Big Girl Bed!

We moved Violet to her big girl bed this past week, expecting some protests, but NOTHING at all.  Not even a glimpse of wanted to go into her crib instead of the bed.  She loves it and she's SO CUTE in it!  She takes up about 1/3 of the bed, about 1/4 of it when she curls up so she looks like a little baby again.

Late last night she rolled out with a thump and wailed.  I went in to check her and snuggled her in bed and asked what happened.  She said "fell out of bed!".  I then asked where she hurt.  She said "my head hurts" while holding it, so I rubbed and kissed it and snuggled her in tight again and she was dead asleep in about 2 minutes.

This morning she slept in (late night, again) and I peaked in on her before leaving for work and saw that she was kind of awake, so I went in to say good morning.  I laid beside her and asked if she wanted to go in mommy's bed and snuggle her, and she turned to me and said, "No Daddy! Back to sleep!" then proceeded to pull up her covers.  This is really funny to us because she NEVER wants her covers on, and always wants to go into bed with us for a morning snuggle.  I said, "you want to roll over and go back to sleep"?  She said yes, rolled over and closed her eyes again.  I put a warmer blanket on her and left... too stinking cute!!

She's also turned into a little girl in what seems to be overnight.  She's talking in full sentences now, stringing multiple sentences together, and talking a lot.  It's such a FUN age!  You can actually have a little conversation with her now.  She still does play a little shy with others and doesn't talk half as much as when it's just us, but believe me, she's turned into a little motor-mouth.

Mom and Adrienne came over on Wednesday to paint Violet's room which went really well.  They were able to touch up the walls and clean them from the left over wall paper that was removed the day before, did a coat of primer and a first coat of pink paint, and also painted the trim white.  What a HUGE difference!  It looks great and we're so thankful that they were able to do this for us.  Her room is really looking like a little girls room.  I was initially thinking that we shouldn't be doing her room right now with everything else going on, but with the help of them and Marn's Mom and Dad on the wall paper the day before, it came together quite nicely in just a few days.

The bathroom shower is all done now - I actually showered in it this morning (without a curtain - the water pressure still sucks for some reason?)!  I would like to try and finish the mudding this weekend, and then take off the counter, and maybe paint the cabinets.   Doubtful that I'll get all of that done, but it's a goal.  The mudding is number one as the new cabinets are being measured up and possibly installed next week.  The counter is already detached - It wasn't screwed down at all.  Only the sink and caulking were holding it in place!  In order to remove that I'm going to have to turn off the water to house again as there are no shut-off valves underneath.  So I'll have to look for some kind of valves for that while the new stuff goes in.
Full complement of pics to come later, when I have a final before and after to show off. :)

Marn's Mom and Sister came over last night to do a big clean for her (I had baseball) as she's hosting a get together for her university friends as one of them is in town from Australia (the person we stayed with when we were there).  Crazy in the state that our house is in?  Yes, but, if you keep the bathroom door closed, it really does look good!  Her Mom hung some pictures (she's been bugging me about that for months, and asked me if she could do some), we put a lot of the "junk" away either in the spare room, downstairs or in the garage.  On Monday Marn turned the sunroom into a play room and moved the computer into the living room, and Madison on Wednesday organized the toys in that room.  It looks awesome.  So with a lot of help from a LOT of people, our house looks pretty good right now (sans bathroom and 3rd bedroom)!

Too Busy!

With this bathroom reno throwing our house into a complete mess and half-living there, with all the other things going on, it's completely crazy right now.  I wish I could take a week off and just do it all non-stop.
The bathroom tiling, drywall, flooring, toilet...
The 3rd bedroom, wall patching, painting...
The basement in complete disarray since moving in.
The garage in complete disarray since moving in.
The gardens all around the house and backyard completely overgrown with weeds
Having a new baby in 8 weeks!

We're both very overwhelmed right now.  We probably shouldn't have started the bathroom when we did as the timing with a lot of other things just didn't work out very well.  It might have been better to finish the 3rd bedroom first, and then do the bathroom, but we really needed it done before the new baby.... ah well, just keep hammering away at it.
I'm hoping to have the bathroom shower tiled, grouted and sealed by the end of the weekend, with new faucets installed so that we can actually shower at our own house again. That will be 3 weeks exactly.  2 weeks too long.

The reason we're so far behind?  The past 2 weekends were a bit of a write-off because we had other plans already and couldn't/didn't want to break them off.  One was a BBQ when Adrienne and the kids came from BC (ok, that was only 1 day, but I needed a break one day too) and last weekend was a Cottage weekend with the whole family.  That's 4 precious days of not doing much, or nothing at all.  I did take the Thursday off before the cottage, but didn't get as much done as I wanted to because I had other issues to take care of first -- the rag stuffed into the drain was sucked down and required me to go to Home Depot to rent a drain snake and fish that out.  What a S#!&*y job.  That ate up pretty much the whole morning that day.  This week I have 2 baseball playoff games, and Braeden's birthday dinner, so there's another 3 nights gone/partly gone.

Anyway, despite all of the set-backs, the bathroom is coming along.  I'm about 3/4 the way done the tiling.  I'll do a bit more tonight after baseball, and then some tomorrow again.  Hopefully it'll be all done by Friday so that I can grout, seal and install faucets this weekend.

Violet

Our little Violet is growing so fast these days.  It's like she's become a little girl in the span of a few weeks.  She's really putting a lot of words together for 4, 5 and 6 word sentences, and saying just about everything, or tries to.  It's such a fun age to see what she'll come up with next.  Marn and I almost everyday notice something new with her personality, new word, action, or emotion.  It's amazing and so fun to watch!  I's especially fun to see her really taking notice in how we act, or what we say, and then tries to copy it.  The mimicking started a while ago in a picture we posted - but it's really taken off to a whole new level now.  If Marn's talking to me, she'll repeat the last few words, or summarize the sentence.  So fun, yet we need to be fairly careful. (ie: we can no longer say, "what up bitch" in a ghetto kind of voice, because you just know that she'll be repeating that to the wrong person!  lol  Don't ask why we say that?  It just started a while ago and we think it's funny...)
The other day in the car she said "Daddy, I hear a plane!  I hear a plane, Daddy!".  She was right, a prop plane was going by.
I need to start writing these things down because I forget, and they happen so often.  It's just so fun to hear her come up with new things and longer sentences, especially when she gets the context right.

With the new baby just around the corner, maybe we're just subconsciously taking notice of her a little closer because deep down inside, we know her days of being the baby of our family are numbered. It's a funny mix of emotions when I think about her and the new baby.  How can you be really excited and a little sad at the same time? You start wondering what kind of parent you'll become when the new one comes around and how it'll change our dynamics.  What kind of challenges the new one's going to bring us, especially with regard to Violet and our interaction with her.  Let's face it; we've been pretty lucky with Violet.  Her (mostly) excellent sleeping, great eating, her laid back personality, and awesome hugs and generally happy mood have been amazing things.  How's she going to do with this change?  How are WE going to do with the change?  How is the baby going to be different than Violet with eating, sleeping and the ease at which she seems to pick new tasks up?

We have about 2 more months before we'll find out.  Until then, we're just really, really enjoying watching Violet grow, interact, and become a little girl.

Bathroom Reno

No pics, just yet...
but we decided to take out the bulk head in the bathroom.  The little bathroom feels so much bigger now because of that.  They also had two live wires feeding down through that bulk head to one light (one wire was capped off), so I removed those and replaced with one new wire.  The old stuff was looking rather worn and gummy.  Looked unsafe to me, so it's gone.
Marn and Candace cleaned and mopped the floors last Monday, which ended up being for nothing (other than piece of mind at the time).  The place is a big dust bin, pig sty again....

The tub tiling is coming along slowly.  On Sunday a friend came over to remove the bulk head, redo the wiring and start the tiles.  We only got about 3 rows up as the other stuff took most of the day.  I then did some more on Monday and got another 4 rows up.  That brings me almost half way done.  If I can spend an entire day on it, I think I'll get it done before Thursday night.

I may take Thursday off to try and finish it before the weekend where nothing will get done again because we're going to a cottage all weekend with the rest of the Family and leaving on Thursday night.  There's still a lot of drywall and mudding to do.... and then the floors and toilet issue (flange needs replacing).

The goal is to get the shower in working order before the other stuff so that we can start using it again.  The drywall, etc. is trivial at this point.  We need a functioning shower again.  We've been half staying at Marn's parents and showering there, and I've been showering at Mom's place when I drop Violet off when we stay overnight at our house.  Mix in not having our 2nd car (we lent it to Adrienne for 3 days), and it's been a tough week/couple of days!
If we had a 2nd shower, this wouldn't be a big deal.

Anyway, here's hoping things work out tomorrow, if I take the day off!

loooong weekend

I forgot my camera memory card today, so you get a brief update with crappy cell phone pictures.
I took Friday off to start on the Bathroom demo.  At the end of the day, this is what I had to show for it.

Yes, that's pretty much one full day's work.  This was taken at the dump at 5:00 on Friday before unloading it - all 400+ KG of it.

And that was only the tile and plaster around the shower and part of the walls around the toilet.  There was still more to go, which was finished with Dad's help on Saturday.  This load is the rest of the walls that came down, which I took to the dump on Monday.  I reused the new tub box to haul it, so think of a standard size tub, 30" x 60" x 20" high, all filled with more debris, with larger stuff beside it.  Another 255+ KG!

The rest of Saturday and Sunday Dad and I spent on removing and cleaning up the remaining walls, plumbing and fitting the new tub, and putting in new insulation and vapour barrier.  I don't have progress pics of that with me right now, but will update with better pics later on.

Monday we tested the water pressure on the new plumbing, corrected leaks on the new plumbing (!), put up the walls for the shower and tub area, ripped out most of the floor, and cut the drywall for the rest of the bathroom walls.
So, I am a little behind my original schedule, but the plumbing took a little longer than expected, as did the old 2" cement wall removal!  I couldn't have tiled the walls because I wasn't quite ready and we didn't have enough of that tile anyway.  I also want to wait a few days with the water pressure just to make sure we don't have anymore leaks in it (I only put a few screws in the boards to hold it up, just in case).

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how much was done, even though Monday wasn't the most productive.  It was a killer previous 3 days, so I was allowed to relax a bit on Monday.

This is at Granny's after dinner and a bath....

Bathroom Reno

Last night I decided to take a few tiles off the wall to get a taste of what's to come this weekend.  What I thought was behind the tiles, is not at all. I'm thinking now that the tile work in there is original to the house because it's plaster about an inch thick, then metal mesh, then sheet rock and studs, which are also tied into the existing non-tiled walls (so, the finish coat of plaster stops at the top of the tiles and then about an inch more of cement without a finish coat was added making the walls thicker where the tiles are).  There will not be a usable wall after removing the tiles at all.  Not even close.  I have a picture of it which will make more sense when I post it.
So my goal of having the new tub in place for Sunday and ready to re-tile will probably not be happening.  I'll have to gut the walls to the studs on Friday.  I would love it if I can get so far as to remove the tub by the end of the day as well, but that might be a lofty goal.
Saturday and Sunday will most likely be re-drywalling, waterproofing the tub area and prepping for new tub placement. If I get to Monday and I'm able to start tiling the walls again, I'll be thrilled, but I think this is probably a very tight schedule.
The floor tile I'm not even thinking about right now as the walls have thrown a big wrench into the plans.  What was going to be a "minor" bathroom reno is looking more like a pain in the butt large job....