MOLES!

I've had the week from Hades, but to top it all off today we discovered MOLES! GREAT!
FANTASTIC! Our lovely back yard it now a patch of nasty paths and sink holes. I guess tomorrow I will be hitting the feed store and seeing if they have choke traps.
Yippee!

Retro Lighting

Not being able to work outside this weekend despite the lovely weather has driven me nuts. We just need to let things dry out a tad first. So I'm looking around the house at what I can tackle on my own and within our budget. Then my eye spies our lighting. Our lovely retro lighting. Have you ever seen anything quite like this? I'm at a loss. Should I polish it up and keep it? Or donate it to ReStore?
Oh I forgot to mention....there's a matching one in the living room.

Meet the first babies

This isn't house related, but just as important. For those of you who don't know, these are my first babies. The renovation is probably the hardest on them.

The Shower Is In!

I got home from work yesterday and dear hubby had the shower in! That means no more showers in the basement for me!!!!!!!! I was so happy! Then this morning when the shower didn't leak into the kitchen ceiling I was even happier!
Now our bathroom is functional, thank goodness! We do have a narrow fit between the shower and the huge bathtub, but I have a shower!!!!!!!!!
View of shower from the doorway, do you like my towel rack? ;-)View of bathroom from the tub towards the door,
and towards the sink. Now we have to find medicine cabinets, lighting and decide on flooring.
I'm thinking of painting the vanity gold. Something funky. Maybe.

A Little Girl's Room

Before.
After.
A while ago, before I knew such things as houseblogs existed, I got a bug up my butt and had to do SOMETHING to this house during the middle of winter. While the most pressing on our "to do" list is on the outside of the house, there was one more pressing matter, my then 5yr old's room. We had moved from our old house that had a totally two toned pink, (hubby called it Pepto Pink), room for her. In this house she had 1970ish wallpaper...not to her liking. So after the holidays we went to Menards, (the home improvement store of choice here, being we do not have a Lowe's) and got what we needed. We could not pull down the wallpaper, as it had lead based paint underneath. So we mudded what needed to be (we meaning hubby), and put two coats of oil based primer on it. Man is that stuff nasty to work with! I had a vision...hubby once again rolled his eyes. The top half of the wall pink, the bottom half in 8 and 10 inch stripes, light blue and lavender. Hubby has no patience for masking or detail paint work...that's fine I don't mind.
So the only thing left to do, is to put a chair rail up to divide the room. And either strip the wood work....again that lovely color CREAM, or paint it white. Which is why the chair rail isn't up yet. I'm still undecided. White would look really cute in there, but I so like the look of wood.
More of the stripes.My dtr's windows. I think these would look nice painted white, but I like the look of stained wood too.........

Our new bathroom ceiling color

Okay hubby helped, and the ceiling got painted! Yeah!!! The last part was the hardest as I so did not want to get a drop on the cedar! (I'm very very picky!) And even the delicate blue masking tape and I had issues. But all in all I'm happy with it! The pictures do not do it justice, it's more aqua!
Here is a pic of the new light fixture too. I didn't really like it all that much, but it was sooo much better than the big old fluorescent nasty thing that was there. I'm liking it more each day....and yes that is our lovely leaky tub, (and No I don't know what I'm doing with it yet!!!) This is more what the color really is like. However I think if I paint this wall (the other side of the shower) this color too, it will be too much color. I'm thinking of tiling it, but for now I might paint it and then go over it with a silver glaze or rag it...something to break the color up....Hey! That silver glaze would look neat on the ceiling too.....but I don't think I want to try that one! LOL I would love to put tiny tiles on this wall, but like I've said before I've never done tile work before and it scares me. I'm woman enough to admit it too!

Bathroom floor???

I'm at a loss what do with it. Tile? I've never done tile and I'm scared. Then of course I want the HEATED tile, because face it, this house seeps heat in the winter and damn it my feet are always cold. The old tile had to go. It was beige/almond/cream. Sorry....gone! Plus it was past it's prime and there was no real fix to it, especially since we had to tear up the floor to get the shower plumbed in. Now do I go for REALLY gaudy? Or kinda subtle? I change my mind more about the bathroom floor than I did about the kid's names. (And trust me that was a lot!)

The Bathroom

I had gotten a little spoiled, I was used to having our own master bath at our other house. So sharing one bathroom with little children and a teenager, certainly makes for interesting mornings! That was one of the reasons we decided not to go with the traditional style bungalow bathroom. We removed the lovely, almond colored, pedestal sink and replaced it with double sink vanity. (I never took before pics....sorry!) We stayed with white, well because I hate ALMOND, CREAM AND BEIGE, and I knew I wanted to put a lot of color in the remaining white wall area. The rest of the bathroom has cedar lined walls, which is kinda cool in a sauna sorta way. So we now have a wall dividing where the shower will eventually be and I'm thinking of trying my lovely left hand at putting 1 inch turquoise /aquamarine tile there. I have a nice color paint that's a cross between turquoise and aquamarine to put on the small part of the ceiling left exposed. I think it would brighten up the room quite a bit. Of course dear hubby just shakes his head. (I'm sure he thinks I'm nuts.)

Then in the meantime we have the leaky tub......

Starting on the shower

Well hubby has started on the shower! It will take a couple of weeks due to his work schedule, but hopefully will go smooth. He had to cut up the floor and found three, plus and old ceiling and original wiring....pretty scary!
Now what to do about that bathtub??????

The bathroom hates us

Well we found out the hard way that the lovely oringal, 1985, almond, jacuzzi with the dial on the wall tub leaks. It leaks directly into the kitchen windows. It looks like the POH lowered the ceiling of the kitchen when they "updated" the plumbing in 1985. The tub only leaks when you fill it up past the back jets. Whenever we give the muchkins a bath it doesn't leak, only when I try to take one...so we just avoid doing that!
On a sad note, we found a clawfoot tub for $25, but it was taken before we could get there! For $25 I would use that baby as a planter! ;-)