Renovating has taught me many useful skills. Sure there is the proper use of a miter saw, the balancing of drywall on my head, or how to cheat Home Depots Equipment Rental hours**, but the real readiness skills include how to not go insane while living in the one mostly clean room in your house or how to survive months using a toaster oven as your only cooking device.
It is coming down to the wire until Pork Chop's due date (11 days!), and after perhaps the most depressing, boring, and lonely family-less Christmas ever, I'm feeling antsy.
Nursery is ready.
Hospital bag is packed.
Franca's overnight bag is packed.
Email announcement is drafted.
Blog announcement is drafted.
Happy holidays/birth announcement
addresses have been updated on tiny prints.com.
So I decided to do some additional preparing by making crockpot meals and freezing them. I whipped out my Renovation Readiness Skills, bought 4lbs of skinless boneless chicken thighs and went to work!
Here are close up photos of the recipes.
(Click to enlarge.)
It was pretty darn easy, so if you have an good freezer/crockpot recipes please leave them in the comments. Vegetarian recipes will get extra thanks.
**To 'cheat' their system, rent your tool or equipment so that it is due back when they are not open. (9pm Sunday right maybe?) That way you get a whole bunch of free hours up until the reopen!
I'm super happy with his choice. It is really hard to find modern tile that isn't super expensive, but we have a GREAT local Crossville rep so we went with their Shade series.
We really like the elongated rectangle size for this space (because it is an elongated rectangle itself), so we ended up with the unpolished 12x24" for the floor & wall both in Vapor. We would have loved to do a darker tile in a 6x24", but we got a screaming deal on the vapor color. (I'm talking 81% off deal. Yea.)
We needed also needed smaller size for the shower floor (helps in sloping to drain) so that we paired the 1x3" mosaic in the Whites. (Only 40% off deal. Bah!)
Check it out, it is so pretty and modern (not to mention cheap!):
Here's a detail shot of the vapor's surface. Pretty.
12x24" Vapor for floor & wall
1x3" Whites for shower floor
Here are all the bathroom selections together:
A - Speakman shower head
B - Speakman controls
C - Hansgrohe Starck hand held shower & wall clip
D - Schluter shower drain
E - Schluter kerdi shower base and curb
F - Kohler persuade circ toilet
G - Hansgrohe toilet paper holder
H - Ikea Godmorgen cabinet in white oak w/ Odensvik sink
Last Friday my eyes welled up with tears, because finally, FINALLY the house didn't look like a crack house anymore. It wasn't a place of which to be embarrassed. I didn't feel compelled to launch into a 5 minute "we are renovating" explanation every time someone new came over.
Now it looks like a home.
Our home.
Here are some Before & Afters:
Ah. That's nice right?
I still laugh to myself whenever I look at the "before" photos lately.
Seriously, what the hell were we thinking buying this house????
[Side note: I randomly drove by the previous owner's current house this past weekend and while I couldn't see inside, her front porch was packed with stuff. Hoarding habits die hard.]
I *almost* changed the paint color in this hallway from the yellow-green (SW Rice Paddy) to something a little more matching to the dark trim. I'm so glad I didn't. Its a really different, refreshing and unexpected color and I'm totally digging it.
I know we've made some unusual choices with the trim in this house. First with the decision to paint the baseboards and picture rail the same color as the wall (but semi-gloss), and then my decision to go dark with the trim. I'm completely in love with it though. It's a little more modern, streamlined but dramatic.
And now some other shots:
So clean and fresh and DONE!
The guys still have to come back and do some fixes and touch-ups, but all-in-all, I'm like a new woman.
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