Write From Karen

I’m too tired to take pictures of our evolving bathroom. It was one heck of a week.

Who am I kidding, EVERY week is one heck of a week.

I’m going to Branson tomorrow – with a nurse and an MA.

That won’t be awkward.

Anyway …

The front bathroom is coming along nicely. We have a toilet in the front bathroom and the shower is now functional, too.

*Side note on the toilet: It sucks. At least, it doesn’t flush as well as our old one did. Kevin told me it has something to do with yet another asinine government regulation – the whole can’t flush too much or we’ll kill our planet nonsense. How is it saving energy to flush a toilet five times instead of two? Seriously … government is so stupid.

Jazz will be the first one to break our new shower in tonight. We’re now exclusively using the front bathroom. The back bathroom was completely gutted today – much to my surprise and horror.

(Horror because I MEANT to clean everything up [i.e. toilet mainly] before they got to that part, but no one warned me and … UGH. Don’t you know remodeling bathrooms must be NASTY?!?)

The electrician came out and put the wiring for the sconce lights in the front bathroom … only, we hadn’t picked them out yet. I just got back from Lowe’s (Kevin is at band practice), and I picked out some sconces I liked. It’ll be interesting to see if Kevin agrees with my choice since we rarely agree on anything style wise and end up compromising (i.e. Kevin usually gets his way).

I also bought the mirror to put over our sink – WHICH, by the way, looks pretty damn nice in that bathroom, I’ve got to say. I wasn’t sure about buying a sink with a small cabinet but I’m so glad Kevin got his way (again) and talked me into it because it really does look nice in there. I also found a cabinet with three small straw baskets on shelves that I think will look pretty fabulous on the wall behind the toilet. I’m a little concerned about the walls – I think the wall guy is going to mud the parts of the wall he added/fixed and leave the rest of the walls to us. We (Kevin always gets annoyed when I say “we” when it really means “him”), textured the walls and though they looked cool, we’re so over textured walls, which means, “we” will have to sand the walls down and mud before “we” repaint. (Actually – I sort of like painting).

The construction guys are going to put a corner shelf in our shower. We had initially asked for a shelf to be built into the shower, but again, those dang walls are too thin to do anything like that, so we’ll have to compromise (again) and go for the corner shelf. Which is sort of cool, I guess, and is certainly better than having a shower caddy.

I don’t know when the tile guy is going to show up and do his magic – hopefully soon.

So the front bathroom is nearly finished – or as finished as it will be before we get in there to paint and add our own finishing touches. I’m looking forward to seeing how much of the back bathroom the guys get done before the weekend.

We have them.

I know it doesn’t look it? But the room is actually turning out to be bigger than I imagined. Of course, we don’t have the sink in there yet …

Still not crazy about the shower head on the back like that … but that’s as good as it gets, I’m afraid.

The construction guys taped off where our mirror will go …

Picture a small (think SMALL) sink/cabinet under the mirror. The electrician is supposed to come by tomorrow – we’re putting sconces on either side of that pretend mirror.

The guys also knocked out the back bathroom wall …

We’re moving that toilet and putting it up against the wall. The tub will go back in the area behind the toilet and the shower you see there now? Will be gone and we plan on putting a huge cabinet in that space for dirty clothes and bathroom “stuff.”

The guys are making progress. I have yet to even meet them. They always come after I leave for work and are gone before I get home from work. I told Kevin to thank them for keeping everything so CLEAN. I can’t believe how nice they clean up after themselves. It’s like we don’t even know anything is going on – they just shut the door and *POOF* no construction mess.

I’ll link to our construction guys when this is all over … I’d like to give them a fair critique of their work, but so far? I’m very pleased.

Kevin said they tore down the shower wall. They actually gave the toilet area, and the sink area, two more inches. I’m SO relieved on that front. However, the fly in the ointment is that they didn’t have enough room on the left wall to put the shower head – that wall is actually the back side of our rock fireplace. And the other wall, the wall on the right, next to where the toilet is going to go, is too skinny, so, that only leaves the back wall. This means, the shower head is going to be spraying toward the shower curtain.

Hmmm …

I’m not exactly thrilled with that, but we really don’t have a choice, otherwise; we’ll just have to make sure the curtain remains IN the shower so we don’t soak the entire bathroom floor.

I’m hoping the light is NOT going to remain where it is now because … ugh, that would IN the shower. We’re actually planning on putting two sconce lights on either side of the the oval mirror we plan on putting above the small sink. I’m also sweet talking Kevin into putting a recessed light above the toilet area so people are not having to do their business in the dark.

They placed the shower base in today and worked on re-routing the plumbing. I have no idea what they have planned for tomorrow. It’s sort of fun to leave the house with it looking one way and coming home to a bunch of changes at the end of the day.

I’m thankful that Kevin’s job is flexible enough that he’s able to come home and check on them periodically.