Weekend Warriors

Ah, the joys of home ownership. Why do we buy a house we love, then immediately want to change it? Who knows. But this last weekend, we were working our hineys off.

Currently, we have two projects going. 1) Update the guest bathroom; 2) building a brick mailbox. The first has been planned for some time. The second was unexpected. Our normal mailbox finally made the hall of fame in "Mailbox Baseball". It barely opens enough to get the mail in and out. Time for a new one.

We started these projects the weekend before 4th of July. Being the time optimists that we are, we were confident we could get most of it done by the 4th. Yea, right. These projects never go as planned.

So this last weekend, Gabe worked on the mailbox while I continued with the bathroom. I took pics when I could along the way.

Here is the planned color scheme for the bathroom:

The plan for the bathroom was to replace the current tile, repaint, and strip and re-finish the vanity. Simple right? Sure, no problem!

Day One (two weekends ago):

Gabe pours foundation for the brick mailbox

Then he comes in to help me with the bathroom.

Here is the before pic for posterity purposes. Yea, it looks nice here, but trust me the blue was hideous. We had numerous gaping holes in the walls and the tile was in terrile shape. And ugly. And hard to clean. My justifications can go on and on...

Removing tile - this took all day:

End of day one:

It would be another week before we got back to work. It would take me 4 days to sand, strip and stain the bathroom vanity.

Finally, Saturday, I was able to start painting. 2 coats of primer, a coat of paint and some really sore arms later, its done. Note to self: vaulted ceilings are a B*$%& to paint. This is the only room in the entire house that has vaulted ceilings. Go figure.

New color. Better than the hideous blue. This pic doesn't really depict the color very well. Its not really this yellow.

While I was dealing with those shenanigans, Gabe was busy building the new mailbox. His dad Rick helps out.

Like a pro!
Needless to say we were pretty pooped from the weekend.

Now its Tuesday, and I just finished laying the first part of the tile. All I have left now are the cut pieces.

If my back holds out I hope to have this ready to grout by the weekend. But then again, nothing ever goes as planned. I am trying to remember now what possessed me to change the tile?????

oh yea......[sigh]....Time for bed.