Friday, May 15, 2009

I have waited for this my whole life...

Okay, well not my WHOLE life, but this project has been simmering on the back burner for 2 1/2 years.

When we first bought our house in 2006, Ande and I decided that we wanted to fix up the 1/2 bath off of our kitchen, for a number of reasons.
  1. It was freakin' UGLY
  2. It was going to be easier to tear it apart than to clean it
  3. It was REALLY STINKING UGLY
  4. Did I mention it was ugly?

It started out we were just going to take the paneling off the walls, maybe get a new vanity and medicine cabinet, and possibly put new linoleum in.

Once Ande started tearing the stuff out of the bathroom, he realized that the only hope in this room was to tear it completely out, down to the studs. So he did. Once he did that, we discovered that there were actually 3 places where we could have a water hook-up, plus 3 drainage pipes. It was around that time that we hatched the plan that we could convert our once cramped, UGLY bathroom into a laundry room/half bath combo.

We started out well. Bought all the supplies, including some SWEET marble floor tiles, that we got for about $6/box (works out to be just over $1/sq ft), AND a brand new LG front load washer and dryer set that we can stack to save room (and energy). So Ande got the room gutted, put pipes in place where they needed to go, and put up the drywall. He taped the drywall. Started mudding the drywall. Then he stopped. For 2 years.

Now, I partially blame myself, because I probably didn't really encourage him to continue on...you know how it is when someone does nice stuff for you and you want to do nice stuff back? Well, let's just say I wasn't really giving him too many reasons to want to work on the bathroom.

Recently I have been trying to be a better wife, and it's really started to pay off! Ande finally started working on the bathroom again. Here's a few pics (I have some "before" pics somewhere on a disk, if I find them I will post those so you can see where we started...)

Puckey was VERY excited to be getting to help Daddy work on the laundry room...


Showing me the screw that she would soon be handing to Daddy.

Hammering down an old nail that was sticking up so the cement board could go down.

I got to buy the primer last week, then I bought the paint this morning.

This is our bathroom with the primer, now just waiting for the opportunity to put the color on.

Once the walls are painted, we will be putting the marble down, then doing the trimwork. After that, we can hook up the plumbing and get our sink, toilet, and washer and dryer hooked up and ready to run.

4 comments:

12-arrows said...

Is that loud cheering I hear coming from your way??? I am so happy for you and I am sure you are just estatic too! I bet you just can't wait to get to the painting! WOO HOO for Ande! what a great job he is doing too!

Devin said...

Oh, YAY!!

It looks great so far Julie! I know you must be so excited. Nothing like waiting this long only to see a project finally come to it's end!

And, yay for Ande!! It looks great, and that's coming from someone who knows how much hard work goes into all this stuff!!

Michelle said...

Looks like fun!

How do you get your comment box to pop up like this? I need the code!

Thanks for visiting my blog last week. I know what you mean by cloth. You either KNOW you can do them or you know you cant.

I was always intrigued by them.

amanda said...

awe-some!

I like the bit about "you know when you do nice things for people and they want to do nice things back..." Great insight!

I am glad you got the ball rolling again. Keep up the good work, both of you ;)