My Favorite Room Renovation of 2010

I started blogging in February of this year and, looking back, I'd say it was quite a year.  I started the blog to share all of our home renovations because I was finding myself pulling out renovation pictures every time someone came over to our house.  I wish I would've started blogging sooner because some of the transformations were so amazing.  It's been great to look back on the year in review and see all that we've accomplished.

Perhaps the most impressive room renovation this year was our upstairs bathroom.  It was a tiling extravaganza as Jason set out to complete my vision of a bathroom much like the tiled ones I am fortunate enough to stay in when I travel for work.

It was probably one of the most drastic room transformations in all of our house.  Let me refresh your memory.

It started off pretty dumpy.  It was dingy with old dirty sheet rock and nasty green tiles.  The stand up shower was tiny and had a plastic shower surround and a plastic base  We used this room as a "crate" for our dog, Maggie when we first got her . . . and we felt badly for leaving her in such a nasty space!

But let's fast forward to earlier this year, when Jason completed my vision and we tiled from floor to ceiling.

You might recall that this was a family project and Jason agreed to tile the whole bathroom, but it would be my job to seal all grout lines . . . and spray sealing was NOT allowed!  So I set to work with a little paint brush and a cup of grout sealer while Jason and Imani watched a movie downstairs.

I thought those grout lines would never end . . . and I started to question why in the world I had this idea of all this tile!

But thankfully, my wonderful husband and daughter took pity on me and joined in the fun.

And Ta-Da!  Finally, the room was complete!

The shower has custom-cut glass with oil-rubbed bronze fixtures and a stone-pebbled floor.

This was, by far, my favorite room renovation of the year because it is my own little pretend spa space, where I get ready for work each day.  It's amazing to think that a room so hideous could be turned into something so beautiful.  Here are the before and after one more time.

Before (YUCK . . . I know, I know, you want me to stop showing it to you because it's so gross!)

And AFTER . . .

Keeping the Cape

As many of you know, Jason and I put an offer in on a big house out in the country and it was accepted.  The house was beautiful -- it was a renovated 1840s colonial and I was excited to have found it.

The entire process of listing my house and putting it on the market was far more emotional than I thought it would be.  I never realized just how attached I was to this little cape.  But we forged ahead, excited about our new venture.

To make a very long story short . . . as beautiful as a house might appear at times, what matters most is the home's structure.  Unfortunately, the home we were about to purchase had major structural problems.  Sometimes, when you want something really really badly, you try deny reality.  I was denying reality for quite some time in the process, but it became very evident that the structure had more damage than we were willing to take on and we decided to back out.

We thought about looking for another house, but after such an emotionally draining experience, we began noticing all the things we love about this little Cape and we've decided we love what we have.

Grace, at Sense and Simplicity is hosting a little blog party to list the five things you love about your home, and in looking around . . . I realized there is a lot I love about my house.

My house isn't overwhelmingly unique or awe-inspiring like this barn that was converted to a house (one of Jason's favorite type of houses by the way)

contemporary exterior design by dc metro architect Blackburn Architects, PC

contemporary exterior design by dc metro architect Blackburn Architects, PC

contemporary exterior design by dc metro architect Blackburn Architects, PC

And my house isn't some 1800s Tudor revival mansion with a manicured lawn

traditional exterior design by chicago architect Eifler & Associates Architects

traditional landscape design by chicago architect Eifler & Associates Architects

My house doesn't have any incredibly fancy amenities, like an infinity pool.
 
(Who in the world owns these places and what do they do for a livng?!)

tropical pool design by hong kong architect Original Vision Limited

contemporary pool design by George W Girvin & Associates

contemporary landscape design by vancouver landscape architect THOMAS KYLE: Landscape Architecture

 My house is just a cozy little Cape Cod in a small town in Upstate New York.

I know, we have GOT to do something with those steps!

So, in looking around, there are a lot of things I love, but I will narrow it down.  You'll find that I'm not that difficult to please.

Probably one of the single best features about my house is the enormous family room with cathedral ceilings.

 

With skylights, sliding glass doors, plenty of windows and a big bay window where we sit and watch unusually large herds of deer roam through our backyard, what's not to love about this space?

 

But the best part about this room is that at Christmas time, we get the biggest tree we can find!
 

Another feature of my house that I love is my deck.  It's not big or elaborate, but I enjoy sitting out there and having a cup of coffee in the morning or reading in the afternoon on the weekends (sorry for the rain in this photo . . .)

Another feature of my house that I love is the gas fireplace in our sitting room.  I have to confess that we cannot use it to actually have a fire because, although it's new, it sets the smoke detector off every single time we start it!  We need to address that this year, but I still love having it. 

I love the slate tiles Jason put in and I enjoy having a mantel to decorate (which currently needs an update).

Okay, the next thing I love is really silly and Jason will likely make me remove the photo if he reads this.  I love the marble tile he installed in the entry of my house.

Jason didn't really have any experience tiling and I picked out marble for the entry.  If you know anything about tiling, which we obviously didn't at the time, you'd know that marble is difficult to cut.  It is very soft and breaks really easily.  What should have been a small project turned out to be quite costly because of the many cutting mistakes.

To make matters worse, Jason wanted to just lay the tiles all straight and perpendicular.  I, of course, wanted a diamond shape in the center with little tiles bordering the center tile.  I haven't laid a single tile in my entire life and I am not the greatest at math with angles and cuts so I had no idea what trouble my idea would cause.  All I knew was that I saw something similar in a magazine and thought it'd be cool to have it in my house.

Jason argued with me that it was too difficult, so being the brat that I can sometimes be, I said, "Fine Jason. Just don't do it.  I'll just hire someone who can do it the way I want it done.  Forget about it."

But my good husband set out to tackle what he didn't know how to do and, in my opinion, it came out great.  I love this tile;  Jason hates it.  He sees his imperfections, but every time I look at it and see that diamond, I see my husband figuring out how to make my wish come true.

Like my bubble-gum pink toes dangling off that step?!  That pedicure was a celebration that recently, I survived lay-offs in my job .. . but I digress!

Back to what I love about my house.  Of course, I love my new tiled bathroom . . .

with a pebbled-floor shower. . . .

But what I love most about my house isn't any particular room.  I love that this house sat on the market forever and everyone laughed at it because it was so hideous and smelly.   But I had a vision, and Jason made it happen.

Every inch of my house has my husband's time and love poured into it.  He obtained his degree in Fine Arts and I often complain that he isn't doing anything with it but when I wake up each day, I realize his art is all around me. 

Our house has been his canvas.

The Not So Beautiful Sounds of Birds

For the past few weeks I've been waking up to the sounds of birds, though not the beautiful sounds of chirping that I'm sure you're imagining.

Image: smartisans.com

No, these are  not the sounds of birds singing sweet songs of Springtime.

These are the sounds of birds digging at the insides of my bathroom walls to use our insulation to help make themselves a beautiful home. They are just digging away every day at the bathroom walls that Jason has worked so hard to tile.  

I keep waiting for them to dig right through the grout and poke their little heads inside my walls while I'm blow drying my hair.  Imani has an incredible fear that they are going to get in our house and we won't be able to get them out. 

I have to admit, it's sort of a creepy sound, like rats digging inside the walls or something.  It freaks me right out.   If it were happening at night, I probably wouldn't be able to fall asleep, but fortunately, it happens bright and early when I am trying fight the reality that I have to get up and go to work.

Last year, when we gutted the incredibly disgusting bathroom to begin the renovation, we ripped the walls all the way down to the studs.  Wouldn't you if your bathroom looked like this?

When we gutted it, we discovered a little nest all cozied right up with the insulation.  It was vacant at the time, so Jason removed it and proceeded on with the renovation.  Kelby told us we needed to install some sort of vent in the soffits of the dormer that is our bathroom, but we put it off, as we often do with things that aren't aesthetics within our home.  

I didn't even know what soffits were.  In case you're as clueless as I was, Wikipedia defines soffits as "the exposed undersurface of any exterior overhanging section of a roof eave.  Usually, the soffits have vents. In this picture, they are numbered "2."  

Image: www.withambrook-windows.com

Ours are pretty beat up and need some fixing, but here is what ours look like.  You can see there is nothing covering the vent hole, so the birds have easy access to get inside.

Kelby was right . . . again.  The birds use these soffit holes as doors to their new home.   Every morning, while I am getting ready for work in my brand-spanking- new tiled bathroom, I hear them digging away at the insides of my walls.  If you follow me on Twitter, you were probably aware of this problem weeks ago. (If you don't follow me on Twitter, get with it!)

I hadn't written about it because I wanted a picture to go along with this post.  Every morning I sit in my bathroom and try to snap a picture of these birds flying in and out of the soffit holes to my house.  I kid you not; I knock on the walls and when the birds fly out, I try to snap the picture, but they are too fast for my little Coolpix camera.  Finally, I decided I would write the post without the pictures.  

So what are we to do?  We could knock on the walls and get the birds to fly out and then install the vents in the soffits, but I worry that there are eggs in there.  We couldn't live with ourselves knowing we separated babies from their mothers, or worse, that we stopped life altogether from hatching.  

There is also something wrong with having a blog about renovating and decorating a home and then forcing a creature out of its own.  So until we can get over this moral dilemma, we will continue to wake up to the sounds of birds --  digging and scratching at the walls of our home to create their own.

By the way, if you haven't done so already, head on over to the This Old House renovation contest and give our submission a favorable rating.  Thanks!

 

The Joys of Water

I've always said I need to live in an area where there is a body of water.  I could never live in a landlocked place.  There is something about bodies of water that bring me inner peace.  In fact, when Jason and I got married, we decided that one of the most important factors in choosing a place for our ceremony was that it had to be outside near water.

We are fortunate to live in a place that boasts one of the highest waterfalls East of the Rocky Mountains and also has many beautiful waterfalls tucked away in gorges throughout the region. 

Photo: Gowaterfalling.com

Although I don't live directly on the water, I do a lot of driving for my job and get to see all of the beautiful lakes and waterfalls throughout the region every day.

Not only is water beautiful, but it is critical to our bodies and to our Earth.  After all, the human body is made up of 70 percent water and the Earth's surface is between 70-75 percent water.  We need it to survive.

Last night, Jason satisfied my love for water once again.

That's right, our plumbing is all hooked up in our upstairs bathroom.  This means that when Imani gets up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I can remain sleeping in my bed because she won't have to go downstairs to go to the bathroom so she won't be scared.  Yes, having water in my upstairs bathroom means I get to sleep more.  It also means I can go to the bathroom upstairs, brush my teeth upstairs and do anything else that requires H20.

 Our bathroom has come a long way.  You might remember that when we bought our house it looked like this.

Needless to say, we didn't use it.  Instead, we used our downstairs bathroom and gutted the upstairs bathroom.  At one point, we even used it in place of a crate for our dog, Maggie.

When we finally got around to renovating it, I had a genius idea.  Over the course of working at my job for the past five  years, I've had the opportunity to stay in some fancy schmancy hotels when I travel so I decided I wanted a bathroom like one of those hotels.  I wanted the entire thing tiled and I wanted a clear glass shower.  So being the amazing husband that he is, Jason tiled

and tiled

and tiled

some more until we came up with this.

I will admit that I often worry that this bathroom, which is really just a dormer in the upstairs of our Cape Cod home, might break off the top of  the house because of all the weight from the tiles. 

But Kelby says it won't and he's our 'go to' guy. 

He's always right.

About everything.

Oh, and did I mention that we called some plumbers before we started this project and they quoted us $2,000?! Fortunately, we listened to Kelby (we've learned to listen to Kelby), and Jason did the plumbing himself so we kept our $2,000, thank you very much.

Now all we have to do is install the shower and this bathroom will be considered "complete." 

Back to water . . . Some people are deathly afraid of water, while others -- like me-- are drawn to it. Admittedly, water can cause massive destruction in the forms of natural disaster.

It is a powerful piece of nature.  Jason's fear of water kicked in after he finished the plumbing last night.

Before we went to sleep last night, Jason told me he was nervous. 

"Why" I asked.

"Plumbing just makes me nervous" he said.  "I am afraid maybe I didn't do something right and when we wake up in the morning, our dining room will be flooded."

When we woke up in the morning, the dining room was perfectly dry.   I knew it would be. Jason doesn't give himself enough credit. 

I brushed my teeth in the upstairs bathroom just because I could.

I am a happy girl.


BTW - If you get a chance, check out the newest page of our blog "Two Addicts Become One."

Linking to:  My Romantic Home, The Inspired Room