Lisa and Michael

We start the bathroom remodels with demolition this week. Lisa and I are doing the demo ourselves to pare down the budget, and the contractor begins in one week. I am of course taking pictures to document the entire process. To start, here are the before pics.

It’s our final major project on the house, a few years overdue, and we are both really, really looking forward to having this behind us!

The master bath vanity arrived Friday!

Project complete!

The grout went up last Wednesday, a scary job for an amateur doing it for the first time, but fear of ruining a perfect tile job forces one to be patient and exact. It took 3 hours with Lisa doing the harder, detailed work of sponging away the excess grout and making the grout lines look perfect, and it really turned out that way. By Sunday, a week after starting the project, the trim was back up, the switch covers screwed back on, and the sealer applied.

We couldn’t have asked for anything nicer and more professional looking, I think:

The whole project only cost $468, and that included $231 for the tile, $103 for the wet saw rental, and the rest in tools and supplies (beer and food, not included). There are more pictures of the whole process here.

It’s always refreshing to complete a DIY project like this. Just not again, ever.

Well that’s happening this September, but first we’ll let Oscar and Junior continue to enjoy vintage 1970s decor.

Oh, and Lisa and I continued with the backsplash, pulling all the spacers and mastic boogers yesterday, and completing the (dreaded) grouting tonight. I was a basket case, considering I’d never grouted a thing in my life. With me on the float and Lisa on sponge duty, we completed the grouting in about 3 hours. The result? It looks awesome! I really should quit worrying so much, Lisa was calm and composed, not a worry at all. All that remains is replacing the trim and outlet covers tomorrow, another sealer application in a few days, and pictures to prove that anyone can put in their own backsplash.

It took a few years, but we’ve finally begun tackling the kitchen backsplash, the last critical part to the kitchen remodel.

It was not easy, a bunch of tile amateurs (me, Lisa, Darrell, and Shari) putting it up, but so far the results are stunning. Lisa and I decided on a nice natural stone, 4″ x 4″ tumbled Troy, with marble accents throughout. Twelve exhausting hours it took us to cover around 41 sq. ft. Grouting is next, probably Tuesday. Stay tuned.

It’s just about midnight, Lisa and I have setup the air mattress outside in the beautiful New Mexico summer night, random bottle rockets and firecrackers are going off.

I’m not sure why I’m still up, I’m absolutely exhausted, it was a busy day — we’re putting a fresh coat of paint in the garage and arranging things, getting rid of stuff we no longer need, just one of the many items on our 2010 list we’ll be able to strike off soon. Next week will be tiling the backsplash, and in about 8 weeks, contracting out for two fully remodelled bathrooms. Add to that my pending GMAT exam, and Lisa’s current mediation course, we’re both super busy!

It’s nights like this we live for, though, so so relaxing. I can’t stand the heat and the lack of rain sucks, but it’s really been a great summer so far.

We just finished planting the garden this afternoon. A week later than we did last year since the weather has been cooler. We are hoping to have great results like we did last year, and crossing out fingers that it wasn’t beginner’s luck. We used Bonnie Plants exclusively, they did so well for us last year.

This year we planted tomato, broccoli, leeks, peppers, jalapenos, and squash.

Lisa reminded me we also have an herb garden growing, started a few weeks ago: cilantro, flat Italian parsley, sweet basil, Thai basil, Greek oregano, and German thyme.

Summer weather seems to be here already! I sit back here in the backyard watching the tram go up the mountain and the dogs play. I think I’m ready to plant a garden!

Last weekend we completed the sun room by touching up the walls, re-installing the baseboards, and moving in the furniture. (More pictures here at the end of the project summary page.)

We think the results are amazing:

Pottery Barn’s Markham Console is a very similar workbench, although ours is authentic and not a reproduction. Talk about functional art. We thought it’d be fun to steal Pottery Barn’s idea, though:

Lisa and I blocked off enough time last week to refinish the sun room floors, getting rid of the carpet and staining the concrete instead.

It took four days of work, with 90% of our time spent on the concrete preparation and the rest on the stain and topcoat application, but it was worth it!

You can see a photo summary of the project here.

There was enough downtime while waiting for things to dry that we knocked off another project, painting the exterior of the sun room.

(before)

(after)

In all, lots of hard, hard work. But the results… wow!

I suppose it’s not technically a dump. Lisa and I took a field trip to the Eagle Rock Convenience Center today.

We did some heavy work in the back yard and ended up with a bunch of bags full of trimmings that we needed to unload. The Convenience Center is certainly convenient. You pay your $3.60, back your vehicle up to a concrete trough, and dump whatever garbage you need to get rid of. A tractor pushes all the trash to the west end of the center where it drops into waiting tractor-trailers, which then haul it all away to the real dump, where I guess is somewhere west of Albuquerque. Not sure.

Anyhow, it’s all quite exciting, and run in a very professional manner. I’m impressed.

We weren’t able to get all the trimmings hauled away today, Scratchy can only carry so much. We’ll dump the rest next weekend along with a pile of carpet we’ll be removing from the sun room later this week, as we decided to strip down to bare concrete and acid stain it. YES!