Bold and the Beautiful: Part 3

Joe keeps plugging away! I continue to be amazed. 

This week he hung drywall on the walls

and on the ceiling. You can see here the heating vent and the downspout for the shower head poking through the drywall. Joe must have done some serious measuring because usually he measures carefully, cuts carefully, brings the piece in, cusses profusely, re-measures, re-cuts, brings the piece back in, cusses more profusely, and possibly ends up damaging the piece and putting it back together in a non-approved way. Not THIS time! One cut, one installation, one happy Joe, and good looking ceiling.

 The good-looking can light

 He wired in the light last week, here he officially placed the switch box and got the wall up around it.

 Cement board is much harder, and much harder to work with, than drywall, so cutting out multiple holes for the shower valve, outlet, sink drain, hot and cold supply lines, and various angles for the shower curb and wall ledge made this a tricky job… and Joe NAILED IT! Simply amazing. Nice shower basin, too, huh? It's all poured in and sloped and ready for tile! Simply amazing x2.

 Here's what the "tile" looks like. We chose a modern pebble design for the shower basin. Since the shower is small there are lots of angles on the slope from the edges down to the ddrain so we would need small tiles, like mosaic tiles, to accommodate  - but this pebble tile is about the same price per square foot as mosaic tile and (we think) even cooler. Since the basin is open to the rest of the bathroom you'll be able to see it all the time, so the cooler the better!

 A very small compilation of the finishes we chose - large 12x24 wall tiles in "silver" with a layered sandstone look, the pebbled shower floor, and luxury vinyl floor planks for the floor in black oak. Will the floor be dark? Yes. Will it be amazing? YES.

Now imagine that $20 Kohler sink mounted to the awesome tile wall like it's floating… and you've got an idea of how great this bathroom's gonna be by the end of the month! And I say "the end of the month" with an air of confidence because Joe is KILLING IT with this project. More thoughts later on my supporting role in this endeavor...

Life if like shopping at ARC - you never know what you're gonna get

I went browsing ARC before Halloween - it's where we got Caroline's Halloween costume, I picked up a couple materials for some homemade gifts, and while browsing for a small shelf to hold my piano music I came across THIS:

 

It's a KOHLER sink! No chips, no cracks, and EXACTLY what we had been looking for! We saw one just like it at Lowe's as a set with the stand (couldn't buy the top separately) for $284. LOVED it, but you know… hard to spend $300 on a sink. 

I wasn't searching for a sink at all - in fact, I've never even SEEN a sink at ARC, so I was really surprised! I think it happened because the Re-Store (which sells salvaged home parts like sinks) is remodeling and not taking donations right now, and ARC is just up the road, so people dropped their salvaged sinks there instead. Well, Kohler is an expensive brand so I was trying REALLY hard not to get my hopes up… I thought it was probably priced for re-sale from $60-$80, but sometimes ARC gets surprisingly high on their horse so it could be even MORE...

Ooooooh, YEAH. $19.99 baby! SOLD to the lady with a cart full of kids and Halloween costumes.

Birthday #4

Eli turned 4 today! If I remember correctly, almost at exactly the same time of day as I'm writing this… but my brain doesn't function as well as it used to before 4 kids, so I could be completely wrong. Mom brain stinks.

Anyway, Eli was adamant that he wanted his cousins Kalena and Will to be at his party, but they are not coming to Pueblo for another 4 weeks. Eli actually suggested he wait 4 weeks to have a party - amazing patience for so young a kid! Of course, last night at 8 pm he had changed his mind and DEFINITELY wanted a party today, but tough luck. Although there was no official party we DID open presents as a family after breakfast (Joe is working 11 a.m. - 1 a.m. so we had to do it early) and the kids have been enjoying the gifts ever since! From Joe and I he got a remote controlled Monster truck - I gave him the birthday pass on taking turns, he wasn't required to share his truck on his birthday (but he did anyway because Patrick's a smooth talker and Eli's a nice kid).

 Trying it out through the long unmowed grass and leaves

 Tackling the garden wall

 Tackling Eli's foot

 Tackling the hose

 Finally I made the kids take a break and get dressed so we could go in the front. Tackling a leaf pile.

 Seeing if it will go while Eli picks it up.

Back to tackling the leaf pile. It has front and rear suspension so it tackled everything really well… EXCEPT the leaves. The wheels just spin and dig it in deeper. 

So… about Eli at 4 years old! He is pretty crazy. For one, he's crazy huge - he weighs in at about 55 pounds and is nearly as tall as Patrick at about 46 inches (we'll get official stats at his 4-year checkup next week). We feed him lots of healthy food - low-fat milk and yogurt, lots of fruit, some veggies (I'm terrible about veggies in general so you can't expect me to become amazing when it comes to my kids), plenty of sugar-free juice and RARELY any soda, whole-wheat bread, lean meats like chicken and pork (which he just chews up and spits out)… but he is a garbage disposal. He'll eat his whole lunch, eat his siblings' leftovers, then ask if he can have some more. ANYTHING more, it's not like he's digging for dessert even! We went to a wedding and he was hungry waiting for dinner to be served so he chowed down on 4ths of carrot and celery sticks from the snack trays. There's no stopping his eating, only holding it off for a minute or two. Thanks to that we've gotten to the point where Patrick wears Eli's hand-me-downs. Honestly, this reminds me A LOT of myself with my sister when we were kids. I was tallest and stockiest (though perhaps not as stocky as Eli) so while it took the 2 of them working together to give me a horsey ride, I would give the 2 of them a ride simultaneously. And they got my hand-me-downs, even though I'm not the oldest. 

But back to Eli. He is also crazy physical, as he always has been. If any of his siblings happens past - on the stairs, in the bathroom, in the living room - he will tackle them. It starts with a nice hugs, moves to leaning way into them and bending at the waist, ends with Eli on top wrestling while some poor soul wails with what breath they have left after being squashed, "Mom, help! Eli's wrestling me again!" No matter how many times we talk to him and remind him not everybody wants to be wrestled every time you see them, it falls on deaf ears.

He also has crazy deaf ears. He's not deaf, but he talks like he's trying to speak to someone who's very hard of hearing. There are 2 volumes on Eli: loud and louder. At 3:30 in the morning he came in and seriously yelled, "Mo-om, I can't find my water bottle in my room." HE-llo! The house was perfectly still, I could hear a whisper no matter how quiet, but yelling made me jump out of my skin! Awful. We have to remind him repeatedly every day that he needs to hush his mouth/quiet down/whisper/shut up because when Eli's around you're liable to wake the dead.

He's a crazy bad listener. Notice how we have to remind him about wrestling and toning down the volume… well, we've been reminding him of those things every day for about 2 years, to no avail. He is who he is, and obviously WE are not going to change it. 

Lastly, he's a crazy good kid. In spite of it all I just love him to death, even when he's ridiculous. He still has a somewhat babyish way of saying some words - I love it, and on the one hand I don't want it to stop (don't grow up!) but now that he's 4, I believe it's stopped being cute and started being a speech impediment. I know our neighbor has 2 boys (ages 5 and 7) that both have some speech delays and it's definitely NOT cute. So we work with Eli at random points through the day, having him mimic making "TH" and "R" and "F" sounds so he can say "three" instead of "fwee" and "Patrick" instead of "Patswick."  I die a little inside as my kids grow up, and I will surely miss Eli being afraid of "tomatoes" (tornadoes), biting his "lung" (tongue), and explaining "bu-cept" (but except, a longer version of "except," as in "I wanted a yellow plate bucept they're in the dishwasher"). It took about 3 years but he finally got over his aversion to snuggling and now he loves to be held and hugged and snuggled to bed, so it's nice to finally get a piece of my Ooly-Kadooly. 

Happy birthday, big guy!

What were you?

Happy Halloween! We were: a dinosaur (that's now 3 out of 4 years, his choice), a baby (the pacifier was in my pocket), a magician (nope, no top hat), a witch (I love her candy cauldron!), and a pirate (holding the sword in his other hand).

 Eli didn't have any pirate-looking shoes, so he chose snow boots - he's starting a new brand of arctic pirates. The striped shirt was actually mine! I even wore it the day before; he's a BIG DUDE. I stayed true to tradition and made Ethan's cape the night before Halloween. If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done!

 Abracadabra, alacazam... PRESTO! A ridiculously cute (and cheap) Halloween toddler.  Before we left for the Halloween party, I filled in his mustache gaps with permanent marker... am I a bad mom or just dedicated to a good costume?

Wreath

I would include this project in my "Pinned There, Done That" category, but I'm not actually sure I pinned it... I think I had to stop pinning wreaths. As I've stated, I like to pin things I plan can do, not just things I dream about or drool over, and if I made all the wreaths I dreamed about and drooled over... my attic would explode. BUT. There were some super-cute tutu wreaths I saw, mostly springy or birthday themes, but I realized I am shockingly low on Halloween decorations and my sister had some black tulle, soooooo....

 I made it! I at least made one super-cute wreath.

It's hard to see the fun play of smooth round wreath-form surrounded my exploding tulle when it's straight black, so this angle gets it a bit better.

Simple chipboard letters from Hobby Lobby, painted orange and hot glued on. Then I went old-school and busted out a toothbrush and black paint and speckled it. It reminded me of a shelf I decorated with my friend in middle school, we splatter painted with toothbrushes on that bad-boy, too.

All in all, happy I stopped pinned and started working! I've done a few more pinned projects since then but they need to remain surprises since Christmas is only about 9 weeks away (YIPES).

Bold and The Beautiful: Part 2

I am so impressed at how this project is going - I've never seen Joe get to a project so intensely! Well, maybe the one time we redid our downstairs bathroom in Thornton, but he was getting all crazy and halfway through got struck down by Strep throat so then the rest of the project dragged.... but I have a feeling this will be different. For one, this is more INTENSE. More ripping out means more putting back together. For another, on the last bathroom he was rushing to get it done before company comes (that's how we usually roll) and stayed up until 1 a.m. so when he got sick he wasn't nearly well-rested enough to battle back; this time he works until Ethan goes to bed (Ethan's wall IS the bathroom wall) and then we chill and watch some Netflix. Even with all the downtime the project is FLYING!

 

 Ceiling and wall completely ripped out. Joe needed to work on some wiring because the last fixture wasn't secured with a junction box, but he needed to work on some plumbing because he couldn't FIT a junction box, so now we have some slightly-moved pipes, a per-code light installation, and the world's most basic (and ugly) placeholder light.

 Whoa, when did THAT shower basin get here?! It took about a week, but Joe formed it up himself, installed a new drain, poured the concrete, laid the gray waterproof membrane, and has it ready for another layer of concrete - the layer where we set tile!

 Before tiles comes walls, of course, and now that these are re-plumbed and they're ready for some hardi-backer boards. I thought you could see it when I took the picture, but there is also a new can light in the ceiling! More light! Hooray! Joe wired that in solo, like it ain't no thang :) Notice how there is no longer a dangling showerhead? Yep, he cut that out and re-piped the faucet to the interior wall. The showerhead looks like it's missing, but really it's in the....

CEILING! We're going to have a rain showerhead! Not shown, of course, just the plumbing fittings for it, but I am so stoked. I will be singin' in the rain.

Every DIY project has to have a snag, of course, so a minor snag on our project was ripping out the drywall on the exterior wall - carpenter ants had had their way and the drywall was destroyed, as were some of the furring strips (boards secured to the concrete so that you can fasten drywall to them, instead of drywall to the concrete). This was just a good opportunity for Joe to buy a new tool: a hammer drill to nail new strips to the concrete. What's a home project without a new tool to decorate the garage?

Stylin'

Free tattoos from Old Navy = fun for mom!

This inspires me to whip up a black and red cape so he can be a magician for Halloween.