It's so easy being green

Randy:  Once upon a time, we started this blog to describe the process of cleaning our house. Hmmm... how do I explain what we're doing? This is yet another distraction from cleaning... but this story by far less amusing than rock concerts or trips to Disney.

Jodi woke me up one morning and said the very Phineas and Ferb-esque, "hey, I know what we're gonna do today. We're gonna redesign Mom and Dad's powder room."  Jodi went on Craig's list and found a beautiful pedestal sink with faucet. That would be the centerpiece of the new bathroom.

Here's the plan... we're painting the walls a nice bright color. We're gonna put in some wainscoting. We're gonna install this new sink (instead of their horrible fixture). Simple enough?

Let's start with the demolition. It was fun. I got to rip out this horrible fixture and toss it to the side. I did get to empty the contents. There were golf balls in it. There were soaps stolen from hotel rooms from Disney (probably in the 1980s). It was crazy. Jodi had the pleasure of ripping the tiling off the walls (that were used instead of molding (don't ask). We were off to a good start.

Then we went for the supplies. All those commercials that show happy people leaving Home Improvement stores have big SUVs or trucks. My Honda was not able to hold the wainscoting. So I tried to rent a truck. Cool deal! $19 for the first hour. Awesome, I'd need it for 20 minutes. 

"Ma'am, I'd like to rent your truck for an hour."

"The truck has been seized by police for the investigation of a DUI."

"Then why is the sign still out there?!"

"Advertising."

"Advertising what? You don't have a truck."

Whatever.

So Jodi bought some twine and we tied the stuff to the roof of the car. And like clockwork... it rained on the way home. Not too badly, but enough to get this off to a wrong start.

Let's begin with the painting.   I'm not even gonna lie... Jodi took care of most of the painting. I suck at painting. I don't know why.

3 freakin'  coats! You can see that I measured the 5' mark where it would be safe to stop because the wainscoting will go. But it took 3 nights to paint. And let me tell you... we work. We have jobs. So this started on a weekend, but now, we're coming to the house during the week.  Ugh. Do you know much it sucks to work 8-10 hours per day... then commute 1+ hours... then start working again? And we're running out of time because we have about 2 weeks before her parents come home.

3 freakin' coats! We were almost out of the green paint. I can't lie though... it does look nice and bright. You'll see.

This bathroom defies the laws of geometry, mathematics, and physics. I took my 2' level to the threshold of the door. Vertical. I took my level to the adjacent corner. Vertical. No gaps between the surfaces and the level. This implies the walls are parallel.

Law of geometry: Two parallel lines never intersect nor diverge. They remain equidistant.
Keep this in mind.

At the 5' mark... 36.25 inches apart.
At the 3' mark... 36.75 inches apart
At the 1' mark... 37.5 inches apart.

I ate a lot of corn chips struggling with this. I must have measured and remeasured this about 1000 times. I still cannot explain it. I am a damn engineer, for cryin' out loud. WTF?!


I cut the first piece. Jodi and I used a hammer and nails to install it. Do you remember the board and batten fiasco of 2012? Our nail gun died.  We're not returning to that. So we went to Sears to buy a nail gun with an air compressor. What's another $100+ among friends, right? The nail gun made life a lot easier.

I think the picture below is pretty charming.  You can see my precious level and nail gun on the toilet. There are not many occasion in my life that I can use that sentence.

Jodi loves using wood filler and caulk and putty. She's such a goof. Oh, it dries white. She's not color blind.

Jodi:  Having used caulk and spackle last summer on the board and batten, I thought the spackle would create I nice, seamless transition between the two boards behind the toilet.  Yep, I was wrong.  But it's ok, I went back over it with caulk.

Randy:  It appears that this bathroom will make Jimmy Buffet proud. If you are a Parrothead that needs to poop... do we have a room for you!

Below is my weekend. It didn't take long for this project to stop being fun. If you'd ask what I'd been up to... I'd say, "Jewish carpentry." I think it is funny. If you need to understand why it is funny... you must be a priest.

This project required a whole lot less swearing than most projects. Maybe we're making some progress!

Jodi:  While Randy was cutting and measuring the beadboard, I worked on other mini projects.  Then when he was done, I'd run back over and we'd glue the back of each board and nail it in place.

This is the old magazine rack/toilet paper holder.  Mom and Dad have had it for as long as I can remember, and I thought Dad might cry if I didn't put it back in.  It was stained a dark walnut color, but I didn't think it would look good that way.  So I sanded it, primed it with spray primer, and painted it the same nice, glossy white as the beadboard, so it would blend into the wall.

I looked around for some tropical hand towels for the bathroom, and I had my heart set on the hot pink I found when we were looking at paint colors:

I looked at Ikea, Target and Home Goods.  I could find tropical prints, and pink towels, but not tropical pink hand towels.  I did, however, find this awesome beach towel.  So I cut it into fourths and sewed the edges.

And we had four new hand towels for $12.  

Then I walked around and took pictures of some of the flowers in bloom around the back yard.  I thought maybe we could frame some of them for the bathroom later?  They fit into our color scheme.

Then we started working on the trim across the top of the beadboard.  We got some with a lip at the top so it fit over the top of the beadboard.

We cut all four pieces and put them up in the bathroom.  Then we nailed each corner, as opposed to installing it one piece at a time.  It was easier to prevent moving and "cheat" the trim a little if it was a half a millimeter too short.   Which it was on one corner.

Then I caulked around the edges.

It's looking good so far, right? We still need to finish the trim, paint the beadboard, tackle the sink and put the finishing touches on!

Room & Bead board

We have officially lost control of the house again.  We're catching up on laundry and dishes, but we have four happy cats and everyone is fed, so we must be doing something right.  You see, we haven't been home very much lately since we undertook a project at my mom and dad's house.

At some point, somewhere, Mom said she wanted bead board in her powder room. Since Mom is really hard to shop for, I made a mental note.  Randy and I have not put up bead board by ourselves, but Randy helped our buddy, Derrick, install the bead board in our powder room.  Still full of confidence from our Board and Batten project in our Family Room last summer, we figured we could put up the bead board for her for Mother's Day. Since Mom and Dad were out in Arizona for the spring, we could get the whole thing done as a surprise.

As we got closer and closer to Mother's Day, we had to kick it into gear to get the bathroom done before they got home.  This would explain the bead board sheets tied to the roof of Randy's car.  We had done several trips to Mom and Dad's house for measurements and devising our bead board strategy.  The walls in the powder room had two parallel lines going around where the walls had settled against what I'm guessing are studs, so we decided keeping the bead board about 5 feet high would cover that up nicely.

It was a beautiful, sunny day when we went to our local home improvement superstore to pick up a few supplies.

We tried to rent a truck from the store (I won't say which one), but their truck was being held as evidence in a drunk driving incident.  We would NOT recommend doing this, but we got it home with our arms out the window, holding the boards down, driving very slowly to prevent the wind from catching the boards.  It brought back fond memories of Jill, Orrie and Daryl helping me move in T's house.  It was about 12 years ago, with my mattress tied to the roof of Daryl's red Subaru, through the ghettos of Harrisburg.  Good times.

Luckily we don't have to take any major roads from the store to M&D's house, and we got the boards in the house just before it started to pour.

Here are some before pictures of the bathroom:

Yes, that is my preschool handiwork on the door.  It's been there for 30 years, you gotta problem wit' that?

In all fairness to Mom and Dad, I forgot to snap the "before" pictures before I created the absolute chaos you see below took down the shelf and all the pictures off the wall.  Notice how Mom painted around the shelf rather than remove the shelf and put it back up later.  I love you, Mom!!!!

I had also demo'ed the tile that was serving as a baseboard around the perimeter of the room with that mother of a screwdriver you see above, and a hammer.

Yeah, Mom and Dad didn't see this part.  They're probably cringing now.

We even have plans for this hole in the wall.  We got a door stop!

While we were back at the store to pick up something we forgot (isn't that how it always goes?) we got the crazy idea of repainting the bathroom too.  I was looking at a fresh coat of blue paint, but Randy and I couldn't agree on a blue.  I wanted a rich blue, he wanted a light blue.

So we went with Pantone's Macaw Green.  I know, crazy.  I jokingly pointed it out to Randy, and he actually liked it.  Just like that, the simple bead board project turned into a total bathroom overhaul.  The color seemed perfect for a couple of Parrotheads with a new pool in the back yard.  So without bringing home a paint chip and taping it to the wall like we usually do, we picked up a gallon of Macaw Green.

...and some Emerald for the door, for some variation in the color and some interest.  It's Pantone's color of the year, and they had samples available.  I just couldn't help myself, since a sample was all I needed...

To make the door this bright and beautiful!  I love the door, even with the blue paint still on the hinges. I think it gives it a casual elegance.

Then I did the first coat of the Macaw green on the walls.  I only painted from the top down to a little past the 5 foot mark.  I have to admit, I was nervous.

These walls are almost 34 years old, and even though Mom and Dad have been the only owners, these walls have been painted, wall papered, stripped and painted again and again.  So even though I had spackled and sanded and spackled and sanded, I had to do it once more.  Don't you love that spackle that goes on pink and turns white when it dries?  Then I had walls that looked like a kid with chicken pox, covered in calamine lotion.

After the pink turned to white, and I sanded them down, I did a second coat.  The walls started looking less like smashed peas, and more like lush jungle leaves.  Here you can see one of the horizontal lines that went around the room.  

I used paint with primer, but you could still see the spackled areas under the second coat.  So I had to a do a third coat.  If you had smoother walls, two coats would probably be just fine.

Anyone else do any special surprise home improvement projects for mother's day?  Re-do a room in someone's house when they were far away and couldn't stop you?  I think maybe I just wanted full reign to decorate the bathroom however we wanted!   It's a good thing they're my parents and have to love me, no matter what I do to their powder room...

More green goodness to come!

Lyla's First Birthday

I'm a little late posting this, but better late than never!  Back in December, our goddaughter, Lyla, turned one.  Randy and I got to go up to State College to celebrate, and I made her a big cupcake cake.  I love love love to do children's birthday cakes, and it's extra special when I get to make one for the kids of my very dear friends.  

Some resemblance, right?  This is a smash cupcake (and a spare) for Lyla.

Lyla LOVES cupcakes.  I know this because while we were in Ocean City on vacation back in September, I was working on test cupcakes for Kat and Brandon's wedding, and the kid, at 9 months old, almost ate an entire pumpkin cupcake.  She is highly motivated by food; a kid after my own heart.

She is just all around a happy kid!

 So when Hannah started carrying out the cake...

Lyla was enthralled.

...But we had to finish singing...

and the song was just too long.

I've seen kids at their first birthday cry because they were overwhelmed by the attention and large groups of people, but Lyla just wanted that cake!

Happy girl!

The cake was vanilla (but I dyed it purple to keep things interesting) with lemon buttercream

All done!