More home improvements

This spring, summer, and fall, we've been adding some more home improvements!

The first was putting up this swing set for the kids, which I can see from my kitchen sink. It is so nice to be able to watch them play, and they make up all kinds of stuff to do out there. They swing, they play family, they move mulch around with trucks, they build forts, they do the monkey bars.

We tilled up this area of dirt, leveled it out, put down weed blocking fabric, built a small retaining wall, and filled the area with mulch. The play set itself was free from a family giving it away - it was a nice one but 10 years old, so Wade just fixed up a few places where the wood was rotting. It's good it was free, though, because all the materials involved in making a place for it sure added up!

If you notice in the first picture of the swing set, there is a dirt area to the right of it... this was the result of an unfortunate miscalculation of the size & best location for the swing set, so since this area was already dug & leveled out, we decided to make it into a fire pit! This involved building a larger retaining wall, with a French drain behind it, for which Wade shoveled & moved literally tons of gravel in the heat of summer. We got pea gravel (instead of trying to do pavers, which would have been so much harder & more expensive), and then the fire pit kit from Lowe's.

Since Wade built this in the middle of summer, we had to wait awhile to put it to use since it was way too hot for fires, but we've had people over, roasted marshmallows & made s'mores several times this fall - super fun!

Finally, we decided the house could use an exterior face lift, and we had some rotten siding repaired that needed painting anyway, so we had the whole house (siding & trim) painted as well. This is the old color - a faded pinkish gray.

And the back of the house with the old color.

And now! I love the way the darker gray & white trim pops and looks so much richer. We chose Sherwin Williams Dovetail for the gray and Greek Villa for the trim.

I especially love the back now that it's painted!

Kitchen Reno!

Just as we were embarking on our bathroom renovation last November, we discovered that we had a leak in one of our pipes under the slab foundation of our house (discovered by way of a running-water sound in the walls & higher water bills). Our plumber, with some additional sonar detection equipment, narrowed the leak location down to the pipe that takes cold water to the kitchen sink. Since the pipe was completely inaccessible under the house, he recommended capping that one off & running a new cold water pipe from our laundry room, behind the walls of the pantry, cabinets & stove, to the sink.  Because this repair was going to require moving all the cabinets away from the wall & thus removing the granite countertop, we decided to go all in & do a small kitchen upgrade too :).

This is what the kitchen looked like before. The dark granite was here when we moved in & it was fine, although maybe wouldn't have been my top choice. The cabinets were original to the house (1985) and painted white.

View from the breakfast area (which we use as a sunroom because there are several windows & skylights).

The night before the tear-out.

A couple pictures of the progress. It was a lot more work than even the plumber anticipated to run new water lines through those walls. He ended up running a hot & cold line and left the hot one not hooked up, so that if we ever get a leak in the hot pipe under the house, we won't have to rip out cabinets & countertops again!

It was a disaster zone for several days...

And now!  We got new upper cabinets (42" tall instead of the previous 29" ones we had), and added a cabinet there on the left-hand side on top. That one allows me to keep a lot of small appliances in the kitchen that had previously been stored in odd places in the garage (not very handy). The lower cabinets we had painted & got new doors to match the uppers. The granite is 3" longer than before to give me just a little bit more counter space (all we could do with the room's spacing & not adding support legs).

The sunroom area

View from the sunroom - new barstools because the two we had before were so wobbly & falling apart. We went with a medium gray on the cabinets & a very light gray on the walls to keep the space clean & neutral. The cabinets are a shaker style, and I really love the pulls we ended up choosing. They're nice & chunky but curved & smooth, and they mimic the shape of the refrigerator door handles & oven/microwave handles.

Our pretty granite! Wade talked me into going with this somewhat bold "statement" slab, with some unique black & gray veining, a little bit of green & some gold flecks. It's pretty sparkly in person in the light because there is some quartzite in it as well. And an undermount sink that I have wanted forever!

And last but not least, we got new French doors to the deck as well! The old door was terribly sealed, so cold air would just blow in around the frame in the winter. 

Disregard the mess on the deck, which is the next project we're undertaking... a play/swingset for the backyard :).

I love how much brighter the kitchen is, the extra cabinet space, and sweeping crumbs directly into the sink instead of over the lip of the sink - haha. It was an expensive fall/winter for the Tapp house, but I love the finished products and they do say kitchens & master bathrooms are the rooms where you get the most bang for your buck on resale. Hopefully we're not selling this place anytime soon though, because I want to stay & enjoy it for a long time!

Bathroom Remodel!

We've lived in this house for almost 6 years now, and during that time have periodically dreamed of different improvements we'd like to make. One of these was our master bathroom, which is big but was outdated and grungy. This fall, we finally decided to go for it and do a remodel!

Here is the BEFORE:

Small shower & small tub - very plain vanilla!

Gross, tiny shower from 1985. It was about 3x3 feet, and the tiles were breaking, and mold & mildew were all in the corners & grout and just couldn't even be cleaned. The door was nasty and grimy too.

Shower & tub from opposite angle

View from entrance to bathroom. As you can see, there was carpet in the front half where the sinks are, which is never a good thing in a bathroom.

Back half of the bathroom

We contracted with a local small business - Veritas Construction Services - who had repaired our powder room ceiling after a leak and did a good job. Most of the work for this took 2 full weeks (they were here every day), and then the shower glass was ordered and took another 3 weeks to come in.

And now, here is the AFTER:

Our bathroom has never had a door for whatever reason, and we decided against the expense of adding some kind of door. Pocket doors would have been an option, but expensive because of moving electrical wiring. Folding doors were an option, but would have stuck out a bit in the room in a way I didn't like. And barn doors on a sliding track were the cheapest option (but still a good chunk of $$), which we could still do at some point, but this works for now. I got a curtain rod and new blackout curtains to hang outside the door frame.

View from the doorway. We removed all the old floor tile & carpet and put in large square floor tiles in a diagonal pattern, which I read makes the space look bigger. The floor tiles are a light gray ceramic tile. The cabinet at the back is a Christmas present from my dad & aunt. It is technically considered a "pantry" but it was perfect for the space and holds all of our sheets & towels, extra toiletries, medicines, my make-up, and more.

We did not replace the countertop or cabinets - just too big of an expense at this point. The counter is a newer laminate, and it is quite long, so that much granite & 2 new sinks would have been a lot of extra money. I painted the bathroom a blue-green color called Pigeon, which I had basically a full gallon of, leftover from painting an accent wall in our dining room earlier this year.

We thought about losing the tub altogether, because it is very tiny (pretty much unusable by me & definitely unusable by Wade) and we are not bath people anyway. But, it would have cost $500 just to remove it & cap off the water lines, so we decided to leave it and have the tile surround redone to match the shower tile.

We tore down the full wall that used to divide the shower & tub, and framed out a new half wall, gaining a good 6 inches toward the tub and another 12 inches out into the bathroom. So the new shower is a good amount bigger, plus it feels even bigger with the frameless shower glass & natural light from the window coming in. 

Since the plumbing was in the wall that was torn down, it had to be moved to the opposite wall. We took the opportunity to put a 9" rain shower head straight out of the ceiling, as well as a handheld shower head mounted on the wall. With the new valve behind the wall, you can use either shower head by itself or both at the same time! For the first time, Wade has a shower head that he doesn't have to bend down & duck under to get his head wet. It's pretty fantastic and feels like a spa every day.

The back half of the bathroom - so nice to have it opened up so the window light can shine through. You can see a little of the corner shelf/bench in the shower, perfect for putting a foot on to shave.

This is the new light fixture, replacing a cheap, plain flush-mount fixure that didn't give off much light.

Close-up of the shower niche. We added a porcelain hook beneath it, too, because my pet peeve is not having a place to put my stuff & hang my loofah. I also like a place to hang the wash cloth, but we thought another bar for that would look too cluttered, so I'm just hanging it over the handheld shower head for now.

The shower tiles are a mixture of a white textured ceramic tile on the lower 5 feet of the shower walls and natural stone tile on the upper 3 feet, as well as a natural stone tile for the shower floor and natural stone slabs for the shower curb, top of the half wall, and the other end of the bathtub.

Close-up of the rain shower head :)

Overall, we are super happy with the way it turned out. If I had it to do over again, I might do less of the "splurge" accent tile, like just a stripe around the shower instead of the whole top third. Once we got all the different things we ended up needing for the tile, it added up to quite a bit of money, even though we stayed with bargain tile for the bathroom floor & lower shower walls. The shower heads & new valve were also more expensive than I anticipated, but in the end, I think they are worth it.

A tip I read about and am trying to put into practice is keeping the shower clean by drying it out after every use. We Rain-X'd the inside of the shower glass, and have a squeegee to clear the water off the glass after every shower. Then 15 or so mins after the shower, I take an old towel and wipe down the walls, floor & corners so the water doesn't sit in/on them, since that's what really ends up causing mold & mildew. If they are dried out within a short time, that stuff doesn't have the chance to grow. So, it's a few minutes of keeping up with it daily, but the blog I read about it said she really never had to clean her shower with cleaning products because of the towel trick. Then you just throw the towel in the laundry with your regular load!

The Summer of Daddy

The second theme I noticed in our pictures from this summer, was the many different activities that DADDY (Wade) was present for!  This was the most "home" that Wade has probably ever gotten to be since the summer we were first married.  With three years of grad school in the summer, and then a few years of varsity coaching with related duties that kept pulling him away during the summer, he hasn't had much of that "summer off" that people talk about with professions in education.

For a good chunk of this summer, he was home with the kids 3 days a week while I was working.  He frequented the pool with the kids, either at the Y or at his parents' new house (at their development's pool).

He was able to take a whole week truly off with us as we road tripped to Atlanta to visit friends, from there to Chattanooga to visit more friends, back through Atlanta, and to the beach with my family.

Another pair of hands to put on sunscreen, brush teeth, give baths, read books, fix meals, dole out discipline & instructions, answer the kids' 182083387 questions a day, dress, wipe, clean up, even brush & dry Lindley's hair!  It was magnificent!

I know he was around more by the fact that the kids have started mistakenly calling me "daddy" when they're calling me or talking to me!

I know he has loved getting to have more time with his family this summer, and hopefully we'll work to keep a better balance, as best we can, into the school year.

One thing Wade is MUCH better than I am at doing is *teaching* the kids things (go figure lol!).  He is so much more patient, more willing to let them make mistakes and learn from them and not have things be perfect at the end.  He would invite Caden to help him make eggs, while I still cringe at letting the kids help me with anything in the kitchen (I'm trying to let go, I really am!).

He got to do a lot of yard work - putting in a drainage system on one side of our house so we don't get a lake when it rains, clearing out the entire back of our lot that was brush & trees & poison ivy (he amazingly did it without GETTING poison ivy, which is actually incredible for him), staining our deck, spreading pine needles, mowing the lawn (until 2 months of upper 90s killed all the grass), etc.

So along with our kids becoming friends with each other, they also got a summer filled with memories of doing stuff with their dad.

I guess this was a pretty great summer when you sum it up!

The Summer of Sibling Friendship

So, I thought I would write a blog update tonight for the heck of it, and as I looked through pictures from the time since my last post, I noticed two themes emerge, which are both pretty awesome in the life of our family.  So I'm going to do one post on each.

The first theme I noticed was all the pictures of Caden & Lindley together... playing together, hugging, laughing together, exploring the yard and playing whatever games their imaginations came up with...

They really became best friends this summer, and looking back on the pictures helps me see that.

The daily grind still had plenty of fights, squabbles, stolen toys, tears, tantrums, arguing, etc. so it was sometimes harder to notice it on a micro level.

But there were lots of times that I looked out in the backyard and saw them absorbed in their own little world in the sandbox, or driving the battery powered Jeep around the yard in fits & starts, or shooting monsters, or jumping on the trampoline, or putting each other in a giant plastic storage container & closing the lid (had to intervene on that one, considering it was 100 degrees outside, whichever child was inside couldn't unlock the lid to get out, and sometimes the storage container was half-filled with water!).

We explored places that were new to them, like Wade's alma mater, Covenant College, on Lookout Mountain, GA.  They ran shrieking through the halls of his old classroom buildings, and got a little too close to the edge of some stone overlooks with 20-30 foot drops on the other side.

We went to the beach twice - once at the beginning of May with just us 4, and once at the end of July with my dad & sister + crew.  They loved digging in the sand together, playing in the tide pools together, asking for snacks always.  (They also loved playing with their cousins, Madelyn & Riley!)

For the 4th of July, we continued our tradition of visiting mom's grave at Forest Lawn Cemetery.  They asked who was buried in all the other graves, and were we going to dig mom up, and is she ever coming back, and why is she buried here, and where will they be buried.  They would not be still to get a good picture, so the mood was not super peaceful as I barked at them to stop pushing each other and stand still and smile and no not like that and ok Caden's smiling now Lindley smile! (and then Caden looks away) over and over again.

Caden was sometimes especially sweet to "Ninley" as he calls her - hugging her when she was upset, telling her it was ok, reading books or playing on the iPad together, sharing toys and trying to work out squabbles or teach her things.

And then there were those many times when their antics together - while great for sibling bonding - were just a WEE bit frustrating for mom... when they were so wrapped up in silly giggles that they would not listen to a word I said, when they ran rampant through grocery stores laughing and shouting nonsense at each other, when bath time turned into splash & kick time, when they would disappear into the garage and play with all the controls in our parked cars, or in the backyard dump sand in each other's hair.

All in all, though, I can look back on this summer of 2015 as a great beginning to their hopefully lifelong close friendship - always having each other's back and sharing lots of memories, laughs & hugs!