Mastering the Art of the Remodel

It still enthralls me to step across my new bathroom/kitchen floor and hear no signs of a creak anywhere! It is solid as a rock! (And yes, I sang the last part). Just 6 LOOONG months before, the day after we signed the deed, I couldn't resist the urge to peel back the awful linoleum that was coming up behind the toilet. And that, my friends, is where it all began. You see, this laminate flooring was the last bit of flooring left all the way from the bathroom to the kitchen. All other traces were rotted away (PARTICLE BOARD WILL DO THAT!) and poor patch jobs along the way, left one big mess. Rip up the papers or continue ripping up the floors?? With my brother and dad leading the way, THANK GOD IF THERE IS A GOD, we replaced the old blue toidy and shower with pristine bisque. Painted the former Mildewy Blue to Liberty Park green, added espresso colored vanity with granite top, with matching mirror and medicine cabinet. A new window that actually opens and a tub that doesn't feel as if it's going to fall through the floor!

IN SPEAKING OF FALLING THROUGH FLOORS, AND ALSO THE GREATEST SEGUE EVER, we moved on to the kitchen after a solid 2.5 months of bathroom remodel. We all know the famous scene in The Money Pit where someone falls into a large hole. This is what ensued as we ripped up a floor and neglected to replace it immediately. Of course Travis knew we didn't have a floor, but it slipped his mind as he opened the door to the kitchen, like he's done countless times before, and stepped in without looking. He missed the balance-beam floor joist we've been tiptoeing along...and both legs would've been dangling in the neighbor's downstairs kitchen, if it wasn't for their cupboards and Tinker Bell Disney mug collection to break his fall. That is what some would call a 'memorable bruise.' I know I've had a memorable bruise, and I'm sure if you really want to know the story bad enough, you can just peruse the blog history and find it yourself.

Somehow we made it through; the months without a stove, of doing dishes in the bathtub, the week and a half without a toilet...and can you believe it we are still going at it! Up next is the living room, new wiring and new heat. Of course new paint, I am thinking of turquoise perhaps. But long before I see this turquoise I speak of. Our other half of the house is going to be renter-free so that we can fix 'er up...Tax return = new windows. There's a bedroom to completely gut, a bathroom that needs a ton of work and we can't forget those two holes in the kitchen ceiling screaming for a patch job! \

'Tis all for now. More to come.