In case you've been wondering where I've been all week, here it is. After twelve years of hem-ing and ha-ing (and the fact that the shower was a mere moments away from springing a leak), we made the spur of the moment decision to remodel our bathroom. They started the next day. That gave me exactly one day to empty out all of the bathroom cabinets, throw away garbage bags full of products and free samples that I will never use and decide how I was going to exist for the next who-knows-how-many days without my sink, without my shower, and without full accessibility to my closet. I packed up what I needed (and what was previously stored in all the bathroom drawers and cabinets) into boxes and put them in our bedroom.
Ripping out the shower and all the bathroom tile and the countertops and replacing them with something resembling the 21st century was a huge undertaking, but they managed to finished all the tile work by the end of week one.
Week Two: Painting. What seemed to be the easy part of the job - the icing on the cake have you, turned out to be the that of which nightmares are made. After beginning the project, it was discovered that under the existing Master Bathroom paint, existed not one, but multiple layers of wallpaper adhered to the walls by the original builders without proper sizing. What should have been a two day job turned into a week of scraping, scoring, steaming, mudding and sanding. I imagined the painters just not showing up one day - abandoning the job sight - cutting their losses - leaving for greener pastures - and leaving me with a big mess. To their credit, however, they are still working away.
It brought back memories of our very first house on Apple Orchard Road. Our very first house was built in 1970 with all original decorating intact: Brady Bunch plaid wallpaper, gold appliances, kitchen carpet, bedroom shag and FOIL wallpaper! The do-it-yourself-ers in us tackled the foil wallpaper with child-like innocence. How hard could taking down wallpaper be? In retrospect, we should have left it up and let the room serve a duo purpose: Main Bath and Bomb Shelter. Nothing could penetrate it. We scraped the foil birds off in 1-inch pieces. It was an act of love. This was where we were going to build our lives together. This was where we were going to live forever.
We moved three years later.
This is a glimpse of my brand new sink and countertop.
Hope that paint comes off!
While the mud was drying in the bathroom, the painters decided to forge ahead and paint the master bedroom. This was not my original plan. My original plan was to finish the bathroom, put everything neatly away in the drawers, take a refreshing shower, and THEN paint the bedroom.
This change of plans found my husband and I scrambling at 10PM to move everything that we had previously moved out of the bathroom and into our bedroom, out of our bedroom and into the 14-year old boy's bedroom. That stuff, plus everything else that was in our bedroom.
Apparently, the new influx of clutter also gave the 14-year old boy license to not make his bed!
I'm pretty sure I vacuumed recently.
I have no idea where we are going to sleep tonight.
(Did I mention that we're keeping a friend for the weekend?)
Hopefully, AFTER pictures will be posted soon!