Neighborhood Shower Party!

For months now, we've forced friends and neighbors to look at the progress we've made on the bathroom every time they come over, and now that it's DONE, we feel as though we should have an open shower party. Any takers?

It took us a couple of weekends to finish tiling, grouting and sealing everything. The glass people came about two weeks ago to take the final measurements, and installed it over the course of four hours on Thursday. The caulk used in all of the corners and edges needed 24 hours to dry, so our first chance to use the shower was Friday after work (and I really needed it after spending the day in 100+ degree weather on a platform in the middle of a river looking at a 19th century shipwreck site). Anyway, we couldn't be happier with the end result of our work, so without further ado... our shower!

Now that you've seen it, don't you want to come to our shower party?! I love everything about it, and so far, we haven't had any floods or collapsed ceilings. I'm keeping my eye out for a ceramic stool to put in one of the corners like this one in Architectural Digest.

Chic and spa-like, yes? We're also thinking of framing some of our photos for the walls, so I'll update if I ever get to that project. For now, it's back to the finishing touches - a little more caulking, trimwork, and painting!

Nice Shower Niche!

With the three day weekend over July 4th, we were sure that we were going to finish tiling our shower. Sigh. So close, and yet, it's still not finished. At this point, the few tiles we have left to put in place all require careful measuring and cutting, so it's slow going (at least for us first-timers). But we're moving forward, and we've scheduled the glass fabricators to come out and measure next week - that'll motivate us to finish for sure!

Even though we still have to make a few tricky cuts, the most difficult part is actually finished! We spent last weekend working on the niche, which took us way longer than I'd like to admit... The first step was to determine exactly where the niche would be located so that all of the tiles and grout lines would be matched up. We put two rows of tile in place to get the overall height, and then added in the thickness of the shelves and niche tiles to figure out how big the hole needed to be.

Don't mind the tiles on the left hand side that fell off the wall while we were cutting the hole - that's perfectly normal. Just kidding! We were still figuring out the whole thinset mortar thing.  Next, we built out the niche walls using cement board so that it was the exact width we'd need. We waterproofed using the same Kerdi material that we used for the rest of the shower, following the instructions over on the Floor Elf's tiling blog. After that, we made some cuts to our border tiles, slapped them up on the wall, and got to the pretty glass tile part. Finally.

The finish line is in sight!

The Great Garden Taming of 2011

I took a hiatus from tiling the shower the past couple of weekends* because 1. Ryan was traveling for work and 2. our back yard started looking like this:

Jungle-licious, yes?

Umm, no. With the potential for friends or neighbors stopping by over the July 4th weekend, we just couldn't put the weeding off any longer. We picked up some mulch for the front yard and some veggie plants for the back on Friday, and I got to work early this morning. The garage and crepe myrtle give us a little bit of shade in the morning, so I wanted to get out there while it was still somewhat cool. I rounded up my gardening gloves and the trowel and clippers that Ryan gave me for my birthday this year, heavy-duty trash bags, a rake, and a hoe - and yes, "Inch by Inch, Row by Row" was stuck in my head the entire time. Roughly five hours later, I have mosquito bites, blistered fingers, and thighs that can no longer move into the squatting position, but I also have my patio back!

I also finally planted our vegetable garden. This year, we chose four kinds of tomatoes (Early Girl, Taxi, Brandywine, and Beefsteak) and two hot peppers. We also have lettuce that carried over from last year, basil, and a mystery squash. We've never planted squash, so we're not sure where it came from. I guess we'll let it grow and see what we end up with. Our tomatoes are never particularly successful - neighborhood squirrels tend to steal them before we can get to them. But sun-warmed tomatoes fresh out of the garden are one of summer's great pleasures, so I'm determined to do whatever it takes this year!

As for the chimney pots used to border the raised beds, the Corinthian column, and the random fence door to nowhere, all I can say is that we've done the best we can with what was here when we moved in. When we decide to take on a more extensive patio renovation, these things will be among the first to go!

Now I can get back to tiling with a clear garden conscience!


* This seems to be a theme. Is this why our shower project is taking an eternity to finish?

Past Projects... Refinishing Floors

We took a break from working on tiling today to focus on the important task of relaxing. It's been fabulous, and I'm confident that we'll get back to work tomorrow feeling all the more refreshed and enthusiastic.

I thought I'd take this day off to share one of the very first things we did with the house, back in the winter of 2008 - refinishing the wood floors. And by that, I mean we hired someone to do it for us. We're pretty into doing-it-ourselves, but this was one job that we just weren't prepared to take on.

The house's floors are the original 1897 heartwood pine, but over the years, they'd been stained dark brown on the first floor, and were mostly painted on the second floor. Our house can be pretty dark inside because it's a row house in the middle of a block, so we figured that restoring the floors to their natural lighter color could make a big difference in brightening things up.

And it made a huge difference. These are before and after photos of our guest bedroom and master bedroom (don't worry, these are old pictures - we've done a lot of work since these were taken).

The guest bedroom...

And our master bedroom...

The feeling of the whole house completely changed with this one relatively simple project. We've moved a few walls around since then, so we'll have to have those spots of the floor sanded down and polished in the future.  But for now, we couldn't be happier with the new life breathed into some old wood!

Subway Tile Layout

Our first subway tile layout dilemma of this past weekend... do we go with butterfly or wrap around style corners? Ryan and I completely made these terms up, so I found a couple of pictures to illustrate what we're talking about.

The one on the left is what we're calling butterfly style because the tiles are the same size on either side of the corner, and they look kind of like wings (at least to us!).  The other type's tiles are cut to look like there's one full-sized tile wrapping around the corner.

We went back and forth on which way we preferred it. When we worked the math out though, we realized that we'd have the same size tiles in each of the four corners if we went with the butterfly style. That appealed to the neat-freaks in both of us. Here's a shot of our handiwork.

As you can see, one of our cats, Sabi, is very interested in this project. She's been checking it out daily, but I bet that ends as soon as she figures out its true watery function. 

We're really excited to finally see this project moving ahead!