Tubby Time

Man, did I want to have a grand before-and-after post about the new upstairs by now. Well, long before now, actually. We are so close to the end, but we have reached the DIY phase of the construction--we are installing the closet and stairs ourselves; then our contractor will return to install safety railings, bannisters and a newel post. And between both of our jobs, chasing after the boys, and trying to keep up with everyday life, those stairs just ain't gettin' done. We've realized we're going to have to take some time off work, keeping the kids at daycare during that time, if there is any hope of finishing our project.

Until then, we've been enjoying what we can about the space, namely the bathroom. Everyone has tried out the tub, and everyone approves.

From a completely practical standpoint, I love bathing the kids in this tub because it sits higher than a standard tub (because of those little claw feet on the bottom), which means a smidge less bending and crawling around for me. I love using the handheld shower to rinse my older son's hair, and he gets a big kick out of "taking a shower."

So, we are in a remodeling no-man's-land at the moment--our bed is upstairs, but all of our clothes are in sad hoarder piles in the downstairs former bedroom because there is nowhere to hang or organize them . (When I get dressed in the morning, I rummage around in this pile and that pile, and it just makes me CRAZY, and I feel like the big pile o' trash lady from Labyrinth.) We are using the shower and bath upstairs (and the other, ahem, facilities), but we don't have medicine cabinets or shelving yet, so all of our toiletries are still downstairs. I hope to remedy some of that this weekend. Or maybe I'll just spend some quality time in the tub with my Entertainment Weekly, who knows. Pin It

The Bathroom Buddy

Man, time stands still when you are waiting for a second toilet. It's a fact.

By this evening, we should have plumbing connected/running/live/all systems go in ye olde upstairs bathroom. So excited! Here is where we stand right now. (I SWEAR I will have someone with a real, grown-up camera take pictures of this when it's done. And hey, it will just look that much better next to my smudgy iPhone "before" shots.)

From the top of the steps, looking left, the doors that lead to our bedroom:

Bedroom light fixtures are in, one coat of paint up. Our painters are so lazy! Wait, we are the painters. Oops.

Slightly better shot of the light fixture, which will be over the bed if we EVER FINISH. I liked this fixture (the Emma, from Overstock) because it's flush-mount, which we need for the 7.5' attic ceilings, but it has a chandelier quality to it. It's a little more girly/blingy/glam/whatever than I would normally go for, but I'm kind of steering the bedroom in a fancy direction, to my surprise.

Back across the hall to the bathroom. Through a pocket door (which will be painted white):

The shower, she is tiled!

I love it so much. HOWEVER, here is a good lesson for everyone. Just because you have the room  (and the crazy greed) to make your shower humongous, please take standard sizing into consideration. I liken this to the time Homer Simpson designed a car. Because the shower is not a standard size, we'll have to have glass custom cut for it. To the tune of, oh, $1800. Which we do not have at this point in the remodel, after paying for all of the other bathtastic stuff. So the shower will remain doorless for a while. We'll probably improvise with a curtain of some sort for the time being.

Shower plus wild monkey child, for scale.

Shower floor and threshold:

I hope that whoever is nice enough to come take pictures of my bathroom can capture the marble better than my phone. It is so pretty, but my pictures make it look dirty and yellow.

Our genius tile guy cut one 12x12 marble tile in half to make two corner shelves.

Vanity (needs two medicine cabinets):

Vanity from another angle (on the other side of that window is the shower):

Where my precious the tub will go (gotta touch that paint up!). Again, my "camera" (phone) makes it look so yellow. Too bad I can't buy a real camera since I went and spent all my money on marble. Oh, the irony. It's like O. Henry crafted this tale himself. What?

Anyway, that's obviously a very rough and hasty peek, but hopefully I'll have a gorgeous tub in place to take horrible photos of tonight!

Here's what's left to do:

-finish puttying/priming/painting (we took this on in order to cross a whopping $2100 off our contractor's estimate)
-install permanent stair treads (I think we're going to do this ourselves. See: the part about running out of money)
-bannister/railings/newel post
-figure out the flooring situation for the landing/hallway area
-have carpet installed
-move all our crap up there and enjoy having a bedroom larger than a phone booth! Pin It

In Like a Lion

Well, the upstairs renovation is creeping slowly toward the finish line. The bathroom is looking gorgeous, everything else looks pretty much the same, and the bank account is an empty little ghost town with tumbleweeds rolling through it.

Back to the bathroom, though! Our floor and shower have been tiled. By the time I get home today, I hope they will have been grouted as well. Here's a sneak peek (sorry about the paper. But isn't it MYSTERIOUS?).

Here's an equally "mysterious" shot from a little further into the room.

Our meticulous and lovely tile guy, Viktor, was run off on Friday by tornado sirens and hail (apparently he chose to brave his chances DRIVING through TORNADOES rather than retreat to the basement with us). We huddled in the basement, watching the storm's progress through all kinds of . . . interesting towns I'd never heard of.

We saw golfball-sized hail hitting our tiny basement windows and heard winds howling outside. When we emerged, we saw what hadn't melted away in the freaky eighty-degree heat.

And it took us a little while to notice this, but the storm did leave a little bit of unfortunate damage.

Graham is being a trooper. I told him we would try to fix it, but I have no idea when we'll have time, and that's the truth! Every spare minute that's not taken up with work or the upstairs renovation is filled with parties and projects.

In the next month, we have

• Dean's first birthday (more on this to come. So much more. Seriously, you will be so sick of it.)

Momma! Stop talkin' so much about my birthday!

•  a Godzilla-themed first birthday for Penny, whose baby shower it seems was just yesterday!

• Camilla's second birthday party, which I hope to help with as much as possible because her mother is about to have baby number two! I was three days away from having Dean at Camilla's first birthday. Time flies, y'all.

• a VERY special party that I am so excited to be involved with. I'll give you some hints! It involves floating candles, graduation robes, and lots of these felt banners.

Ten points if you know what this might be!

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Bathroom Mood Board

Ah, we are nearing the finish line! There is a fine coating of drywall dust on EVERY EFFING THING IN MY HOUSE. The finishes have been selected, the bank balance has shrunk to almost nothing, and I am thisclose to dragging a mattress up to the still-quite-raw attic and just pretending it's done. Remodeling is chaos. I know--wah, wah, right? It will definitely all be worth it. I just want to press fast forward and soak in my big new tub. Sadly, that tub is wrapped in plastic, in my basement, with everything from tile samples to dirty laundry stacked on top of it. Not very spa-like.

I find it therapeutic to concentrate on the awesome things, like my bathroom! Seth thinks I am joking when I say this, but quite seriously: I AM NOT COMING BACK DOWN. I am locking that bathroom door (note to self: check with contractor to make sure the door locks), putting in some ear plugs (as soon as I find them--the house is seriously reaching Hoarder/Buried Alive levels of insanity right now. They keep making us empty out closets to run pipes and things through them! AND on the days that I am "home" with my children, ages 4 and 10 months, we have to vacate the house and wander around town aimlessly because of the construction. WAH INDEED.), and TAKING A NINETEEN HOUR BATH, FOLLOWED BY A NAP AND POSSIBLY ANOTHER BATH.

But! Eyes on the prize and all that. Here is my little mood board of what we're doing in the bathroom (heh heh).

1. Okay, so herringbone marble. How pretty is that? We can't afford to do much decorative tilework, but there is a handy tiny wall right behind the tub that is just right for a little accent tile. It will give us a big impact without having to tile all the wall in the bathroom. You'll see what I mean when it's a little further along. Right now it just looks like this:

Admittedly, it might not inspire much awe as it is, but picture that back wall covered in marble, with a clawfoot tub in front of it. Now picture a nasty basement, with a plastic-wrapped tub full of dirty laundry in it! You may need to call upon your memories of recent Hoarders episodes for this. Which one is better? This brings us to my third child, THE TUB.

2. I have wanted a clawfoot tub since I was a little girl. My grandmother had a huge old house with a deep clawfoot tub that must have been six feet long. After looking into refinishing an old tub, I ended up buying an acrylic one from Overstock. The cost was about the same, maybe less, than a vintage tub plus a good refinishing job, and the weight of a cast iron tub was of some concern, since we are retrofitting a space that wasn't originally designed to hold that much weight.

3. I want a little side table by the tub for things like trashy magazines, liquor and a baby monitor candles and bath salts, and I looooove the classic Martini Side Table from West Elm. The silver is just so gorgeous. I saw a silver one at my local West Elm in the scratch and dent section, and I could just kick myself for not grabbing it. It's on sale this week, so maybe I can justify it. I love that it's a stool and a side table, and I could take it downstairs for extra dining seating if I needed it. It's so perfect.

4. Maaaaahble, again. I can't say "marble" very many times without reverting to this. Seth and I priced about fourteen different kinds of marble, and we ended up going with 12x12 GrecianWhite from Home Depot, which we'll have cut in half for 6"x12" tiles, laid subway-style. It was half the cost of Carrara, my favorite, and a little more expensive than other colors we considered (a darker gray, a less-veiny white), but it was the one in our price range we were most enthusiastic about.

And now we move over to the vanity section of the bathroom, which is currently in this less-than-spa-like state:

An oasis, yes? However, it will be laid out (in terms of mirrors, lights, and the actual vanity) very similarly to this setup from Pottery Barn:

Um, minus the mahhhhble wall. I ain't made of money, y'all.

5. For our sconces, we chose the very basic, affordable (and hopefully not too draining to my already ghostly complexion) Good Earth chrome sconces from Lowe's. Ha, you can actually see the exact moment where we started to run out of money. But these are nice and basic, and they came with CFL bulbs.

6. The best gray paint I've found to go with all of my other finishes is Martha Stewart's Heavy Goose, which my four-year-old thinks is the funniest name in the whole world.

7. We haven't bought our medicine cabinets yet, but my husband wants something linear and simple, and we need one that is surface-mounted (not recessed, due to our stud placement, ha ha), so we're thinking something like these Zenith Early American cabinets from ye olde Home Depot.

8. All of that will sit above our vanity. Look closely at the Pottery Barn vanity above. Now check out this one on Amazon. I'm no vanity expert, but to me, this looks pretty much like the same exact vanity for about, oh, half the price. And you can get it even cheaper if you opt for polished white marble instead of the carrera countertop. Ours is scheduled to arrive tomorrow, and my fingers will pretty much remain crossed until then, but I've heard good things about this brand and this company, Kitchen Bath Collection.

I'll spare you a vision board on the water closet, which will be a white toilet in a gray room. That leaves us the shower. The shower is to Seth what the bathtub is to me. It's a big space, which is not really reflected in this sad picture:

9. If you're standing at the vanity, the shower is directly behind you. The little window to the side of the vanity is between it and the shower.  The part facing the vanity will be all glass, pretty similar to this configuration--a door in the middle with a glass panel on either side. The interior will be gray subway tile. The color we chose is Daltile's Desert Gray in semi-gloss, with white grout. You can find it at your local Daltile showroom, or at Home Depot. We actually found it was cheaper to go through Home Depot in this case.

10. Finally, we wanted seating in the shower. We considered a built-in bench, but because we're putting shower heads at both ends, we couldn't figure out a good location for that. Seth mentioned a teak bench, but I was all, "Okay, Seth J. Rockefeller," because holy cow, those things can get pricey.  Also, I wasn't aware that HE was even aware of such things as teak benches. La dee DAH. But I digress.

However, I remembered the Italmodern stools I had perused when looking for something for Graham's room a while back, and I ordered the Sally stool for just over $50, with free shipping. It might be too good for my preschooler, but I'm fancy enough to sit on it while I shave my legs. Also, it can be used as extra seating or a side table elsewhere in the house, but don't tell people it's been in your shower, where you get all nekkid and stuff. Just a bit of personal advice.

That's all I got for now. I am aware of how gray and white everything looks, which is soothing, but also--to a color freak like me--a little bleak. I plan to inject a little color through accessories and towels, which I can change out easily. I'm digging coral against all the silvery gray, so I'll probably treat myself to some coral towels when we dig out from under the piles of craziness and finally move upstairs.

If you need me, I'll just be rocking back and forth in a corner of my attic, pretending everything is done and pretty already. Pin It

Upstairs Update: Drywall Edition

Happy Valentine's Day! Here is a picture Graham drew for me.

 

He said, "This is me telling you 'I love you' and thinking about rockets." Well okay then. At least he's honest about his priorities.

 
So! The upstairs, she is rolling right along.

Where our attic door and dining room wall used to be (do you like the creepy chandelier shadows?) . . .

Is now our little stairway to heaven, har har.

Sorry, I couldn't move any further back from it to get a better shot. We have a lovely, temporary plastic wall cutting our dining room diagonally in half (to keep the drywall dust contained):

And here are some gray, indecipherable pictures! The top of the stairs, with my little office nook in the background. Note to self: do not use a rolling office chair here. That silvery business is where the air return will be, under my desk, which does not yet exist.

View from the top of the stairs, turned around. There will be a bannister on either side of the gaping hole/stairwell, and shelves or picture "gallery" space on the walls. Right in front of the window will be one of those Edison pendants the kids are liking these days.

View into the bedroom before:

Currently:

Before:

During framing:

With drywall (awaiting new window):

Where the bed will go, before:

After demo:

After framing:

With drywall (and a fancy garbage bag!):

I'll spare you photos of the rest of the space--just more greige drywall that's kind of hard to distinguish from one room to another. But speaking of greige, I was testing out different color gray paints on a scrap of drywall, and I cracked up because somehow they ALL managed to look exactly like the ol' cardboardy gypsum color of the unfinished drywall.

That should keep you on the edge of your seats until next time--"Which gray will she choose?!" It will either be the top shade or the bottom one.

We are purchasing light fixtures and tile left and right. We have to go pick out carpet this week (is there anything more boring than looking at carpet? Answer: no.) and at some point a big ol' vanity (my biggest Amazon purchase ever) is arriving at my house. I can't wait to share more. And I REALLY can't wait to move up there. Pin It

"Floor Plan"

So, as anyone who knows me (or anyone who sees this drawing) could tell you, I am not an architect.

My lovely friend Jessica, a real grown-up interior designer, took some measurements for me and drew a scale plan of my raw attic space for me in AutoCad, and then I mutilated the drawing by pasting it into Publisher and drawing little boxes and shapes all over it. But this is the only way I know how to do it, so this is what you get.

All of that gray space on top is where the ceiling is sloped too low, so most of it is storage space behind a five-foot knee wall. The bottom half of the plan used to have the same slope, until we busted through the roof and built a shed dormer. 

The whole left side is our bedroom. THE WHOLE SIDE. That ends up being about 16x18, which is nothing crazy for newer houses, or even more spacious older homes. But it's 2.5 times as big as our current "master" bedroom. Our kids' rooms are in the 9x10 range. My house in teensy, y'all. Anyway, I keep wandering into the unfinished space and twirling around like an idiot. All of that space! For ME us! 

So the attic stairs (which were replaced last week! More on that later!) sort of divide the space in half. We'll have a little hallway (really just a landing, I guess) at the top of the stairs, at the end of which will be my office nook. So far the only plans I have for that are building a desk out of a hollow-core door and mounting it to the wall. The ceiling on that side (the front of the house) is slanted, so I can't do much in the way of vertical storage. I have found some cute ideas for hallway offices on Pinterest, like this one. 

Back to my "floor plan"! From the hallway, you can turn left and go through some mini french doors into the aforementioned giant (to me) bedroom, or you can go right (through a glass pocket door, which delights me to no end) into my our master bathroom. I'm pretty sure our new shower is the same size as our old downstairs bathroom. Also, we are very fancy with our water closet. This is pretty much the Spelling mansion now.

On the other side of the bathroom is our closet space. Someone (ME! That's who!) had the clever idea to install washer-dryer hookups in the closet, since it backs up to plumbing anyway. Now, I don't know when exactly we'll be able to buy a nice little front loader set, but I don't think we'll be hauling the set that's currently in the basement up the steps anytime soon. It's just nice to have the hookups there, and to know we'll eventually be able to do some laundry where we actually keep our clothes and linens. I hate trudging up and down the rickety basement steps to do laundry (I guess that's why Seth does it. Aw). 

So, that's the layout. That is what we are working toward right now, and that's what has taken over our house since before Christmas. Our house is TORN UP. Clothes everywhere, plastic sheeting, and goofy baby exersaucer plastic craziness thrown in for good measure. There are always random dudes coming in and out, and Graham is always making them uncomfortable, trying to be friends with them, asking them to hug him when they leave, wanting to discuss the solar system with them. Poor guys.

If you (Mom?) are interested in my ideas for the space once it's finished, my Pinterest board for the whole upstairs is right here. Follow me for up-to-the-minute breaking news about grout selections, or what pillow I'm currently too poor to order!

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Movin' on UP

I have been a poor blogger. Besides the excuse of the holidays, I had an intense, 7-week, out-of-the-blue freelance assignment (Yay, money! Boo, poor timing!) that just swallowed me up over Christmas and through the new year. I feel like I just came up for air last week. AND in addition to all that crazy business, I offer you this poorly written story.

Once upon a time there was a young couple who bought their first home.

 
It was modest, but they loved it's blank-slateyness, and they especially loved the neighborhood it was in.

They tore up lots of green carpet, painted and repainted (and repainted) the inside, and sort of neglected the landscaping.

Somewhere along the way, they also acquired two elderly chihuahuas and had two little boys, and the tiny house felt positively miniscule.

 
The little family began to trip over each other in the hallway and the bathroom.

The couple considered their options:

1. Move out to the suburbs, where they could afford double the house but  miss their neighborhood and their three-minute commute terribly
2. Try to find a bigger house in their own neighborhood that they could afford (also known as the Imaginary Option), or 
3. Expand the teensy house to accommodate their growing family.

After YEARS of fighting over the toilet and keeping their clothes in their children's bedroom closets like animals considering these options carefully, the wife couple demanded decided to dig in their heels, stay in the house and neighborhood they so loved, and BLOW THE ROOF OFF THE SUCKER.

That's right--we're going up! Our attic, which spans the entire length of our house, is being built out to become a big ol' (well, by our standards) master suite! We are the MASTERS. What what?

This is what we used to see when we climbed the stairs to our attic:

And this is what we saw for a couple days back in December:

And now here's that same corner:

My usual apologies for the iPhone pictures, but I have no decent camera, and with the money we are bleeding into this upstairs, momma ain't gettin' one anytime soon, mmkay?

Anyway, that is about what it looks like right now. I'll share floorplans soon, and we have electrical and plumbing in, but that doesn't look like much. We passed our HVAC, plumbing, and framing inspections this week, so onward to insulation and drywall!

We are beyond excited because this will completely change the way we live in our house. Pin It