Saturday, May 26, 2012

Summer

Fresh berries- a favorite summer time treat!

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Before/After next to each other.






















Tile Spacer - $2.97
(2) Supply Lines - $8.92
12" Floor Tile (60 sq. ft) - $106.20
(5) Fittings (2 I broke) - $50
P-Trap - $19.14
New Hallway Mat (destroyed by Thinset) - $18.97
(3) SpectraLock Grout - $21.18
(3) SpectraLock A/B Mix - $53.94
Paint - $25.17
Thinset - $27.43
Sealant - $17.08
(4) TileBacker - $34.56
Screws for TileBacker - $7.16
Grout Sponges - $8.99
Windleton White Vanity - $422.10
Windleton White Mirror - $69
Light - $80
Tile Saw Blade - $50
Plumber - $100 (Install new drain piece on sink)
Painter - $150 (Paint bathroom, ceiling, trim)


Total Cost = $1,272.81

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Bathroom reveal. Its finished!!!!!!!

 New paint on walls, trim color changed from almond to white, new tile floor, new light, new toilet, and new vanity. Nicely done Mike! The pictures don't really do it justice because A) I am a bad photographer and B) it was night time.



 Ignore the missing light bulb and the blue tape on the faucet. Mike was still doing finishing touches.


 Below are the old pictures just in case you forgot how it looked before



One bathroom down and 2 more to go..... :o)

Froggie


 Backyard visitor.
 Concentrating on capturing the frog.

 I love love love their delight in finding a frog hopping about the backyard. They were captivated, curious and excited.





 Keira's sassy frown face. She was displeased with something I said.


Nairi loves to tickle her own belly button and say " Tickle Tickle!!" and then she always laughs.

Oh yeah!!

By now everyone knows that Israel is obsessed with mowing. He talks about mowers all day long, his favorite things to do are mow the lawn and go to Lowes and sit on all the riding mowers. He looks at the Sears flyers to see the mowers and weed wackers and leaf blowers. He likes to color pictures of mowers that we print off the internet for him. The boy is seriously crazy about mowers. He even told Mike he wants a lawn mower cake for his birthday in October. And I have posted a million pictures of him mowing. But this one just cracks me up. Daddy and son with buzz cuts, shirtless mowing the lawn. I hope they can still mow together when he is 16.

Monday, May 14, 2012

Various Videos


Israel and Keira like to play a game where they say "I broke my Cheese-Its and act sad". It started when we bought Cheese-Its and they decided to crush them up and say this.

Good thing she is cute and funny. Nairi kept us up one night (of MANY) and since we were yawning, she decided to join in.

We had a small sandbox, but not enough room for 3 kids. We finally bought sand for the sandbox underneath the swingset.

Israel loves riding mowers, tractors, trucks, etc. Anytime we go to Home Depot or Lowe's, he has to sit on the riding mowers. Well, I have been keeping an eye on Craigslist and this thing came up yesterday while we were at the in-laws. The owner lived about 20 min north of their house (about an hour and a half from my house). We met up and it was perfect and a GREAT deal. Israel slept all the way home, but when we pulled into the driveway, he asked in his cute voice if he could ride it. It was charged, so I let him! He woke up early this morning and won't stop talking about it. SUCCESS!!

Saturday, May 12, 2012

6 years ago today

Best decision I ever made!! :o) Happy Anniversary to an awesome husband and father! I have loved every  (well except those moments filled with drywall dust) moment with you. Looking forward to more years and maybe even more babies with you!

Friday, May 11, 2012

Faces





I love the faces toddlers make. So many in a span of 1 minute.

This is what happens when you have sisters!

Tough guy! Love how he is wearing sparkly pink barbie heels and holding a chainsaw and drill

It always takes longer than you think

DIY projects that is. We were hoping that this whole project would only take a few days because A) I want my laundry appliances hooked back up and B) Its annoying to go upstairs every time I or Keira or Israel needs to use the bathroom and C) Because we hate mess and there are tools  and stuff  and mess everywhere.
But as is always the case unforeseen things arise.  The tile adhesive Mike used was the premade adhesive this time. Before he used the glue that you mix yourself. It says it takes 24 hours to dry but in reality and after doing further research we saw that it can take 72 hours plus to dry. Combine that with a super rainy and humid week and lets just say we gave it 6 days to dry to be on the safe side. 
Then we were held up by the painter who was going to come last Tuesday, then he was going to come today and now its tomorrow.  In his defense he has many children and only works part time and must have childcare to work so its understandable. So we plug along and hope to have everything back together by Wednesday. In the meantime here is the completed tile job ( minus the grout of course).

Saturday, May 05, 2012

First Floor Bathroom/Laundry deconstruct

 Here is the first floor bathroom as it was when we bought the house last year and yesterday before we started deconstruction. It was circa 1990. Almond sink, toilet, and counter top. Cheap mirror. Stage lighting. Faux wood floor linoleum and WALLPAPER!!!!



 Can't forget the brass/gold vent cover. Looking at the pictures it really doesn't look that bad but trust me when I say its alot uglier in person.  Not nearly as ugly as the bathroom in our first house but still very dated. We actually had no plans for redoing this room any time soon but the toilet was on its last leg. It was requiring at least 2 flushes for every job. So we bought a new toilet. The Champion toilet from American Standard. The one where you can flush 2 dozen golf balls at the same time and it claims it still won't clog. We haven't tried flushing golf balls down it but we did have this toilet at our old house and the kids flushed several things down it including a largish comb and it really never did clog.  But then the sink started leaking and if we are replacing the vanity and the toilet why just rip off the wallpaper, replace the ugly flooring, add some new lighting and a mirror and consider the room remodeled? So that's how we began this mess project.
 Opposite the vanity is my laundry area. The scariest part of the whole remodel is having that baby disconnected. Rule number 1 in this house is MUST keep up with the laundry. I am very afraid that not doing laundry for a week or more will set me so far back in laundry that I will never catch up. I always have piles of clean laundry to be folded and put away but I truly never let dirty laundry pile up more than a day or 2 because that's just gross to me.
 Mike looks like he is hung over and puking here but really he is just removing the bolts on the toilet
 Mike's right hand man
 I love the expression on Israel's face. " Oh Man! What a mess daddy!!"
 Sans wallpaper! Lots of wall repair for Mike to do.

 Linoleum removal
 The world's narrowest spot to remove wallpaper. To small to fit the steamer or a scraper in between those 2 moldings but somehow I managed to get the wallpaper off.