, and dog paws don’t like getting impaled by errant nails and drywall screws.  So we’ve given ourselves a few “chores” at the end of the day just to keep ourselves sane:

• About an hour before we think our energy is going to completely tap out, we stop what we’re doing and clean up EVERYthing at the end of the day.  Typically, it involves Dr. J or I splitting up and one person starts in the bathroom and the other person starts in the garage.  We clean up everything we possibly can and slowly work our way to a middle ground, vacuuming and mopping the whole way there….whistling optional…
• Yes, we vacuum EVERY.SINGLE.DAY now.  With the shop vac and the Dyson, I’d say they’re getting a pretty hefty workout these days.
• Dr. J and I had an agreement when we started this project that I wanted our master bedroom to not become a tool graveyard if at all possible.  It helps keep things feeling serene and restful, which is kind of important in a bedroom.  Aside from the random glove and/or beer bottle, the bedroom has NOT been overrun by tools and supplies, which is SO great.
• We dust our bedroom and keep our closet doors closed, drawers closed and all of the other bedroom doors upstairs CLOSED whenever we are working in the bathroom.  If I can get the above pic worth of dust DOWNSTAIRS, then you know it can get all over the upstairs bedrooms too.  May as well save the trouble of dusting eleventy billion surfaces in the house…
• The upstairs is mostly chaos.  The hallway is all covered up with paper,

• …there are tools and supplies stacked ceiling high in our office, we have a door laying on its side in the guest bedroom, the guest bath is overflowing with toiletries and temporary storage solutions while we camp out there for a few months:

• and the master bath is in a constant state of repair and disrepair.  Though we do keep it covered most of the time so we don’t have to look at the mess:

• All in all, it’s a mess.  However, we have been very diligent about keeping our downstairs living room and upstairs room of requirement tool free!  So at least we always have two places we can retreat to each night to wind down and relax.  It’s good for us and, let’s admit it, it’s good for Maggie, too :-).

So there ya have it.  Remodeling is a b$%^&.  But the results are oh-so-amazing.  Stay tuned later this week and we’ll update with yet another video of the ever-evolving bathroom remodel.  We’re FINALLY starting to see things put IN the space as opposed to TAKEN OUT.  It’s such a good feeling!!!

We’re remodeling our master bathroom and it’s a doozy!  You can click on the following links below to see what it’s all about: The Bathroom begins…, Demolition Day 1 and Day 2 and how we got rid of all that trash! Our budget and a tile preview and a little look-see into what MY view is when my hubby is installing electrical and a video view of what all of the demolition looked like before we started installing things. Stay tuned for more updates!

For your viewing pleasure…a bathroom update!

Rather than typing a whole update on the plumbing and electrical, we thought it’d be easier to have Dr. J give you an overview on camera….’cause let’s face it….typing’s hard…

So click here to see the video, which will take you to YouTube.  We still can’t do embedded videos yet – that takes money and all of our money is wrapped up in our loo at the moment.

So if you’re at work and can’t watch, here are a few highlights:

• The bathroom is completely torn down to the worst possible place it can be.  It’s got to get uglier before it can get prettier…
• Maggie saying hi.  Ooohhh….she’s so cute!
• Dr. J explaining the various wires and doodads hanging from the walls.
• Dr. J showing you our new sconce holes – they’ll be prettier once they have actual SCONCES in them.  To be determined…

So there ya go.  Now the full disclosure part.  We shot this video about a week ago and this weekend Dr. J’s dad is in town helping us “button up” the room.  We may even get to tiling the floor later today….ooh…..stay tuned….

We made our dining room bigger! Well, kind of…

It’s time to update with something OTHER than bathroom mayhem.  I need to focus on something aside from renovation dust and demolition for a change….

The big news for us (well, sorta) is that we made our dining room bigger!!  Not really, but we did get a smaller dining table which gave us soooo much more floor space.  And it’s been such a long time since I’ve made any updates to this space (uhhh….try since we last painted it, which was a whopping year and  a half ago – whoa!) that it seemed like a good time to get on it.  So here’s a WAAAAY old pic from before we even painted the space (notice our R2-D2 AC unit in the background??):

Dining Room Before

So that’s from about a whopping year and a half ago.  We hadn’t even painted yet at this point or bought any window treatments or even installed Air Conditioning.  We just tossed our antique hand-me-down furniture in here and called it a day.  And don’t even get me started on that builder grade chandy that looks like a five legged octopus.  What would that be?  A penta-pus?  Moving on.  Here’s the after as of this past weekend:

Dining Room After with new table and chandelier!

Much better, no?  But why?  I’m a shameless over-explainer, so here we go!  For starters, our dining table was just too big.  If somebody was sitting in the far chair, then you couldn’t open the pantry doors without asking them to move.  Then there was this strange 6 footed base which made it really hard to push chairs under and have space for those random appendages known as feet (go ahead and scroll up – it was just odd).  The last bother was the fact that it was an antique that belonged to my beloved Grandmother and even SHE hated how WOBBLY it was even when she owned it.  My poor Grandfather spent decades trying to “sturd-i-fy” that table and I remember eating many an Easter brunch at this table and watching my eggs jiggle while eating them.  Cutting meat at the table was always an adventure!  Forget about even trying a Jenga tourney on this table (although drunk Jenga….)!  No, no, no….the table had to go.  It wasn’t functional for us as it was and even with Dr. J’s handiness we still couldn’t get that table to be solid without seriously compromising its structure.  We had our eyes set on something much smaller (it’s usually just the two of us), round (they take up less room and are easier to fit a big crowd around), with a leaf that we could extend to seating for six when the family drops by, and solid, solid, solid!

The new table is made of solid Rubberwood and we got it for a good price from World Market.  It’s solid as a rock with a big chunky pedestal base that just feels so more upscale and normal (goodbye hexa-pedal table).  When the leaf is in it feels juuuuust right for the space and since it’s more rounded, we can actually sit more people at it than we could at the previous table which was also about the same size.  We also love that the finish isn’t overly polished or waxy, so it doesn’t show fingerprints and it’s rustic and durable enough so that I don’t have to worry about people dropping things on it, etc.  Overall, it’s a win-win!

Second update?  That builder’s grade chandelier is gone, gone, gone!  It was too big for the space and just kind of reminded me of an octopus or daddy long legs or something.  It had to go.  So off to Overstock I went and found a new chandy and….voila…

Much better no?  I love how it has a glass diffuser on the bottom (as opposed to plastic) and it had three bulbs (as opposed to more expensive versions which only had one).  It’s definitely a statement without being over-the-top traditional or modern.  Just what the doctor ordered…perhaps a Dr. J?

Verdict??  We can actually open our pantry doors now!!!  And cutting meat is absolutely no problem-o.  Dr. J and I sit at this table all the time just trying to make it wiggle.  IT DOESN’T WIGGLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I mean, seriously – it’s the little things in life.  No wiggling.  I won’t be able to say that for much else in my life (ya know, like the waistline), but I can say that about my dining table, thankyouverymuch!  And the light is just perfect for dining and gaming.  It also “simplifies” the lines in that room and immediately draws your eye up and in…love, love, love….

Hello, now functional dining room.  It’s so nice to finally meet you!

The view from downstairs….

This is how I saw my husband most of the day on Sunday…

This is the wife’s point of view when the hubby is doing electrical work in our master bathroom.  All I have to say is that I’m glad he decided to tackle this project while I was at home.  Unlike the laundry room when he decided to tackle electrical while I was at a wedding shower…le sigh….safety first in our household, I swear!!!  Stay tuned…

We’re remodeling our master bathroom and it’s a doozy!  You can click on the following links below to see what it’s all about: The Bathroom begins…, Demolition Day 1 and Day 2 and how we got rid of all that trash! Our budget and a tile preview. Stay tuned for more updates!

 

Thanks, Pottery Barn!

If you read this in a reader and/or from our subscription service, then visit the website because I’ve made some minor modifications to the real post.

So it goes without saying that I have seriously been looking for a family room rug to replace our old one for well over a year now! 

In fact, I wrote a post about it back in September mostly just to whine about how far away all of the Pottery Barn outlets are from Portland, Oregon and how I’d love to be able to buy a rug from there on the cheap.  We already have a few rugs from P Barn and they hold up so well (much better than some of our other rugs), so you could say that I have a love affair with quality rugs that don’t cost an arm, a leg and your firstborn child.

But finding “the one” isn’t easy and it has to be right.  It can’t be too Persian, too antique or too gold or green (which happens ALL the time in nice wool rugs).  It needs to be a modern take on a classic design and it needs to have a pattern – hello?  It’s in a family room where things get spilled – could be red wine, who knows?!  Oh, and it MUST be wool.  Wool is the best, it holds up for centuries, is completely natural and cleans up so easily.  Enter the Bouquet Floral Rug from Pottery Barn and I was totally sold:

I love how it’s patterned without being over the top, plush without being shag and quality without being $3,000.  Believe me, if you look around for rugs enough, you start to realize that size wise (we need an 8×10) you just can’t do much better than $3,000.  So we ordered a swatch a few days back and decided that while we have the money in the bank and the rug we love is about $500, may as well just go with what we love.  The colors work for our subtle greens and blues we have in our family room already and the greens and blues we hope to add later on with more pops of color.  What can I say?  LOOOOOVE!!! 

So I got online on Wednesday night this week and ordered an 8×10 rug because our local P Barns were all out of stock (as was every store in the country), so I got the feeling it would be discontinued soon and I needed to act fast!  I pulled out the credit card and felt a little bit of pain at the final tally, but relieved that I “secured” MY rug before it was discontinued! 

Fast forward to yesterday morning and I wanted to check the website to, ya know, gaze adoringly at this rug again….

…the price was lowered by $100!  GAH!!!  IT’S ON SALE!!!!  FOR ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS LESS THAN WHAT I PAID!!!  Seriously?!?!  Seriously…so I called Pottery Barn as fast as you can say, “SHOW ME THE MONEY!”  Turns out that Pottery Barn will honor the price difference within 30 days of the purchase date and will just credit my card back the hundred bucks!  Well, slap me silly!  That sounds like a plan with a capital P to me!  And here’s another tidbit that I learned, so stockpile this away for future reference – Pottery Barn always lists things on sale on Wednesday nights!  So the best time to go shopping on their website is on Thursday morning when the sales are fresh and before the stock gets sold out.  Betcha didn’t know that.  Me neither.  You’re welcome! 

I still don’t have the rug….yet….but it’s coming and should hopefully be here really really soon, so I’ll be sure to share those pics once we get them.  In fact, I think it’s about time I wandered around the house and updated all of our Nickel Tour pics as best as I can.  The dining room is different, the family room needs to be updated once we get our new rug, we’ve also made some small updates to the laundry room (added some crown molding to the top of the cabinets), and our Room of Requirement is starting to get pulled together.  Now that it’s Daylight Savings too, I could probably eke out a few good pics at the end of the workday, too!  Whoo hoo!!!  Don’t hold your breath, though – it takes a LOT of time to produce all of this content.

….and as for the bathroom?  Well, we took a break from all of that last weekend and went skiing instead!  And I don’t know about you,  but I’m never traveling on Daylight Savings Weekend ever again.  I have been so beat all week and I can’t snap out of it!  We’re back in the bathroom this weekend working away.  Hopefully we’ll have some good tid bits for you next week :-).