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 One of these was our master bathroom, which is big but was outdated and grungy.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!

An update just for kicks

I'm relatively sure no one reads this blog anymore, but just for the sake of my being able to look back on it, I'm going to keep updating it every 9-12 months or so :).

These are our kiddos at about 4 and 2.5.

Christmas picture photo session at the park

Reading before bed on Christmas Eve

Me & Wade on Christmas

Caden turned 4 in January and has slowly been progressing & developing.  He doesn't throw as many tantrums anymore, but we're still working on listening, obeying & having a good attitude.  He loves his preschool class and his teachers, Ms. Judy & Ms. Jenny.  

He is wild and all boy - he doesn't think before he acts, but somehow is still pretty cautious of new things.  He just finished his first month of swim lessons, in which he progressed from sobbing on the side the whole first lesson to loving it and wanting to keep going to the pool.  He's still a ways from actually swimming by himself, but it's great to see his confidence around the water improve.  He just needs to learn to really TRY things that are hard and take effort.  

He is OBSESSED with trains and Thomas the Train.  He will play trains for ages, just narrating his own story based on the Thomas videos he has seen and his imagination.  He uses AA batteries as "jobi logs" (a certain type of wood they have on the Island of Sodor) and pulls them around in the flatbed cars and who knows what else.  It is really a trip to watch :).

He is a good eater (always, "mommy, I'm still hungry!") and good sleeper still.  He got one of his top front teeth ripped out by a hammock last month, so he now sports a snaggle-toothed grin (for probably 3-4 years until the permanent tooth grows in!).

Kids playing in a little bit of snow we got late this winter.

 

Lindley is very much 2.5.  She is a stubborn little thing.  She can be the most adorable girl on the planet or a belligerent lunatic!  She has a violent streak of hitting or pushing Caden when she doesn't get what she wants, or just throwing things across the room.  And then other times, her little giggle and grin just light up the room and are the cutest you've ever seen.

She's a good bit more daring than Caden and more independent-minded.  She potty trained the weekend before she turned 2.5 and stays dry at night now too.  We set up her big girl bed right before Christmas, so after a week or two of adjusting, she doesn't remember any different.  She is able to take herself to the potty, put on her pants & shoes, and ride a tricycle - all well before Caden did those things, age-wise.  She can get picky about her clothes & hair bows & jackets and has to pick them all out herself.  Her amazing hair takes 8 minutes to blow dry after a bath!

She's still a very picky eater.  Pretty much still just peanut butter sandwiches, applesauce, cereal/bread, pumpkin pancakes, milk.  But her pot belly and 4T clothes tell me she's growing in spite of it!  She can be pretty clingy to me & wants to be held a lot, but once she gets involved in something away from me, she's good to go.  She loves her preschool class, too, and her teacher Ms. Beth.  She will not sit and watch anything on TV, but occasionally she'll sit & look at books by herself for a while.  She talks a lot & is easily understood now.

The two of them together can get into a ton of mischief (coloring on the walls, smearing lipstick everywhere, pouring water all over the floor that ran through the ceiling and poured out through the dining room light fixture, crumbling up styrofoam all over the trampoline to make "snow," stacking oddly shaped objects on top of each other to try to reach things that are too high for them, etc. etc.).

Sometimes Lindley just follows Caden around, imitating everything he says & does, which is hilarious.  Other times they fight, and it is fairly even now in terms of who is the aggressor - it is just as likely to be Lindley as it is Caden.

Overall, we're getting into a better stage for me, parenting-wise, I think...  having two kids that are able to do more for themselves & are picking up helpful habits at a more regular pace.  No more diapers or baby food or cribs.  We'll test out how much easier it is to travel with them in a few weeks when we go to the beach.  I think they'll have a blast playing in the sand together - they could probably do that for hours.

Wade resigned from being the varsity basketball coach after this past season, so it will be different to not have that time commitment and such a big part of his/our lives.  We shall see how God uses & directs him in his career over the next year!  I'm still enjoying my 15 hours a week at the church - it's the perfect amount to give me a little outlet and mental/creative stimulation but still have plenty of time with the kids and being at home.