I'm Dyeing, Here

I may have taken my first foray into covering some gray today.

In part, I attribute this to the fact that so many of the women I work with are constantly changing their hair colors. Sure - they are all in their 20s and are choosing colors like blue and pink - but I'm surrounded by it all the time.

And there have been photos circulating online of men dyeing their hair and beards all sorts of bright colors - think neon green, bright blue, or flaming red.

I'm not really sure that any of those would look good on me. But I do know that, in the recent past, I've been getting kind of tired of seeing the entire front of my beard turning more and more white. I mean, it's not even gray at this point. My mustache is still a bit dark, but the chin area is pretty much white.

For those of you who haven't seen me, recently, here's what I'm talking about:

Okay. No. It's not all that bad. And when I keep it more closely cropped the whiteness of it doesn't seem quite so white (see my "author photo" in the righthand margin). But it's just not really what I think of when I think of me, you know?

So, with a little time on my hands, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I went to the store and did a little shopping around. I opted to see what I would look like with "dark brown" instead. 

Having spoken to a friend who apparently has been doing this for a while, I knew it might take more than one round of color to get it to turn out the way I'd want it. Round one - to quote Christopher - looked a bit "darker gray" in most areas, but not brown.

The second round definitely covered a bit better. And I'm kind of enjoying it at the moment. Is it as  dark as my original beard? I don't think it is. (Christopher says it looks different - like maybe I should have gone for "black" instead of "dark brown.")

Here's what I've got:

Not sure how long I'll keep it this way. I'm really not certain how much upkeep I want to deal with. After all - one of the reasons I keep my beard is because I don't have to shave every day. But, at least until this washes out, we'll see how it goes.

Getting Our Ducts in a Row

Having spent a bunch of the past 3 months with the basement bathroom under renovations, we've been putting off doing some of the final clean-up stuff until it was all done.

Well, we're still in the same weird 95% complete stage on the bathroom(s), but today we had someone come out to clean our air ducts.

Christopher had this done a few years ago, but we can't remember when. Even so, when the guy turned on his mega-vacuum, he started pulling out all sorts of stuff. Sure, there was dog hair and dust in it. We knew that would be there.

But, as I listened to things rattle through the hose, circling around the living room floor, I started to think we were getting a little more out of it than we expected. Masonry, to be exact. Quarter-sized chunks of it, coming up from the bottom of the ductwork.

On the plus side, by the time he got downstairs most of the chunks were already gone, so it got much quieter, which meant that the pup was able to calm down a bit.

And... quieter... calmer pup... meant that I got to relax a bit, too.

Yeah... it's nice to feel like we're getting our ducks in a row.

Basement Bathroom Reno, Part 6 - Ninety (or So) Percent

Much like our contractor, I realize that I have drawn out the story of the basement bathroom way too long. At first, it was because I was kind of keeping pace with the work that was going on. But then things just got crazy busy, and I missed a few blog posts, and - thankfully - the work finally got a little ahead of me. So tonight I'm going for the big reveal, instead of more work steps. 

To understand how far we've come, you have to look at where we started. For this, I refer you back to a post from mid-May: Basement Bathroom Reno, Part 1 - Before. If you click back to that, you can see what the bathroom used to look like. 

I'd like to say, before we move forward, that none of the walls were moved. The ceiling in one area was raised by about 4 inches, but that's all that was done as far as structural movement. The rest of the perceived size change is from the materials - and the removal of that massive shower stall thing. 

The ceiling no longer comes halfway down the window! (Oh... and there is now artwork on that wall, as well as a shelving unit with "drawers" in the corner.)

Yes, these photos were taken before I had "loaded in" all of my stuff, but even with stuff in there it still looks  so  much bigger!

The entire wall that the sink is on is still only about four feet wide, but the cabinet is now about 1.5 times as wide, with a bevelled mirror. It looks amazing. 

Remember how there used to be a solid drywall wall surrounding the shower? Now it's a glass cylinder with a better showerhead - and the drain is actually connected to the pipes (unlike the last one)!

And have we discussed the floor, yet? The tile guys (who also did the walls), did an incredible job on the floor. We designed the pattern, and they implemented it. 

There are still some things that need to be finished, but I've been able to use the "new" bathroom for the past week and it's proving to be (almost) worth the 2.5 months' that it took. 

Ibuprofen and Soap

I seem to be living off of two things this week. And, yes, they happen to be Ibuprofen and soap.

Why? Because I'm not as young as I used to be - and because I like to be clean.

You see, Christopher and I live in a 1950s house. Which means that both the interior AND the exterior are in need of a little boost. So while we were having the bathrooms redone, we also realized that a couple more of our yard-anchoring shrubs were on their last legs. To be honest, they were probably on their last legs last year. But I kept hoping that there would be a botanical miracle and they'd be fine.

They weren't.

So last weekend we headed to the garden store to find some replacements. And last weekend I dug holes and planted two of the three new shrubs. As well as about a dozen other plants that I purchased to fill in some odd holes in our annual plantings for this year. We all know what that means, right?

Planting = Dirt + Water + Outdoors in the sun = A need for lots of soap (of both the hand/body variety as well as the laundry variety)

Here's the thing, though. There's another equation to factor into the... well... equation:

Manual labor + 48-year-old semi-inactive body = A morning after that makes me miss the days of hangovers.

Yeah, okay, that was painful. But it was done, right?

Wrong.

My body gave out before the planting did, so last night after work I was out doing it again. Thankfully, this time, only one shrub. But, first, I had to rip out the old one which - though it was pretty much on death's door - didn't want to go. Remarkably, though - with the help of some pruning shears, a spade, and a whole lot of brute force - it went. And I came inside with only my hands covered in mud that had seeped through my gloves.

I'd probably have been mostly okay, but after I got all cleaned up I spent 2.5 hours putting grout sealant onto the grout in our new basement bathroom tile floor. (Yes, I know that I owe you photos.) Two and a half hours of kneeling, sitting, crouching, leaning, and otherwise lowering myself to work the tile into the floor grout was painful last night. And I worried it would be bad today. I was right.

Tonight, then, I decided to rest, right?

Wrong again. As I type this I have flecks of blue and white paint all over my hands. And my right arm. And the bottoms of my feet.

Why?

Because part of the plan of redoing the bathroom included repainting the downstairs bedroom. After all, since the rest of the basement is kind of torn up, but moving in the right direction, it seemed like the perfect time to paint the bedroom. And it was about time, since - when pressed to name the old wall color - Christopher simply called it "dirty."

So I spent about 4 hours cleaning, prepping, and painting tonight, and then another 30 minutes or so trying to get it all off of my hands. And - all in all - I'm pretty excited about how it all went.

Mentally, at least. Physically... well... We'll see whether or not I can move when my alarm goes off in the morning.

Which reminds me - it's time for more Ibuprofen.

Maybe I Could Send Out Cards...?

I have a ton of photos on my camera to document the changes in the bathroom. Seriously. 

But my camera and computer only talk to each other via a cable. 

I went to find that cable Friday night, and found a battery charger and my phone charger. No connecting cable. 

Have I mentioned that - along with the basement bathroom being ripped up, a bunch of my stuff has been kind of re-positioned, lately? 

I have a really good idea where the cable is. I hope to find it tomorrow, and get new photos up. 

Of course, I also hope to win the lottery. 

And reclaim my sanity. 

Honestly? All things considered, I guess I'll bet on the cable. 

Basement Bathroom Reno, Part 5 - Dust Starts to Clear

You might remember that in the last post about the renovation I showed you how much of the basement is currently "walled off" by plastic sheeting. Well, we did that for two reasons: concrete dust and drywall dust. 

In the past photos, you've seen how they jackhammered out part of the floor to work on some of the pipes. Well, now you can see why we were worried about the drywall dust. 

(For the record, these photos were taken a little over 2 weeks ago... I'm a little behind on updating you because I was worried about jinxing the process.)

When drywall (sheetrock, technically, I think) goes up, it is a multi-step process. The sheets are screwed into the studs, then there is a "tape" applied to the seams. Then everything is "mudded" to glue it all together. 

So far, that doesn't really cause too much dust - unless the person doing it is mixing it all too fast, and then it does the whole "turning the mixer on too high with flour in it" thing. The dust comes in the next day, when the mud all gets sanded down. Even with all of our precautions, there was still a fine coating of dust on pretty much the entire house by the time all was said and done. 

But enough with the words, here are some pictures: 

It's my new shower! Or at least 2 walls of it. Like the bulb hanging from the ceiling? Sadly, that's almost what it was like in the old configuration - a bare floodlight was simply in the ceiling above the shower...

The wall where the toilet and sink will go. The washer and dryer are on the other side of the wall - thankfully no longer visible!

It's my slightly-larger window! And - you can sort of see it in this picture, but you kind of have to know what to look for - there is now a raised section of ceiling, so that there is more window visible. (The old ceiling came about halfway down the window.) If you scroll back up to the first photo, you'll see how much extra height we get.

If I can remind myself to transfer photos from my camera, I'll try to get you a bit more up to speed in the coming days.

Dreaming of Bathrooms

Two of my friends have said, recently, that they occasionally dream of bathrooms.

One of them said she recently dreamed that she was building a bathroom where the privacy walls were made of bookshelves.

The other said that she typically has nightmares about searching for bathrooms, which often seem to be "from hell."

I, on the other hand, dream of a new bathroom when I'm awake these days. Happily, we seem to be getting closer to that dream becoming a reality as the days go by.

More photos to come, soon.

Basement Bathroom Reno, Part 4 - Resurfacing (inside and out)

I'd love to say that this post was going to be all about the final surfaces, like paint and tile, but we're so not to that point, yet. And so - obviously - we weren't there 2 weeks ago.

But, we got new, leveler, concrete for the floor. The whole in the utility room got filled in. The walls got insulated. And - we got a new window!

New bathroom subfloor.

This is where that hole in the floor used to be.

New insulation - and new window!

At the same time, I thought you might like to see what we've been living with downstairs. I am not a fan of concrete and drywall dust, so before they even started, we kind of walled off the bathroom area with plastic sheeting. The pup hates it (which is kind of okay, since she's not supposed to be downstairs running around these days). But, frankly, so do the rest of us.

It's a little like the strips that hang in front of a professional freezer...

It's hard to see it, but on the other side of the dryer is a kind of two-layer protection.

I'm happy to say that we've got some forward movement going on this week. I'll get some pictures up soon.

Basement Bathroom Reno, Part 3 - Anchoring

I didn't mean to leave you hanging for so long about the renovations in the downstairs bathroom. But, then, I didn't expect that we'd still have it going on in June.

So here are some photos from the re-anchoring of the room. You know, the stuff that kind of makes it at least look like a bathroom again.

The wall where the sink/toilet used to be... 

Look! A shower form!

The board was being used to keep the shower base flat.

Looking in from the utility room, you can see all the new pipes. (You can also see why I'm not getting a flush-mount mirror in the new layout, since we obviously can't cut through the studs, there...)

In case you were wondering... this was about the 17th of May. In other words, about when we thought we might be done, until we found out that some pieces had been backordered.

More updates next time. (I promise.)

Obsessed Much?

As I sat down to write this, tonight, I found myself realizing that there hasn't been any change in the bathroom(s) since my last post. And that, because of that, I wasn't sure what I should write about.

Yeah... These renovations are kind of becoming an obsession. They've become one of the main things that I think about - and I'm not really sure how I feel about that.

Okay. That's a lie. I really want to stop thinking about them. In fact, I want them to be done so I don't ever have to think about them again.

But, until then, I suspect I need to start trying to think about something else.

Like, perhaps, painting the downstairs bedroom once the renovations are done.

Basement Bathroom Reno - Upstairs Version

I'm going to jump a bit ahead, today. 

You see, we have two bathrooms. Although the basement bathroom is getting a full redo, the upstairs bathroom is getting just some tweaking. 

For the most part, they're doing one at a time, so that we can actually... you know... live in the house. But there are a few things that need to be addressed at the same time. For instance, when the Duct Guy came to put in the downstairs vent, he put in the upstairs one, too. 

When the plumber came to deal with the downstairs shower, he also looked at the upstairs tub and checked our upstairs sink to see what he could do with the old piping when he puts in a new drain stopper. That... umm... went kind of wonky. So now our upstairs sink looks like this: 

Yep. That's a bowl in the sink to catch water so it doesn't go down the drain. Then we pour it into the toilet...

And, today, when the electrician came to rough-in the downstairs outlets, he also did some work upstairs - which we totally expected. 

What we didn't expect was that we'd be spending the next few weeks with this: 

We've gone from a 1980s four-bulb strip to one nice, single compact fluorescent suspended on a few wires. Snazzy, isn't it? 

I just keep telling myself that both bathrooms are going to look great when they're done...

Basement Bathroom Reno, Part 2 - Demolition

If you've watched any home renovation shows on TV, you know that the first day of activity is the most spectacular. That's how it was for us. In one day we went from our "before" status to... well... studs and concrete.

Basically, it looked like this:

The wall with the door and the light switches.

Exterior wall and the wall where the toilet and sink used to be.

Remember in the "before" pictures where I said that the ceiling came halfway down the window? Here's proof.  

There used to be a wall, here, with the sink and shower build-out in it. The washer and dryer are under the plastic sheeting in the laundry room.

This is the hole above which the shower used to sit. You know, the drain which the shower was never connected to.

Hmm... What do you think? Is this better or worse than the old floor tile?

The view from the laundry room back into the bathroom. 

The hole under the shower eventually extended...

...into the laundry room. We won't talk about how many times I almost stepped into this part of the hole while walking in to do laundry.

Basement Bathroom Reno, Part 1 - Before

Some of you have been hearing about this for a while, and I finally have some photos to share.

If you haven't heard, here's what's going on: Our house was built in the '50s, and at that time, we're guessing that the basement bathroom was simply "roughed in" to be completed later. When it was completed later on... well... it may not have been exactly to code.

You see, we've found over the past few years that when the shower drain backs up, it backs up under the shower pan and out across the bathroom floor. When we mentioned that to the contractor, we found out that in many homes of the same vintage the shower was never actually attached to the drain pipe. It just sits above the pipe, with the assumption that water will eventually flow into it.

That's when we decided that the shower needed to be torn out and replaced. Which eventually kind of had the domino effect of needing to replace the flooring, and - as long as that was going on - fixing the low ceiling, and (why not?) replacing the other fixtures.

We started shopping for this back in March. The demo happened about 3 weeks ago. We found out last week that some parts are back-ordered and may not be here until June. So... For now we're in the "during" stage. But the following photos are from the "before." (Please note that this is not the original before, when the room was "creamsicle" orange, with a darker orange below the rail and a light orange above it - with '80s gold/blue tile. It became peach to coordinate with the new floor tiles a few years back.)

Can you tell that the ceiling comes halfway down the window?

Apparently I was alert enough to take photos before my shower one morning. 

The wall to the right (which makes this entire space about 4 feet wide) is a drywall wall built to enclose the shower (see next photo).  

The shower stall was framed out to look "built-in" - but when the shower stopped working (luckily, just before the reno was to start), we realized that all of the plumbing is IN that wall. No way to fix it without ripping it out.

Current floor tile was peel-and-stick, but I kind of liked it. 

Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting some during pictures and - hopefully soon - I'll post some after shots, as well. I have to admit that I'm really excited with how it should look when it's done. I think you'll like it.